Climate change to hit Central America's food crops

[Judi Lynn]

Climate change to hit Central America's food crops
Tue, 9 Oct 2012 08:34 GMT
Source: alertnet // Megan Rowling

By Megan Rowling

LONDON (AlertNet) - Climate change is expected to reduce maize and bean harvests across Central America, leading to economic losses of more than $120 million a year by the 2020s and threatening the incomes of around 1 million small farmers, says a new scientific study.

Researchers from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) examined how the region's two most important food crops would be affected by higher temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

"Even with our most conservative estimates, it's clear that climate change could transform the agricultural landscape across Central America," Anton Eitzinger, a CIAT climate scientist and lead author of the report, said in a statement. "Conditions are already tough there; it's one of the poorest and most vulnerable parts of Latin America."

In some parts of El Salvador and Honduras that have poor soil, where much farming takes place, maize production could drop by around 30 percent by the 2020s, and on poor soils in Guatemala and Nicaragua, it could fall by around 11 percent, the study warns.

More:
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/climate-change-to-hit-central-americas-food-crops

[ellisonz]

1. Increasing population, decreasing food and water supplies.

We're going to have to learn to share better or we're going to have problems on a global scale.