Climate change could hit crops far worse than thought

[Judi Lynn]

Climate change could hit crops far worse than thought
Thu, 8 Nov 2012 09:29 GMT
Source: member // SciDev

It also identified "major gaps in climate change impact knowledge" for certain crops and regions, such as central Africa. Such lack of knowledge could hamper effective adaptation policy decisions, it warns.

The study projects an eight per cent average decrease for all crop yields — and this figure increases to 40 per cent in worst-case scenarios. In Africa, the most significant yield reductions are predicted for maize, millet, sorghum and wheat, while in South Asia, maize and sorghum will be hardest hit.

The study looked at more than 1,140 publications that have projected the impact of climate change on eight key food and commodity crops (rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, millet, cassava, yam, and sugarcane) that together account for more than 80 per cent of total crop production in the two regions, and then analysed 52 of those studies in depth.

The strength of evidence on how severe the impact will be differed for different crops and regions.

In Africa, just six out of 162 observations from the scientific publications analysed were about rice, yam and sugarcane, despite these accounting for almost a third of Africa's cropped area.

More:
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/climate-change-could-hit-crops-far-worse-than-thought

[CRH]

1. Rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, and millet, ...

staples on five continents. When times are good, eight percent less production, times not so good, a forty percent decrease in crop yield. As the global population continues to rise, the time is near for food shocks.

I keep thinking of the MIT study, global food riots projected for 2013.