Global population is expected to reach 10 billion by the end of the century, and food output will have to double. Mexican farmers face water shortages. Photographs by Jish Haner / The New York Times
Climate change is affecting crop yields. India is experimenting with flood-resistant rice; one farmer calls it "a miracle." A family loads rice husk in Samhauta; right, a dry reservoir speaks to water shortages in Mexico. Sanjit Das for The New York Times; Right, Josh Haner / The New York Times
By Justin Gillis (New York Times)
Updated: 2011-06-12 08:42
Scientists raise alarm as prices, population and heat rise
Ciudad Obregon, Mexico The great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble.
The rapid growth in farm output of the late 20th century has slowed such that it is failing to keep up with demand, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.
Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories - wheat, rice, corn and soybeans - has outstripped production for much of the past decade. The imbalance has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.
Those price jumps have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over prices has played a role in Arab uprisings.
Now, research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.
Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists link some of those events to human-induced global warming.
Temperatures are rising rapidly during the growing season in some of the most important agricultural countries, and a recent paper found that this had shaved several percentage points off potential yields, adding to the price gyrations.
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