As the war in Ukraine continues, the global food trade has suffered severe disruptions to supply chains. Wheat exports from Ukraine have been affected, especially by sea, but also by land and rail. Since Ukraine is one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat, global food security is at risk. Russia, the world’s leading wheat exporter, has been approved.
With the world facing a food crisis, India offered to increase its wheat exports to partially fill this void. As India is the second largest producer of wheat, it raised a ray of hope for the countries of Asia and the Middle East. However, this year the scorching heat affected the production of wheat and also reduced the grain size. Therefore, one kilogram of wheat will produce less flour than in previous years. The Indian government had banned exports in May this year to avoid domestic shortages.
This led to criticism from some foreign governments and international agencies. While such a response is instinctive during a global crisis, critics must recognize that India’s agriculture is a victim of climate change, mainly as a result of its own actions and emissions over several decades. . While all available resources must be mobilized to address global food inequalities, environmental degradation will cast an even deeper and longer shadow on global food security.
Climate change, which is driving global warming to higher temperatures every year, will affect agricultural production through heat stress and water stress. Both staple and non-staple will be affected. In India, wheat and rice are already grown at the highest level of heat tolerance. It is estimated that every 1oC increase in temperature in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will result in a 10% loss in the yield of these staples.
Increase in temperature and increase in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will also affect the quality of the crop. Rice and wheat will have lower levels of zinc, protein and iron. It has been estimated by scientists at Columbia University that there will be 49.6 million new people with zinc deficiency in India by 2050 due to climate change. 38.2 million will be new protein deficient individuals, while 106.1 million children and 396 million women will be iron deficient.
Rising temperatures will also damage non-staples. Fruits and vegetables will ripen quickly and rot quickly in the heat. As water temperatures rise, aquaculture will suffer and the yield of marine fishing will decrease. With rising sea levels, coastal flooding will submerge agricultural areas and increase salinity. In India and Bangladesh, which share the Sundarbans, every year floods destroy an amount of rice that could feed 30 million people.
With climate change, wildfires, consuming forests and agricultural land will also become common. Shrinking of reservoirs will lead to drought conditions due to water scarcity. In North America, crop cultivation patterns are changing. There is a northward shift in corn cultivation toward southern Canada, while fields in Kansas and Oklahoma have less water for agriculture. In any given year, half of the world’s population has extreme water shortages. About 54% of India currently experiences high to very high water stress. These challenges will only increase with climate change. Climate change is expected to drop crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa by 22% for cassava and 8% for maize. Animals in Africa are also reported to grow to a smaller size. With climate change, pests that destroy crops will increase.
Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), recently warned that the growing global food shortage poses the same health threat to the world as COVID-19. In fact, it could pose a serious threat as the effects of climate-related food shortages will be felt in several decades. In the coming decades, global demand for food will increase as population increases, urbanization expands, and average incomes rise. At the same time, food production will decrease due to less land available for agriculture and adverse effects of climate change (mainly heat stress and water stress).
We need to act with a collective global resolve to reduce global warming. Recent reports warn that in this decade itself, the world is dangerously close to exceeding the 1.5oC threshold, due to a rise in temperatures from pre-industrial levels. We need a global will to accelerate our journey to a carbon neutral future. We must also adopt intelligent adaptation strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on food systems. We need to grow more climate-friendly nutrient-rich crops that can better withstand heat and water stress.
We also need climate-smart farming practices, which are harmless to nature. We need to grow nutrient-rich crops instead of deadly crops like tobacco, which consume large amounts of water, pesticides and fertile land. Other Jal-gujjars that also demand higher levels of fertilizer should yield crops that provide higher levels of nutrition per unit investment of land, water and energy. Quinoa, millet, jowar and gram are among the crops that are highly resilient to extreme weather conditions. They are good for nutrition too!
(The author is a cardiologist and epidemiologist, Chairman, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Views are personal)