Climate change and sustainable food production

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges we face in the twenty-first century is to sustainably feed nine to ten billion people by 2050 while at the same time reducing environmental impact (e.g. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, land use change and loss of ecosystem services). To this end, food security must be delivered. According to the United Nations definition, ‘food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’. At the same time as delivering food security, we must also reduce the environmental impact of food production. Future climate change will make an impact upon food production. On the other hand, agriculture contributes up to about 30% of the anthropogenic GHG emissions that drive climate change. The aim of this review is to outline some of the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture, the mitigation measures available within agriculture to reduce GHG emissions and outlines the very significant challenge of feeding nine to ten billion people sustainably under a future climate, with reduced emissions of GHG. Each challenge is in itself enormous, requiring solutions that co-deliver on all aspects. We conclude that the status quo is not an option, and tinkering with the current production systems is unlikely to deliver the food and ecosystems services we need in the future; radical changes in production and consumption are likely to be required over the coming decades.

Food security and sustainability: can one exist without the other?

“…It could be incorporated in the dimensions of availability, for the longterm sustainability of food production (41) , and access, for the long-term sustainability of consumption. Some might hold that sustainability represents the extension of the time frame of stability, or even a more relevant substitute for stability.…”

Malthus is still wrong: we can feed a world of 9–10 billion, but only by reducing food demand

“…Simultaneously, per-capita arable land area has decreased from 0·415 ha in 1961 to 0·214 ha in 2007 (16) . Had the increases in yield of the last 60-70 years not been achieved, almost three times more land would have been required to produce crops to sustain the present population; this is land that simply does not exist or that is unsuitable for cropping (5) . So intensification has been essential, but has resulted in many undesirable outcomes, including air, water and soil pollution (17) with agrochemicals and surplus nutrients, increased climate forcing (18) , resources depletion (19) , high fossil energy inputs (14) and habitat/biodiversity loss (11) .…”

“…As outlined by Smith & Gregory (5) , at the same time as delivering food security, there is a pressing need to…”

Extreme climatic events: impacts of drought and high temperature on physiological processes in agronomically important plants

“…These regional climatic extremes (Gilgen and Buchmann, 2009) are ecologically and economically relevant for agriculture and forestry (IPCC, 2012;Smith and Gregory, 2013;Nair, 2014). The susceptibility to abiotic stresses may differ considerably among species or varieties of a crop (Yordanov et al, 2000;Simova-Stoilova et al, 2009;Vassileva et al, 2011;Chen et al, 2012;Wishart et al, 2014).…”