Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts

Friday, 20 September 2019

Climate Change Threatens Food Security


Food security is defined as the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Stages of food insecurity range from food secure situations to full-scale famine. The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing "when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life".

The human-caused climate crisis is having a direct impact on global foodsecurity. The unpredictable weather affects crops and livelihoods.


In the United States, this past season: 
PERCIVAL, Iowa – The Midwest is still struggling to recover from two devastating floods which brought historic destruction to the region.

Just a few months after the epic floods flowed through parts of Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri, you can still smell the rotting corn and see the costly effects of historically high-water levels at David Lueth's family farm in Percival, Iowa.

Lueth grows corn and soybeans, and the flooding wiped out any chance of planting crops in the 2019 growing season. Source
The concern about the weather's unpredictability is reflected here: 

Canadian weather has become a bit of a guessing game. Does this winter have another polar vortex in store for us, or are we out of the woods? Should we expect floods in the weeks ahead? Will the upcoming summer be the hottest on record? Weather models don’t always get it right, but they do reveal some trends when it comes to temperature and extreme weather in Canada. One key takeaway is that the seasonal cycle may not be as reliable as it once was, which begs the question: how does climate change affect agriculture in Canada?  Source

How do we deal with this? Well, if the problem is the solution and in the case of climate change humans are the cause of the problem, then humans are the solution. Our behaviour as both individuals and society must change. People must recognize they are nature not a being that lives apart from nature.
From: The Inquisitive Gardener