Goals

On completing this module, students are expected to be able to:

• describe the impact of climate and other anthropogenic changes on different sources of food;
• predict how climate change and changing land use will impact food supply in different regions;
• project how trends in global population will impact supply of food in different parts of the globe;
• propose strategies to cope with an increasingly hungry planet.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this module, students should be able to answer the following questions:

• How variable are projections for global population increase in the next century, and what is the cause of the uncertainty?
• What are Thomas Malthus’ predictions and why they are largely right?
• What are the projections of climate change on food supply of different regions and developing versus developed world?
• What are the causes and magnitude of famines in the past?
• What are the impacts of projected changes in different climatic and other variables (temperature, heat waves, precipitation, drought, CO2, ozone) on food supply?
• What are the projected climate change impacts on food production in North America?
• What are the projected changes in production by subsistence and smallholder agriculture, crops, pasture and livestock farms?
• What are the problems facing fisheries, and how will fisheries change in the future?
• What are the projections for insect pests and weeds and their impacts on agriculture?
• What are the advantages of biofuels as an energy source, and what are the ethical and environmental problems?
• What methods can be used to adapt to changing climate?
• What are the causes of food security issues?

Below is an overview of your assignments for this module. The list is intended to prepare you for the module and help you to plan your time.

Assignments

1. Take the Module 9 Quiz.
2. Yellowdig Entry and Reply

Earth is becoming increasingly crowded. Global population stands at just over 8 billion and is rising by 78 million people per year. Now, if that number does not sound like a lot to you, think about it this way--we are adding close to the population of Germany every year to our crowded planet! Currently, 134 million children are born every year, that is 367 thousand per day, and there are approximately 56 million deaths per year. At this rate, the population is predicted to reach 9 billion by about 2046. It's mind-boggling to think that global population when many of you were born stood at just over 5 billion! The graph below shows the massive increase in global population as well as these scary projections. It demonstrates how global population increase has been driven by surging populations of Africa and, especially, Asia.

United Nations population estimates for the world and different continents are based on differing fertility assumptions. Population is shown on the y-axis and year on the x-axis. As you can see, there is a significant divergence of estimates especially in Asia starting in about 2030 due to uncertainties associated with fertility and mortality.

Credit: Cmglee from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The video below portrays the recent growth in population as well as the outlook.

Video: 7 Billion, National Geographic Magazine (2:57) This video is set to music and not narrated.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population. In this work, he predicted that populations of nations would be restricted by the availability of food because nations would not be able to control birth rate. The essay has been intensely debated by evolutionary biologists, economists, and many others for the last two centuries. Repeated famines around the globe generally support Malthus' hypothesis.

Regardless, we find ourselves in a position today where the world is currently not able to feed all of its inhabitants. Currently, more than one billion people are estimated to lack sufficient food, and more than twice that number do not receive adequate nutrition. This situation will likely become a lot more dire in the future. In fact, predictions for population increase diverge significantly in the later parts of the century because some models assume mass mortality due to widespread famine. To make matters worse, climate change is predicted to cause major problems to crop yields, especially in parts of the world where the population is growing the fastest. These shortages will likely lead to mass migration of huge numbers of people, possibly entire nations.

Darfur refugee camp in Chad

Credit: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Agriculture is an essential part of every society. Forty percent of the Earth’s surface is managed for cropland and pasture. That is more than for any other activity including forestry, which comprises 30% of Earth's area. In underdeveloped countries, approximately 70% of the population live in rural areas where agriculture is the major activity. There are many diverse sources of food, and populations around the world have very different diets and demands. In addition to crop and livestock, fish is a stable diet in many countries. Projections for climate change differ significantly for these various food sources, thus we will discuss them separately. For crop farming, in particular, the impact of climate change is very different for agro-businesses run by multinational corporations in the developed nations than for family-operated farms in the developing world.

Family Farming

Climate change will have very different impacts on different continents, and socio-economic factors will govern the abilities of nations to respond. Even though the south-central and southwestern US are likely to face extreme drought in the coming decades, inhabitants and businesses should by and large be able to adapt. It will be a starkly different situation in Southern Africa, India and Southeast Asia, Mexico, northeast Brazil, southern Africa, and West Africa, where climate change will be coupled with a general lack of coping mechanisms. In all of these regions, the impact of climate change, and the inability of societies to fully cope with it will potentially result in security issues including soaring food prices and military conflicts.

Food shortages will not be a new problem in many places. Mass migrations driven by food supply have been an important part of human evolution and a tragic part of the history of many nations, especially those in Africa. As we saw in Module 2, famine caused by drought is thought to have caused the collapse of the Mayan civilization in Central America around 850 AD. More recently in China, famine in the late part of the 19th century caused the death of some 60 million people. Famine is possible even in the developed world. The Irish potato famine between 1845 and 1852 caused by a potato disease called potato blight led to approximately 1 million deaths, between 20 and 25% of the population of that country. This problem does not appear to be improving with time. In the 20th century, 70 million people are thought to have died during famines: 30 million alone in China between 1958 and 1961, and 7-10 million in India in 1943.

Mozambique

Credit: Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Nowhere is the history of famine more devastating than in Africa. Famines on the African continent, like elsewhere, have often resulted from a combination of drought and political conflicts, oppressive military regimes, and war. Most recently, the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan erupted over water in 2003. One side of the conflict, consisting of migratory farmers, has displaced large numbers of sedentary farmers to parts of the country without sufficient food and water. Mass mortality has largely been caused by disease. Estimates of the number of dead are uncertain, but are between 180,000 and 460,000. This number is much less than the number of mortalities in the Biafran conflict of Nigeria between 1967 and 1970 when nearly a million people died from conflict and starvation. Today, more than a third of Africans suffer from hunger.

Children during the Biafran conflict, Nigeria

Credit: Nairaland Forum: Biafra: The Nigerian Civil War in Pictures

The following video portrays the tragic history of famines.

Video: Famines throughout the ages: 19th-21st Century Pt. 2 of 2 (10:14) Set to music.This video is not narrated.

A number of different physical variables impact agriculture. These include temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed, and radiation. The absolute levels of these variables and their variability on a daily, monthly, and annual basis, affect crop yields as well as livestock health.

Crops are particularly sensitive to absolute temperature variation even over short time scales, in some cases a few hours (for extreme cold) and days (for warmth). Likewise, extreme events such as floods, and inter-annual variations in rainfall connected with cycles such as ENSO can also impact crops significantly. For example, the major drought in Australia from 1998-2010 led to significantly lower crop yields. Major cold snaps in Florida in 1983 and 1985 killed a third of all citrus trees, with an accompanying loss of $2 billion. At the other end of the spectrum, the North Atlantic Oscillation has caused sunnier summers in Britain, leading to increased wheat yields.

As it turns out, anthropogenic impacts can greatly magnify the effects of climate change on crops, livestock, and fisheries. For example, soil erosion, overgrazing, air pollution, salinization of groundwater, and pests and overuse of pesticides tend to exacerbate the impacts of the changing climate such as droughts and heatwaves. Here, we describe the forecasts and impacts of changes in climate variables, followed by anthropogenic changes.

Human impacts on crops

To feed the burgeoning global population, food supply is going to have to increase, but it is not going to be easy. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts there will be a 55% increase in crop production from 2030 and an 80% increase by 2050 (both compared to 2000 levels). To allow for this increase, a 19% increase in rain-fed land area and a 30% increase in the area of irrigated land will be required. This areal increase will take place in developing countries, including Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Crop yields/acre are expected to rise in these countries. Even still, the rate of growth in global crop production is predicted to decline from 2.2%/year in 1970-2000 to 1.6%/year in 2000-2015, 1.3%/year from 2015 to 2030 to 0.8%/year from 2030 to 2050. Thus, producing sufficient food to feed our growing population will become increasingly challenging. Here, we discuss the different types of agricultural business and how they will change in the future.

Subsistence and smallholder agriculture

Subsistence agriculture refers to rural production in developing countries where farms are run by families, and farming provides the main source of income. Seventy-five percent of the world's 1.2 billion poor people live in rural areas. These people, with poor technology and more limited access to markets, have a much more difficult time farming than large agribusinesses. Subsistence and smallholder agriculture (SSA) is more threatened by climate change than any other type of agriculture largely because of the lack of technology and limited resources to fall back on during tough times. However, SSA is also remarkably resilient. The availability of extended family labor and indigenous knowledge can overcome significant hardship.

Subsistence farming in Iran

Credit: Hamed Saber from Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

SSA will likely decrease in importance with the gradual migration of the population of under-developed countries from rural to urban areas. Urban population recently overtook rural population, and in rural areas, there has been a movement away from SSA to other forms of subsistence. Thus, in many areas of the world, SSA is becoming increasingly rare as a way of life.

Crops

By far, the most important source of food for humans are grains, wheat, corn, and rice. All three crops will be hit hard by heatwaves in places such as the Canadian, US and Russian heartlands which are key grain producing regions. However, wheat is likely the most susceptible crop. Wheat is a cool season crop and recent research suggests that warming over the last 50 years has resulted in a 5 percent decline in production. Climate change is projected to cause a hotter summer every other year than the hottest summer recorded, and this would cause a 25% decrease in wheat production.

Drought will impact the production of all three grains, drive up their prices, and potentially lead to famine and political unrest.

Pasture and livestock

Pasture includes both grassland and an ecosystem known as rangeland, which includes deserts, scrub, chaparral, and savannah. Grassland often occurs in semi-arid locations, such as the steppes of Central Asia and the prairies of North America. Grassland can also be found in wetter locations, for example, northwestern Europe. Rangeland is found on every continent, especially in locations where temperature and rainfall limit other vegetation types. Grassland is very sensitive to climate change because many grass species are fast growing and have short growing seasons. In the lab, increases in CO2 has been shown experimentally to decrease grassland diversity.

Prairie farm in Nebraska

Credit: Jan Tik from Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

As we have seen, heat stress also decreases the productivity of livestock, especially cattle, as well as fertility, and can be life-threatening. Conception rates are also particularly an issue for cattle that breed in spring and summer months. Heat stress puts a limit on dairy milk yield regardless of food consumption.

The world’s fisheries are in a state of crisis. Environmental changes and pollution combined with over-fishing and the rise of invasive species are deteriorating the health of the global fishing industry. Nothing is more symptomatic of this decline than the history of cod in the North Atlantic. Cod has long been a staple diet for societies in the region including Iceland and Scandinavia, and a century ago, they were so abundant that whole fisheries thrived on this one fish. Now, however, cod has been so overfished that conflicts over fishing rights have erupted (between Iceland and England in the 1950s to 1970s, dubbed the "cod wars") and populations have plummeted. The same countries that depleted the stock of cod are now overfishing other species, including haddock and skate.

All of this comes at a time of growing consumption of fish. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that global fish production will increase from 2012 to 2020, but not as rapidly as will demand. Wild fish will comprise the majority of fish caught in sub-Saharan Africa and the US, but in other parts of the world, aquaculture will increase in importance. It could be that aquaculture or fish farming will dominate fisheries by the end of the century. However, aquaculture has its own set of issues. For carnivorous fish such as salmon, fish farming utilizes a considerable supply of feeder fish. Moreover, fish farms are at a significant risk of environmental problems and are susceptible to outbreaks of disease.

The superb overview of the state of the modern ocean by Jeremy Jackson identifies several distinct habitats and ecosystems that are in a significant state of decline:

Sea urchins often colonize the ocean floor where other organisms have been depleted by pollution or other factors

Credit: nickyfern from Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

• One of the richest habitats for fish are forests made up of giant seaweed called kelp. Overfishing has led to the removal of the predators of herbivores such as sea urchins that consume kelp, and this had caused a drastic reduction in the area of this key habitat, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.
• Seagrass beds are another key habitat, especially in tropical and subtropical lagoons and bays and on continental shelves. These beds are vital habitats for manatees, sea turtles, rays, and sharks as well as invertebrates such as oysters. The area of seagrass beds has declined by about 30% since 1980 due to nutrients in sewage and run-off from agricultural areas.

Healthy and unhealthy seagrass bed

Overharvesting of fisheries in Chile

Credit: C. Ortiz Rojas from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

• On the coast and over the continental shelf, commercial overfishing has depleted ecosystems and destroyed habitats over large swaths of coastline and further out on the continental shelves. Fishing using trawling nets has depleted fish stocks as well as shellfish beds. The total loss of biomass has been enormous, and a number of large fish species are now absent from these environments.
• Pollution of the coastal environment has led to eutrophication and red tides of toxic dinoflagellates (see Module 7). This has caused significant problems for coastal fisheries around the world. On top of this, introduction of species such as lionfish, which come from home aquariums and are fierce predators of other fish, have often turned out to be invasive.

Fish kill in Rhode Island as a result of hypoxia.

Credit: eutrophication&hypoxia from Flickr (CC-BY 2.0)

• We have documented the decline to coral reef ecosystems in Module 7. Destruction of reef tracts, due to physical damage, pollution, and bleaching, has led to the loss of habitats for many species of fish and invertebrates. As we saw in Module 7, algae are taking over many areas of modern reefs.
• Phytoplankton at the base of the marine food chain are also suffering. Some estimates suggest a 40% reduction in phytoplankton production since the 1950s. Such a scale is certain to have an impact on all marine food webs.

As a result of all of these changes, over 100 species of fish are currently on the extinction watch list. Estimates suggest that biomass produced by fish has declined by more than 50% in the last 40 years. Some scientists are warning of a complete collapse of marine fisheries by 2050, which would be a devastating problem for communities that rely on fish as the major source of food.

The following video describes the stark future of global fisheries as a result of overfishing:

Video: Overfishing - The consequences (2:34) This video is set to music and not narrated.

In the US and Canada, warming trends have led to earlier spring activity of insects. Down the road, entomologists predict that many species of insects may thrive on a warmer planet, and populations may explode. This is because research shows that insects that are adapted to warmer climates have faster population growth rates. Insect species generally have short life cycles, fast and prolific reproduction and rapid mobility, thus warming can readily result in massive increases in populations.

Insects have a number of responses to warming. Some species may avoid warmer temperatures by moving to cooler regions. Others may adapt to warmer climates by changing their biochemistry or their behavior. Of course, some insects may not adapt at all and disappear, but those that can adapt will thrive in warmer environments. In general, insects are expected to benefit most in mid and high latitudes. For example, in Alaska and Siberia, longer summers are already producing demographic explosions in defoliating and wood-eating insects that have led to the devastation of thousands of forest acres and millions of dollars in damage. In the future, it is certain that other groups of insects, locusts, and many others will cause even more significant losses for crops across the globe.

Parasitic wasp on a caterpillar. The white silky cocoons contain the grubs of the wasp.These wasps actually are beneficial, killing many other insect parasites.

Credit: tonrulkens from Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The research on weeds and climate change is a little more complicated. Some weeds are not expected to thrive with higher CO₂ levels. These are weeds that belong to the C4 plant groups that typically do well under lower CO₂ conditions. However, some of the most invasive weeds belong to the C3 plant groups. These include Canada thistle, star thistle, quackgrass, lambsquarter, and spotted knapweed. In addition, the use of herbicides to control weeds is potentially problematic at high CO₂ levels.Experiments suggest that certain weeds become tolerant to chemicals such as Roundup at high CO₂ concentrations.

Canada thistle, an invasive perennial weed.

Credit: Mark Schonbeck, Virginia Association for Biological Farming

Biofuels are fuels that derive their energy from biological carbon fixation via photosynthesis. Biofuel sources include a whole variety of plants such as corn, sugar cane, soybeans, sunflowers, maize as well as aquatic algae. The most common compounds used to make fuels are sugars, starch and vegetable oil. A wide variety of fuel types are included under the biofuel umbrella including bioalcohol (most often known as bioethanol), biodiesel, vegetable oil, and solid biofuel. Biofuels were recently considered a vital part of the world's future energy portfolio, and the most compelling argument for their production in the US was energy independence and the low of cost production. Recently, however, traditional biofuels have fallen somewhat out of favor, partly as a result of environmental and ethical concerns, and partly due to the surge of natural gas production.

Environmental scientists at Argonne National Laboratory study potential biofuel crops.

Credit: Argonne National Laboratory from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Biofuels are a very complicated and constantly evolving issue as research on them intensifies and the global energy portfolio changes. Research is being directed at fuel production, for example, the development of fuels that produce the most energy and the least land area to grow. However, the key ethical issue is that the production of biofuels uses land that could also be used to grow crops to feed people. In Brazil, which is the world's second-largest producer of bioethanol, large agribusinesses are devoted to its production. However, subsistence farmers often make more money producing biofuels than crops for food, and this has led to a loss in land area for producing crops for consumption. In addition, deforestation to develop acreage for biofuel production helps to accelerate climate change. Finally, the use of agricultural land to produce biofuels has the potential to drive up the price of food.

These ethical issues are forcing the biofuel industry as well as governments around the world to invest in research into fuels that are ethically acceptable. If biofuels are to be an accepted part of our energy future, fuel sources must be developed that require less land area and less water per unit of energy. Alternatively, fuel such as cellulosic ethanol can be produced from crops or waste products that cannot be consumed; other potential fuel sources include aquatic algae and agricultural or human waste.

Plant in New Zealand that converts algae to biofuel

Credit: Sustainable Initiatives Fund Trust from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The following video describes the advantages and disadvantages of biofuels. Please note that the video must be watch on YouTube, so click the Watch on YouTube link.

Biofuels - the Green alternative (2:04)

Agriculture in developed countries is less likely to be vulnerable to climate change than in developing nations. In both places, the impact will depend on the nature of the climate changes, as well as the ability of agriculture to adapt through technological advances and changing food demand. For example, the management of water resources (see Module 8) will be critical for agriculture in arid and sub-arid environments facing increasing drought. Advanced soil management and crop rotations can also help maintain healthy soil conditions. In the following, we describe a menu of adaptation strategies that have the potential to maintain and increase food production over the coming decades.

Adaptation Strategies for Food Production

• Green farming: A number of environmentally friendly approaches have been very effective in Asia and Africa. These include the biological control of major insect pests, the development of hardy rice varieties, and drought and parasitic-weed-resistant crops.

Hydroponic (i.e. grown in water with no soil) tomatoes.

Credit: Jeff Couturier from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

• Genetically modified crops (GMC) have been produced on over 300 million acres in 25 countries, more than half of which were in the developing world. GMC include crops that are insect resistant, herbicide, and drought tolerant. Proponents argue that GMCs increase productivity and reduce the need for pesticides, herbicides, and tilling. Nevertheless, environmentalists and others are concerned that GMCs may carry health risks. There have been no incidents in 13 years of production; however, this may be too short for health effects to emerge.

Genetically modified tomatoes

Credit: londonianite Flickr

• Precision agriculture is the application of satellite data, geographic information systems and microcomputers to manage a variety of information including soil and crop conditions, application of fertilizers and irrigation, and the automated operation of machinery. These techniques have been applied in a variety of developed and underdeveloped countries in vineyards, vegetable and fruit farms, general crops, and pasture management for livestock.

Precision agriculture in Saudi Arabia; note the highly regular orientation of fields.

Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory from Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)

• Sustainable intensification is the production of more food from the same area of land while reducing the environmental impacts. This includes a combination of techniques that optimize output for example through reduced tillage, contour farming, mulching, and cover crops, and technologies to apply water, nutrients, and pesticides only where they are needed. In addition, the integration of management of pests for different crops, the management of livestock waste and the planting of forests can all be used to offset greenhouse gases.

A large crop of lettuce in Korea is an example of sustainable intensification in farming.

Credit: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

• Reducing Waste. In many parts of the world, considerable waste results from the inadequacy of storage techniques. Estimates suggest that 30-40% of food globally is lost to waste. In underdeveloped countries, decreasing this waste will require investment in cold storage facilities along with improved supply-chain management.
• Changing Diets. The demand for meat and dairy products has increased rapidly over the last 50 years, driven largely by counties such as India and China, resulting in a 1.5 times increase in the number of cattle, sheep, and goats, a 2.5 times increase in the number of pigs, and a 4.5 times increase in the number of chickens grown for their products. All of these animals require additional crops for their sustenance, thus the demand for meat and dairy is straining crop production. A diet rich in grains and vegetables is considered more healthful than one rich in meat. However, the situation is not as simple as advising all citizens to become vegetarians. A significant part of the increase in livestock is grass-fed, and the grasslands on which they live are unsuitable for other crops; pigs and poultry are often fed on human food waste. Moreover, meat is the most concentrated source of minerals and vitamins in developed countries. And in these locations, new breeds of animals are optimizing meat production. However, there have been a number of controversial proposals to reduce the production of beef, partly because of the health risks associated with high-fat foods and partly because of the greenhouse gas emissions of livestock.
• Aquaculture, mainly of fish and other aquatic species such as oysters and shrimp, is already a major source of food, providing nearly 3 billion people with at least 15% of their protein intake. The advantages include the ability to control the environment in which the fish and other species live and not have to worry about external factors such as pollution and changing ocean conditions. The technology stands to improve with advances in hatchery systems, refinement of stock to species that require shorter breeding cycles, and those that are more tolerant to a wider range of temperature and salinity. In addition, aquaculture does have negative environmental impacts, for example, releasing waste into the natural environment, which is a significant source of pollution. This can be improved by integrating land and ocean production; for example, using waste from the land as food and nutrients for aquaculture and concentrating on species such as oysters that produce less waste and use filtration to keep the water clean. Aquaculture is not yet a globally applied technique, and there is much to gain from its application in parts of the world such as Africa. This will take a major investment in infrastructure.

Commerical fish farming.

Credit: Burt Lum from& Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

All of these approaches have been tested and yield positive results. However, their implementation will require decisions by governments as well as substantial investment. Such investment is most challenging in under-developed nations, where policies will need to be conducive to promoting family-run farms. Nevertheless, consideration of these approaches must increase for nations to attempt to feed their citizens in the face of population increase and climate change.

Food security refers to a wide range of factors that affect the supply of food in sufficient quantities to keep populations nourished. As we have seen, a number of scenarios related to climate change have the potential to disrupt that supply. The most drastic food supply issues derive from extreme events such as natural disasters, political unrest, as well as climate change. For example, floods and heat waves can drastically reduce the supply of food. Currently, estimates suggest that more than 1 billion people are estimated to lack sufficient dietary energy availability, and at least twice that number suffer micronutrient deficiencies.

Darfurian Refugees in Eastern Chad, Sudan. Refugee camps often have severe food shortages.

Credit: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid from Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A key component of availability of food is the price. Recently, in the US, food prices have increased significantly. This situation has been part of a global increase in the price of food, driven in part by weather events such as the prolonged drought in Australia, and floods in the Midwest and parts of Southeast Asia. This increase has led to demonstrations and rioting in more than 14 countries. The situation is particularly bad in Haiti, where citizens have eaten mud cakes just to survive, and hunger and starvation constantly have the potential to cause anarchy.

Mudcakes in Haiti.

Credit: Crossroads Foundation PhotosFlickr (CC-BY 2.0)

Food prices are controlled by many other factors besides climate change; for example, currency fluctuations, import and export policy, energy costs, as well as population growth. In the future, climate change and population growth are likely to cause major food security problems. Solutions to the problem must include a combination of concerted efforts to protect people all over the world who are facing hunger and starvation, changes to agricultural practices discussed previously, as well as action to reduce greenhouse gases.

Increase in world food prices from 1990 to 2012. The index is calculated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Click for a text description of the FAO Food Price Index graph.

A line graph titled "FAO Food Price Index," depicting the food price index values from 1990 to 2013. The x-axis represents dates, marked at quarterly intervals (e.g., Q1 1990 to Q1 2013), while the y-axis shows the index value ranging from 80 to 250. The graph shows a fluctuating trend: a gradual increase from 1990 to around 1996, a decline until the early 2000s, a steady rise from 2003, a sharp peak around 2008-2011 exceeding 230, followed by a decline and subsequent fluctuations toward 2013.

• Graph Overview
  • Title: FAO Food Price Index
  • Type: Line graph
  • Time Period: 1990 to 2013
• Axes
  • X-axis: Dates (Q1 1990 to Q1 2013)
  • Y-axis: Index value (80 to 250)
• Trend
  • 1990-1996: Gradual increase
  • 1996-2003: Decline
  • 2003-2008: Steady rise
  • 2008-2011: Sharp peak above 230
  • 2011-2013: Decline with fluctuations

Credit: Jashuah from Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

As we have seen, biofuels have the potential to cause major food security issues. Ethanol produced from corn requires a lot of crops compared to other biofuel sources. In fact, one gas tank’s worth of ethanol fuel requires the same amount of corn that could feed one person for an entire year. Thus, competition for corn between food suppliers and energy producers has the potential to increase corn process drastically and potentially lead to shortages. This has led many to question the ethics of using corn as a source of fuel. Subsidies for biofuel production by farmers in the US and Europe are therefore extremely controversial.

One of the most difficult problems facing agriculture is that the industry itself is a major contributor to greenhouse gases. A considerable amount of energy is used up producing fertilizers, running the factories that convert crops into packaged food, and transporting the food to market. Currently, agricultural activities around the world are responsible for 12% of greenhouse gas emissions, actually more like 30% if the impact of deforestation and the production of nitrogen fertilizers are included. Because more fertilizer and more deforestation will be required to feed the world’s growing populations, this number is set to increase.

A fertilizer factory in Romania.

Credit:Zoltán Kelemen from Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

So, where is all of this headed? It's very hard to predict. Food, like water, is so vital for human livelihood, and climate change is almost certain to cause shortages in some regions of the planet. The likelihood, therefore, is for intensifying conflict in these parts of the globe in the future.

Assignments

You should have read the contents of this module carefully, completed and submitted any labs, the Yellowdig Entry and Reply and taken the Module Quiz. If you have not done so already, please do so before moving on to the next module. Incomplete assignments will negatively impact your final grade.