How climate change is affecting agriculture right now

In the scientific American there was an interesting article about Australian farmers being the one of the first groups to feel the negative consequences of global warming (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/australia-s-farmers-challenged-by-climate-change/). The article referenced the fact that Australia over the past century has had temperatures rise about one degree, which does not sound like much until we dig into the details. Farmers depend on a relatively stable climate throughout the entire farming season in order to properly grow certain types of crops.

Now obviously the everyday weather for a week changes radically but the weather average for an entire cropping season year in and year out tends to stay about the same. However, with massive changes in the climate outlook for an entire season changing crops will start to become unprofitable and will eventually stop being grown entirely. In the case of Australia when crops that require long periods of rain like walnuts and peanuts do not receive the amount of rain they need then they will simply stop being grown and produced.

Now many of you may think that if Australia stops growing some nuts no big deal other countries with better climates can make up the difference and even if some nuts stop being grown entirely it’s no big deal. To those people I say that baseball games will never be the same without peanuts, how dare you and that in many countries around the world food is not presented as a choice but rather a necessity. For example Australia exports 48 billion dollars worth of food to the rest of the world each year. That is about sixty percent of their entire agricultural production, which is a incredibly high percentage to devote entirely to exports. If production of certain products were to fall and then Australia in order to meet the needs of its own domestic demand restricted the number of exports or rather just shifted to become a stronger importer of its crops then a huge number of people would be completely out of food. If that were to happen not only would plenty of people die but many of the poorest people in the world would be seeing a huge increase in one of their most basic expenses because as supply goes down and demand stays the same price goes up.

This would only be the beginning because agriculture is one of the most unstable industries in the world today simply because the instability of the climate prevents a secure environment for growth and investment. That means that as the trend of increasing temperatures continues and more and more crops begin to die out private sector investment and ingenuity will disappear from the field. This is probably one of the worst things that could possibly happen because although we think the local grocery store has an infinite amount of food that is simply not the case. In fact, for many people around the world today they depend on foreign exports and aid to have a good meal. If global warming decreases overall food production at the same time that our global population is growing dramatically increasing food demand, there would be huge problems. This would create huge food shortages and increase the prices for average consumers dramatically.

The ironic part about this is that agriculture itself is impacting the amount of carbon emissions produced and global warming in general dramatically. According to the World Future Council, fourteen percent of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by agricultural practices and another eighteen percent of greenhouse gas emissions are caused by deforestation, which is primarily caused to gain more land for agriculture. If you look at this logically it seems very simple that the agriculture industry will take action on its own to combat the one thing that could destroy their entire field, but it is never that simple.

Since there are market forces at work trying more expensive clean energy agricultural practices would hurt the companies or small farmer’s short-term bottom line and therefore these practices are never implemented. So we have the rare but very real case where agricultural industry is actively participating in its own self-destruction. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that continues because when the market dictates that going green would hurt the bottom line of the industry nobody does because they would fall behind the competition.Then when the problem of global warming gets worse and agriculture yields start to fall it becomes even more imperative to make your practices more cost-effective rather than green. The cycle will simply continue like this unless the government steps in and puts in place standards and incentives to guide the industry to greener practices. I think it is imperative that we stop this cycle and introduce greener standards in the agricultural field, but what do you think?

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