Over the last century as the world’s population has exploded, food production has largely kept pace. Farmers have responded to demand by producing more and more food helped by improvements in fertiliser, agricultural science, and technology. Despite this nearly a billion people remain undernourished, and starvation remains a risk and reality for many.
Now agriculture and food production face the challenge of climate change. Rising temperatures and a fast-shifting climate threaten the production of crops across the world. At the same time agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions thanks to heavy use of fertiliser and growing livestock herds which produce methane and encourage forest clearance.
Rising Temperatures
Up to a certain point heat helps crops grow. But once temperatures rise too far the negative impacts start mounting up:
· Crop failure: excess heat simply withers plants or reduces yields
· Desertification: rising temperatures turn fertile regions into unproductive degraded land
· Drought: less reliable rainfall, more heat and more extreme climate patterns all reduce the amount of water available for agriculture
· Agricultural practices: over intensive farming and grazing encourage desertification and drought
Drought and Flood
Droughts have been part of human life since the dawn of agriculture, but now we can expect them to worsen dramatically. Conversely, we can see more rainfall overall as more water evaporates and is recycled as rain. However, the rainfall is going to be more intense and infrequent, so the world will face a higher risk of flooding and drought.
Falling food yields will place the global food system under unprecedented pressure. Food importing nations will see rapidly rising food bills and increased inflation. Climate change will also disrupt the transportation of food. The Panama Canal has been hit by major delays thanks to a climate change related drought.
Many regions like as South America’s southern cone and parts of the United States are already suffering climate change related extended droughts, but also due to other phenomena such as El Nino. The Russian Federation invasion of Ukraine was another wake-up call. Increasing global wheat prices contributed to a global inflation spike and created severe problems for many African countries who saw vital supplies of grain disrupted.
Below I outline three scenarios the world may face in terms of food security as climate chaos unfolds.
Future Scenarios
1. The Tempest
Global temperatures rise making previously fertile regions arid. At the same time fast warming regions such as more northerly parts of Canada and Russia become suitable for agriculture. But these regions are relatively unfertile and unable to compensate for losses in other regions. The result is that food prices rapidly increase. The most obvious result is that the world’s poorest suffer. Small scale farmers unable to adapt to a radically changed climate will see their livelihoods disappear, while the urban poor will see food prices spiral.
This is also bad news for governments, hungry people make for unhappy people. Despite efforts by governments to keep food cheap, inflationary pressures increase across the globe and many emerging countries such as Egypt that depend on food imports suffer political instability, coups and revolutions as people’s basic needs are unmet.
This instability triggers migration into wealthier parts of the world such as Europe. The continent is also suffering from rising prices and economic dislocation. Migration supercharges political polarisation as many flock to far-right parties and calls for blocks on migration, while equally strong pro-migrant political forces advocate for their rights.
Major food exporters such as Argentina, Russia and Canada that can still produce an excess of food use their now valuable agri-exports to buy political influence while receiving huge revenues thanks to rapid increase in prices. Tensions between food exporters and importers spill over into geopolitical tensions over land and water as countries scramble to achieve food security. Simmering disputes such as the Egypt-Ethiopia Nile dispute could see open warfare.
Improvements in agricultural practices and efficiency such as the shift to more climate resilient crops and different foodstuffs allows food production to recover and mitigate some of the losses.
2. Severe shock
Multiple failure of global food breadbaskets: A painfully slow decades long transition to net-zero mean that global temperatures soar. As a result, crop yields steadily decline but newly arable regions make up the shortfall in the short term. But the sudden mass simultaneous failure of staple crops in the North American prairies, Northern India, Brazil and Central China in the mid-2040s leads to mass famine and starvation. The global food supply system breaks down as countries halt exports to focus on trying to feed domestic populations. Countries are forced to impose rationing and cultivate new crops to maintain food production.
Economic chaos follows the food crisis as inflation spikes and political tensions spill over into wars over land and water. The silver lining of this crisis is a rapid shift towards regenerative farming, decarbonisation and the adoption of new agri-tech such as vertical farming, use of alternative proteins and fertilisers. But the cost is many lives lost thanks to a failure to transition to net-zero in time.
3. Bumps in the road
Rapid decarbonisation in the 2020s and 2030s along with the success of natural and tech solutions that successfully remove carbon from the atmosphere see the reality of net-zero global economy emerge sooner than many expected.
However, existing emissions means that global agriculture pays a heavy price. Desertification, water shortages, extreme heat and wildfires will devastate agricultural yields particularly in emerging economies with fewer resources to adapt. Small scale farmers and marginal pastoralists bear the brunt of these shocks, along with fast growing urban populations in mega-cities like Lagos, Kinshasa and Manilla see food bills soar.
But measures like new varieties of climate resilient foodstuffs, better use of water in the face of droughts, alternative sustainable fertilisers and the advent of cheaper renewable energy which cut production and transportation costs means that these pressures are mitigated.
What’s Next?
These three scenarios illustrate a what might happen to global food supplies in the next few years. The reality is that interactions between a changing climate, agriculture and how society and government react means that the future of global food supplies is very difficult to predict.