14 DAY TRIAL // In just a few decades, folks might have to part with considerably more money to secure their next meal, and climate change will be the one to blame for it.
Thus, a series of papers authored by specialists working with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and published in the journal Agricultural Economics says that, judging by how things are going, food prices could greatly increase by mid-century.
The researchers argue that, despite the fact that a rise in bio-energy demand is likely to put extra strain on the agricultural practices due to the fact that these two industries will end up competing for land, climate change will be the chief culprit behind the predicted increase in food prices. Business Green tells us that, in order to assess how climate change will influence food prices in the years to come, the Potsdam Institute researchers pieced several two models concerning the future of agricultural practices.
One of these models focused on how the agricultural industry would transform as a result of its need to adjust to new climatic patterns, whereas another was a so-called reference scenario that did not include climate change as a variable.
When comparing these two models, the specialists found that, by the year 2050, climate change could cause food prices to up by as much as 25%.
Apparently, climate change has high chances to affect crop yields. Specifically, said phenomenon might translate into a 10 – 38% drop in rice, wheat, maize, soybeans and peanuts production. Consequently, demand for cropland is likely to increase.
As researcher Christoph Schmitz puts it, “We find most models projecting an increase in cropland by 2050 that is more than 50 per cent higher in scenarios with unabated climate change than in those assuming a constant climate.”
More precisely, the world could end needing an additional 320 million hectares of cropland by mid-century. Should the added surface come from South America and Sub-Saharan Africa, global greenhouse gas emissions might increase.
“This [demand for additional cropland] could be bad news as in those regions, in order to gain additional cropland, centuries-old rainforests are cut down. This does not only increase carbon emissions but also harms biodiversity and threatens important ecosystem services,” Christoph Schmitz explains.
An increase in the global bio-energy demand was documented to be likely to drive food prices up by just 5%, the same source details.
“Global food markets would be affected much more by unmitigated climate change than by an increased bio-energy demand,” the researchers sum up their findings.