CLIMATE CHANGE: Food Supply Hangs in the Balance

[Orwellian_Ghost]

CLIMATE CHANGE: Food Supply Hangs in the Balance
By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 2 (IPS) - Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week.

The current devastating drought in East Africa, where millions of people are on the brink of starvation, is a window on our future, suggests a new study looking at the impacts of climate change.

"Twenty-five million more children will be malnourished in 2050 due to effects of climate change," such as decreased crop yields, crop failures and higher food prices, concluded the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) study.

"Of all human economic activities, agriculture is by far the most vulnerable to climate change," warned the report's author, Gerald Nelson, an agricultural economist with IFPRI, a Washington-based group focused on global hunger and poverty issues.

The report, "Quantifying the Costs of Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change", may be the "most comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on agriculture to date", as IFPRI claims, but researchers concede that there is no current way to quantify all of the future repercussions of changing weather patterns on the food supply.

...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48689

World's Hungry Top 1 Billion, 4 Million New Hungry People a Week

Peter Daou - June 17, 2009 - 7:16am


Unfathomable numbers:

High food prices have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first half of 2009, the head of the U.N. World Food Program said Friday, raising the total number of hungry people to over 1 billion.

Urging rich nations at a meeting of the Group of Eight's development ministers not cut back on aid, Josette Sheeran told Reuters the world faced a "human catastrophe" as more and more people struggle to eat a decent meal.

"This year we are clocking in on average four million new hungry people a week, urgently hungry," Sheeran told Reuters.

http://www.undispatch.com/node/8440

[blindpig]

1. Can't let all of that get in the way of making money.

Quarterly reports coming up, ya know.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. People are starving

but let's talk about The Olympics.

[FirstLight]

2. we KNOW how bad it is, and how awful it is going to get

but until it happens here, there is no effort to change. we are the frogs in the slowly boiling pot...not enough sense to save our own skin.

sad and horrible. and unfortunately, third world countries will feel the efects and devastation more and sooner...and the spoiled americans will shake their heads and say, "tut, tut, how awful" and perhaps write a check for relief efforts...then dribve their hummers to MCD for a 3000 calorie meal...

how I wish it could be different, and that my own small efforts could have some kind of impact...but these huge corporations and millions of people polluting and the damage that has already been done is beyond my effects. We are so far past the "tipping point" that all we can do now is hang on and watch the disaster unfold...

[ensho]

3. true - food must be local, as local as your backyard or

as local as you can find or organize

[SpiralHawk]

5. There's a great, new book on just this theme -- lots of solutions

The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century

http://thecalloftheland.wordpress.com/

[Forkboy]

6. K&R