Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Agriculture
One of the major worries concerning future climate change is the effect it will have on agri-
culture, both globally and regionally. The main question is whether the world can feed it-
self with an extra two billion people on the planet by 2050 and a rapidly changing climate.
Figure 25
shows the changes in cereal grain yields that could occur with a business-as-usu-
al carbon emissions by 2050. It is clear that as some countries', particularly in the higher
latitudes, agricultural productivity improves, it will be the poorest countries in the Tropics
that will suffer the most. This prediction assumes that farmers will not adapt to changing
climate as that would boost or at least maintain agricultural production in many regions.
For example, farmers can vary the planting time and/or switch to a different variety of the
same plant to respond to changing conditions. Models suggest that, with reasonable as-
sumptions made on a worldwide scale, the change should be small or moderate. But this
does not mean the amount of cereal produced worldwide will be the same or lower in 2060
compared with today. Since 1960, world grain production has doubled and is predicted to
continue to rise at a similar rate.
