Global warming makes food insecurity inevitable

The climate crisis is changing weather patterns and increasing the chances of extreme events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts. It is also responsible for changing and polluting entire ecosystems, compromising biodiversity and destroying harvests. All these events have a huge impact on food production, as they significantly limit the quality, availability, and accessibility of resources, and compromise the stability of food systems around the world.

According to a new NASA study, maize (corn) crops are among the most threatened under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. If countries do not manage to drastically reduce their carbon footprint, maize crop yields are projected to decline by about 24% by 2030, with severe implications worldwide. The production of some other staple crops like rice and wheat is also projected to decline drastically as a consequence of climate change, with supplies of these resources shrinking substantially, particularly in food-insecure developing countries.

Floods are among the most climate-related disasters for crops. China has made food security a priority but is now battling more frequent and severe weather events that, coupled with the soaring record demand for corn, soybeans, and wheat, are forcing the world’s second-largest economy to rely on imports. In recent years, the country has been dealing with unprecedented floods that have caused irreversible crop damage and drastically reduced the amount of arable land. An estimated 30 million acres of crops have been damaged in the record-breaking rains and floods that hit Chinese provinces in 2021. At the same time, planting on over 18 million acres of farmland, which account for one-third of the country’s total land reserved for winter wheat farming, has been delayed.

Global warming is also responsible for droughts and catastrophic wildfires, both of which represent a risk to global food security as they destroy agricultural land and reduce the availability of water, a crucial resource to keep extensive irrigated agriculture going. In South and Southeast Asia, extensive droughts are already having an irreversible impact on food availability and prices of food, all factors that are likely to boost the already high number of unnourished people. In the Horn of Africa, severe droughts caused by record dry conditions have left an estimated 13 million people facing hunger. Similarly, large wildfires like the ones affecting North America will contribute to the contamination of air and water, both of which have multiple social and economic implications. In Australia, devastating bushfires that repeatedly hit the country in the last two years have been responsible for the destruction of agricultural land and farmland, with the dairy industry paying the highest price. Aside from milk production, other products such as meat and honey have suffered greatly, sparking debates about food security.