How does climate affect agricultural production?
Climate change can disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality. For example, projected increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, changes in extreme weather events, and reductions in water availability may all result in reduced agricultural productivity.
How does climate change affect agriculture essay?
Climate change is affecting agriculture by interfering with the efficiency of crop production. Agriculture is facing droughts, flooding, sea level elevations, natural disasters, and health hazards for employees. All of these exponents lead to crop failure that creates famines and food prices to rise.
How does climate change affect plants and crops?
Rising global temperatures also are linked with changes in rainfall patterns, and the frequency and duration of heat waves and droughts, which can affect crop health and productivity. Higher temperatures also affect the length of growing seasons and accelerate crop maturity.
What is climate change agriculture?
On farms, climate change is reducing crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals, and lowering livestock productivity. Substantial investments in adaptation will be required to maintain current yields and to achieve production and food quality increases to meet demand. The problem also works in reverse.
Overview
The effects of climate change on agriculture can result in lower crop yields and nutritional quality due to for example drought, heat waves and flooding as well as increases in pests and plant diseases. The effects are unevenly distributed across the world and are caused by changes in temperature, precipitation and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels due to global climate change. In 2019, millions already suffer from food insecurity due to climate change and predicted decline in global crop pr…
Direct impacts from changing weather patterns
As the temperature and weather patterns change, areas suitable for farming will alter. The current prediction is for temperature increase and precipitation decrease for major arid and semi-arid regions (Middle East, Africa, Australia, Southwest United States, and Southern Europe). In addition, crop yields in tropical regions will be negatively affected by the projected moderate increase …
Direct impacts from increased atmospheric CO2 levels
Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide affects plants in a variety of ways. Elevated CO2 increases crop yields and growth through an increase in photosynthetic rate, and it also decreases water loss as a result of stomatal closing.
Changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide may reduce the nutritional quality of some crops, with for instance wheat having less protein and less of some minerals. Food crops could see a reductio…
Climate driven changes in pests, plant diseases and weeds (indirect impacts)
Global warming will alter pest, plant disease and weed distributions, with potential to reduce crop yields, including of staple crops like wheat, soybeans, and corn.
Currently, pathogens take 10-16% of the global harvest and this level is likely to rise as plants are at an ever-increasing risk of exposure to pests and pathogens. Warmer temperatures can increase the metabolic rate and number of breeding …
Other indirect impacts from changed conditions
It is difficult to project the impact of climate change on utilization (protecting food against spoilage, being healthy enough to absorb nutrients, etc.) and on volatility of food prices. Most models projecting the future do indicate that prices will become more volatile. In 2019 the IPCC stated that millions already suffer from food insecurity due to climate change. As of 2019, an estimated 831 million people are undernourished. Climate change impacts depend strongly on p…
Global aggregate estimates for crop yields
Climate change induced by increasing greenhouse gases is likely to affect crops differently from region to region. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced several reports that have assessed the scientific literature on climate change. In 2019 the IPCC stated that millions already suffer from food insecurity due to climate change and predicted decline in global cro…
Impacts on forests and forestry
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in 2022 found that: “In the past years, tree mortality continued to increase in many parts of the world. Large pulses of tree mortality were consistently linked to warmer and drier than average conditions for forests throughout the temperate and boreal biomes. Long-term monitoring of tropical forests indicates that climate change as begun to increase tree mortality and alter regeneration. Climate related dieback has also been observed du…
Adaptation
Adaptation in agriculture is often not policy driven, but farmers make their own decisions in response to the situation they face. Changes in management practices might be the most important adaptation option.Changes in locations of agriculture and international trade in food commodities might also contribute to adaptation efforts.
Overview
Impacts on Crops
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Despite technological improvements that increase corn yields, extreme weather events have caused significant yield reductions in some years. Source: USGCRP (2009) Click the image to view a larger version. Crops grown in the United States are critical for the food supply here and around the world. U.S. farms supply nearly 25% of all grains (such as wheat, corn, and rice) on the globa…
Impacts on Livestock
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Livestock locations in the continental United States. Source: USGCRP (2016) Click the image to view a larger version.Americans consume more than 36 million metric tons of meat and poultry annually. Livestock and poultry account for over half of U.S. agricultural cash receipts, often over $100 billion per year.Changes in climate could affect animals both directly and indirectly. 1. Hea…
Impacts on Fisheries
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American fishermen catch or harvest five million metric tons of fish and shellfish each year. U.S. fisheries contribute more than $1.55 billion to the economy annually (as of 2012).Many fisheries already face multiple stresses, including overfishing and water pollution. Climate change may worsen these stresses. In particular, temperature changes could lead to significant impacts. Thi…
International Impacts
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Climate change is very likely to affect food security at the global, regional, and local level. Climate change can disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality.For example, projected increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, changes in extreme weather events, and reductions in water availability may …