Growing seasons for staple crops such as maize will become shorter, hotter and drier in less than 40 years, severely limiting food production and imperilling the lives of millions of already impoverished people, says the study.
For example, by 2050 the best growing conditions will drop below 120 days a season in intensively farmed regions of northeast Brazil and Mexico. But maize, other staple crops, and the vegetation on which livestock feed need at least 120 days to grow and mature. Likewise, parts of Latin America will suffer temperatures too hot for bean production, a major food staple in the region, finds the research.
The study, Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in the Global Tropics, was carried out by scientists from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) - a group of world leading agri-science labs. (See Nature's coverage of the potential impact of climate change on food production here and here.)
They used data from models of changes in temperature and precipitation up to 2050 and indicators of food insecurity, to create a series of detailed maps to identify the most vulnerable regions in the tropics.
“When you put these maps together they reveal places around the world where the arrival of stressful growing conditions could be especially disastrous," says Polly Ericksen, a senior scientist at the CGIAR's International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, and the study's lead author. Read the full report here.
Source: Nature.com, News Blog.
