Category: Mainstream

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Climate change to devastate crops, promote livestock

[B]y 2050, hotter conditions, coupled with shifting rainfall patterns, could make anywhere from 500,000 to one million square kilometers of marginal African farmland no longer able to support even a subsistence level of food crops. However, the land, on which some 20 to 35 million people currently live, may still support livestock.

Boosting livestock production could be an attractive alternative for millions of poor farmers across Africa who, in the coming decades, could find that climate change has rendered their lands unsuitable for crop cultivation yet still viable for raising animals, according to the study that appears this week in a special edition of the journal Environmental Science and Policy.

That’s from a press release put out by ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute. The paper is from a special issue of Environmental Science and Policy on Food Security and Environmental Change, Food Security and Environmental Change: Linking Science, Development and Policy for Adaptation. Just skimming the contents gives me the willies.

By the way, Wikipedia says sub-Saharan Africa covers an area of 24.3 million square kilometers. It doesn’t say how much of that supports a subsistence level of food crops. So it is hard to know how much difference this prediction will really make.

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The youthing of Japanese agriculture

I know I nibbled it, but the recent discussion on Global Voices about how Japanese agriculture is changing really deserves a bit more attention. I was particularly struck by what may just be the green shoots of burgeoning interest in agriculture among the young. There’s a fair way to go, of course.

In the next 10 years, the majority of farmers in Japan will be 70 or older according to an Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry survey, mainly because the younger generation doesn’t want to take over the family business, many young farmers said.

But countering that is the trend for celebrities to get involved in farming. Plus there’s the pilot agriculture-experience program. And increasing use of the internet in farming, including blogging.

Japanese agriculture may just get the shot in the arm it needs after all.

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Food strategies for the future

Coming from a state, Wisconsin, that has more cattle than people, I say thank your lucky stars that Hindus worship cows, because it could be a lot worse. As globalization triggers the successful emergence of a world-spanning middle class largely centered on India and China, what Mr. and Mrs. Middle-Class Chindia choose to eat in coming decades will reshape this planet’s ecosystem to a profound degree.

Tom Barnett has a clear-eyed view of the future, and his take on The Economist’s take on rich countries rushing to buy up farmland makes fascinating reading. Here are his two conclusions:

So those Chinese and Saudi Arabian agents running around the planet, buying up all the arable land deeds they can find, are simply trying to hedge against this inexorable future. Will such pieces of paper matter when a serious food shortage hits? I doubt it. Last year China was one of the first nations to slap restrictions on rice exports, so how can it expect states where it may own farmland to act any differently?

But here’s where the new rules really kick in: A 21st century dominated by advances in biotechnologies is sure to feature commensurate bioweaponization, including among the weapons wielded by transnational terrorists. As energy production becomes increasingly localized thanks to technology breakthroughs, expect global food transportation systems to become the preeminently vulnerable — and thus preeminently guarded — commodity network on the planet.

You think so?

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