Global Warming possible impact on global food supplies

[gagerg]

As we all know the drought that occurred in America during the 2012 summer which had adverse effects on the county's agriculture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_North_American_drought and there is reason to believe that this occurred as a result of Climate change from the Carbon Dioxide emitted by humans along with the decreasing albedo of Greenland and the Arctic Ice (due to increasing amounts of open water).

What is important to note with regards leading food producing countries like America, Canada, Russia etc, is that if their production starts to tank then there is a risk of a global food crisis.

With a repeat of the 2012 large scale ice pack melt likely along with another heatwave in America one has to wonder about the impacts of a summer heatwave that damages crops in 2013.

[Gray-Wolf]

We've had food price hikes and aid programme shorfalls for the past 3 years due to bad weather across major grain producing areas. The drought has receded in the U.S. but NOAA forecast it's return to over 60% of the country through spring and summer so it looks like things are only getting worse with this being 'make or break' year for many of the small farmers.

The other side of the U.S. drought is the raising of saly levels below the growing areas. Continual watering has lead to the salt pan being raised as the water was drawn back to the surface and evaporated. Basically turning the grain basket of the World into a new version of what the Romans did to the Carthiginians lands after the second Punic Wars.

Then we turn to Russia. Will we see a return of it's Continental H.P. and drought (with wildfires through the Tundra regions again) this spring/summer? The precurser downstream Greenland anomally is already setting up (and helping mangle the Arctic sea ice) so why won't we?

The only issue is last years record Arctic melt. If 07' started this Jet stream convolution into motion then what will the extra forcing that 2012 brought us bring us? An even more convoluted Jet? (higher amplification, shorter wavelength) shifting the zones that have become common over the past 6 summers?

Only one way to find out for sure.....lets wait and see!

[gagerg]

Just thought I'd bump this thread with an update.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/apr/02/drought-forecast-bad-to-worse/

It seems like the food situation has turned from poor to absolutely hopeless.

Personally I feel as though the collapse of society is waiting right around this corner in the next few months with cannibalism being the main regime .

I'm a great disaster movie writer, but not enough time for to direct one of those.

[BornFromTheVoid]

While climate change may be enhancing the US drought, using so much of the crops for biofuels, especially with current regulations, certainly won't help with food security issues

I think we'd see a complete end to foreign food aid before we'd get close to food shortages in western countries. Cannibalism is at least a few years off methinks!

[Hiya]

Although I don't know if this is a fact or not might a rise in global temperatures have increased food production in said areas in the first place?

[gagerg]

While climate change may be enhancing the US drought, using so much of the crops for biofuels, especially with current regulations, certainly won't help with food security issues

I think we'd see a complete end to foreign food aid before we'd get close to food shortages in western countries. Cannibalism is at least a few years off methinks!

Certain opinions are much more bleak in comparison to yours BFTV

For example Douglas Spence's opinion of what is to come in the future.

Now

1. Even with the Arctic ice in the present state increasingly extreme weather is already moving us closer to a point of increasing risk to agricultural output.

2. For the last few years extreme weather has worsened year on year and since we have positive feedback processes in progress we have no reason to suppose this will do anything but accelerate rapidly.

2012-13

3. I expect significant to majority sea ice loss to occur in either 2012 or 2013, and expect this to dramatically worsen the weather, causing immediate stress to global food supplies. Combined with weak economic conditions we will see stress in countries dependent on food imports or aid triggering more "Arab spring" moments in previously stable regimes. Movement of refugees will cause knock on effects in neighbouring regions.

4. Modern civilisation is fragile and dependent on global supply chains that can be disrupted both by weather and politics. We will experience an increasing incidence of problems maintaining normal operation in technologically advanced societies. There is the potential for conflict in the Arctic as new resources open up.

5. Other positive feedbacks such as methane release and forest burn off will accelerate.

2014-15

6. I expect total sea ice loss will occur during summer in either 2014 or 2015. By this time I expect agricultural output to have declined to a point where food supplies are inadequate and famine and conflict are rife. Farmers will not know what to plant or when and even acquiring seed from other climatic regions may be problematic.

7. Social conditions will be comparable to the Holomodor. People will try to eat anything and everything - earthworms, insects, each other - even in some cases their own children. Nation states will fragment and reform into smaller and increasingly violent competitive groups fighting over rapidly diminishing resources. Maintaining the supply chains required for the operation of modern technology including agriculture will be largely impossible.

8. If we see widespread war before nation states fragment there is a possibility of the use of nuclear and genetically enhanced biological weaponry. Whether through war or famine the human population will be in freefall.

2016+

9. The climate will continue to worsen as more heat flows into the system and this will become the new threat to survivors as population density becomes too low to sustain conflict. Most survivors will be eliminated, leaving the human race on the brink of extinction. A majority of the planet will cease to be habitable. The deserts will greatly expand, though this will help balance the planets thermal budget. Very few people will live to see the Arctic sea ice entirely gone throughout the year or the ruined cities drowned in the rising sea.

10. Assuming the collapse is as rapid and severe as I expect – I would expect the human population to collapse below the new carrying capacity of the planet and therefore for resource pressure to lighten once a sufficient number of people die (granted with few useful resources left and uncertainty about precisely which regions would be good prospects).

Finally

Theoretically there will be some isolated and scattered areas where the climate is still habitable, resources are sufficient and some form of agriculture can be practised. If small groups of people make it to these areas, there is a theoretical chance over many generations to recover civilisation, albeit at great disadvantage.

Disaster taxa will rapidly proliferate into the empty ecosystem, leaving the return of biodiversity to occur over a few million years, bringing the sixth great mass extinction to a close.

NB Since we are at a point where weather is a key effect, allow +/- 1 year for (good/bad) luck.

I am not sure if this would prove true or not, but with the worsening drought in the US along with the potential for a full melt out of the Arctic Ice, his predictions don't seem to be too far off the mark.

[4wd]

Stock up on earthworms now.

It really is a load of scaremongering codswallop. That is all.

[Gray-Wolf]

Always 3 days away from Anarchy Four!

" Panis quod Venatus!"

Many of the small farms in the U.S. run the risk of Bankrupcy this year if conditions don't bring them a harvest. Even bigger Madness when capitalism demands land sit fallow, due to ownership issues, whilst folk starve???

Even on my jollier days I can't see any way humanity can continue on it's current growth rate? However sad our best chace is a re-size and new economic structure for the planet.

With enough for all surely we can move away from the hinderence of wealth (and the poverty it demands to be measured against?) and focus more on individual worth?

[gagerg]

Always 3 days away from Anarchy Four!

" Panis quod Venatus!"

Many of the small farms in the U.S. run the risk of Bankrupcy this year if conditions don't bring them a harvest. Even bigger Madness when capitalism demands land sit fallow, due to ownership issues, whilst folk starve???

Even on my jollier days I can't see any way humanity can continue on it's current growth rate? However sad our best chace is a re-size and new economic structure for the planet.

With enough for all surely we can move away from the hinderence of wealth (and the poverty it demands to be measured against?) and focus more on individual worth?

Perhaps it will take another record drought before we actually focus on individual worth GW, otherwise it would take another extinction period with many people doomed to oblivion as a result of a massive population die off.

[Methuselah]

Always 3 days away from Anarchy Four!

" Panis quod Venatus!"

Many of the small farms in the U.S. run the risk of Bankrupcy this year if conditions don't bring them a harvest. Even bigger Madness when capitalism demands land sit fallow, due to ownership issues, whilst folk starve???

Even on my jollier days I can't see any way humanity can continue on it's current growth rate? However sad our best chace is a re-size and new economic structure for the planet.

With enough for all surely we can move away from the hinderence of wealth (and the poverty it demands to be measured against?) and focus more on individual worth?

The 'needs' of capitalism are always put ahead of those of people, GW...

[DAVID SNOW]

The 'needs' of capitalism are always put ahead of those of people, GW...

And the 'needs' of communism are always put ahead of those of people.....

[Methuselah]

And the 'needs' of communism are always put ahead of those of people.....

I agree...But only in North Korea, thankfully...I doubt that it's communism that's driving the US into bankruptcy?

[knocker]

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite"

Or

"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong".

John Kenneth Galbraith.

Edited April 3, 2013 by knocker

[4wd]

You can guarantee the supermarket shelves are more likely to be replenished under a capitalist system than a communist one.

I noticed new season spuds from Israel in Morrisons yesterday.

Is the guy quoted in post #1 trying to sell a book or something?

I suppose there's an audience for that kind of doomsday stuff, it seems the mainstay of the Greens to scare people with a continuous narrative of impending disaster.

It's a very old trick which as been around for centuries, there's always a terrible fate around the corner if you don't do what someone else wants you to.

[Methuselah]

You can guarantee the supermarket shelves are more likely to be replenished under a capitalist system than a communist one.

I noticed new season spuds from Israel in Morrisons yesterday.

Is the guy quoted in post #1 trying to sell a book or something?

I suppose there's an audience for that kind of doomsday stuff, it seems the mainstay of the Greens to scare people with a continuous narrative of impending disaster.

It's a very old trick which as been around for centuries, there's always a terrible fate around the corner if you don't do what someone else wants you to.

Indeed; ramping up doomsday scenarios can be incredibly lucrative. Just look at how the energy conglomerates operate: Every winter, they threaten power cuts and hike-up their prices; every summer, they reduce them again, but by far less than the previous increase...

[knocker]

An exert from an article in this months Geographcal magazine.

]

Feeding on fear

DR JULIA WRIGHT

is the deputy director of the

Centre for Agroecology and Food

Security at Coventry University

For some time now. the news media have been alerting us of impending food crises. These apocalyptic headlines serve to repeat

the mantra that only by further intensifying agriculture will we be able to feed the nine billion people due to populate the planet by

2050 But where's this mantra coming from?

Industrial agriculture has been unable to feed the world so far- more than a billion people are currently undernourished. In fact. this approach is actually destroying our natural resource base through pollution and degradation. and destroying human health through denaturing food products so that they have a reduced or even negative nutritional quality.

Paradoxically, current global food production provides 4,600 kilocalories of edible food per person per day, which is enough to feed 14 billion people

What's obvious from this statistic is that worldwide. we waste a significant amount of the food that we produce. both in the field and after harvest In fact. the commonly accepted proportion is about 40 per cent In other words. we produce too much food. but of the wrong type at the wrong tirne and in the wrong place

Food security isn't only about availability. It's also about accessibility and whether the food is nutritionally and culturally adequate. and it's these latter two factors on which we also need to focus. To resolve this would mean having location-specific strategies that are in the hands ofand meet the needs of - the peoples concerned. and this is what the call for localisation of the food system is all about

So why does the rhetoric of feeding the world through industrial agriculture continue? And why haven't we seen a greater and more rapid increase in

agroecological farming approaches? It seems easy to blame individuals in the agribusiness and food corporations for their need to control and maintain the system as it is. but hard as I've tried. I can't think of another feasible explanation

Edited April 3, 2013 by knocker

[Northernlights]

Don"t know if it is relevant here but cattle/sheep feed is being rationed by feed merchants since Christmas and we are receiving 20% less than we order every time.

[mike Meehan]

An interesting program on the box the other night explored the possibility of insects and suchlike for public consumption - apparently this is quite common in Thailand and neigbouring countries.

They contain more protien than normal meats and are more efficient in producing this at much less cost and do not take up anything like the land area needed to produce conventional meat. As such they could be the answer to possible world food shortages.

However our western taste is not acclimatised to eating such things as fried grasshoppers so such food would need to be processed to appeal to our delicate sensitivities - on the other hand we think nothing of eating crabs, lobsters, langoustine, prawns and shrimps which are the really marine versions of which we describe as the insect variety of food - in fact they are sought after as quite a delicacy.

Grasshopper cocktail anybody?