October 22nd, 2009
Global warming promises more hunger, more innovation
An international ag study group foresees less food production from the same amount of land. Global warming is expected to reduce productivity from farms, raise food costs and not help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases from farming. Not a pretty picture.
Here you can find the report from the Food Policy Research Institute (FPRI).
With those predictions there’ll be even more incentive to come up with new crops, new ways of irrigating, new energy saving methods for agriculture. And there may be new varieties of hunger and starvation to share with less economically advantaged fellow humans. At what point do you look at a famine-cursed, drought-prone country and decide people should stop living there? Like Ethiopia. According to FRPI it is one of the three nations with the worst starvation problems. All three are in tropical Africa.
So you want a political problem as knotty as Afghanistan or Pakistan? Try finding a solution to poor nations with interminable population growth and starvation. Is there going to be some global treaty organization that finally declares some areas off limits and relocates populations, or are we going to let survival of the well-fed become the ersatz law of the planet? One thing for sure: the next company or person who comes up with new crops or agricultural systems will have a hot product on this hotter planet.
A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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