Climate change and food security:

current and future scenarioShafqat FarooqDirector (Academic Planning), PIEAS

The problem

The task

Food security exists when all people at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO, 1996).

It has four dimensions:i. Food availability,ii. Access to food,iii. Stability of supply and access, andiv. Healthy food utilization.

23%

10%

32.5%

7%

36% 19%24%

Access to food? Up to 2010, 925 million people were hungry in world

Because of soaring food prices and low purchase power

Some of the main drivers underlying challenge of ensuring

food security around the globe are:

1.Global population growth coupled with demographic change, and2. Global climate change and other environmental impacts

1. Global population growth and demographic change, increasing induce urbanization and increases demand for food and changing patterns of demand where as

2. Rising affluence is associated with increases in food consumption especially of meat and dairy products.

Much (but not all) of the expansion in population will occur in developing countries: improving food security(especially affordability, access and availability) is close

linked with the need to reduce poverty

Structure of the world diet, 2005-2007. Diet composition for 178 countries is represented by three data points along a vertical line corresponding to national dietary energy supply (blue = energy share from protein, red = energy share from fat, green = energy share from carbohydrate). As economies develop, improvement in food access leads to increased caloric intake up to a plateau. From there, diet structure changed: consumption of cereals and vegetables decreases while that of sugar, fats and animal products increases. Developed countries have undergone this second transition over a century. A similar but greatly accelerated pattern can be seen in Asia, Central and Latin America, and to a lesser extent in Africa, where these diet transitions are occurring within 20 years in emerging countries and within 40 years in developing countries. Source: Total energy supply and shares of protein, fat and carbohydrate have been computed from the average values for the last three available years in the FAO database (2005, 2006 and 2007) Update to Combris 2006, courtesy of the author.

2. Environmental perspective?Climate is changing globally

This refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability and persistence for an extended period

(typically decades or longer).

Climate may change due either to natural processes, external forcing, or to persistent anthropogenic

changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land-use.

Source: ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE: KEY TERMS,2006

Climate change will lead to:

Extreme heat and temperature, Intense and longer droughts, High frequency of heavy precipitation, Unprecedented floods andIntense tropical cyclones

It is primarily via these impacts that climate change will have negative effects on food security

and nutrition.

Heat affected patients being treated in France

Temperature anomaly in France Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan, temperaturereaches record high 53.70C in 2010

Islamabad: A motorcyclist rides on the dry and cracked surface of Rawal Lake: The

main source of water supply to Rawalpindi.

According to the United Nations, drought and desertification already threaten the livelihood of some one billion people in more than 110 countries around the world.

Severe drought impacts the Brazilian Amazon. Thousands of fishes die at the dry river bed of

Half of India affected by extreme drought

Rains led declaration of "flash-flood emergency" in Duluth, Minnesota June 20, 2012)

Flood in Brisbane Duluth , Minnesota

The image in the middle was taken on August 15, 2010, and the one on the left was snapped one year ago (2009). The blue patches show the extend of the flooding, which have left 20

Million people homeless. Extreme left: flood in Badin dist. 2011

Developing countries are hit the hardest

Economic losses Losses as %age of GDP

Emerging food insecurity : Rice crises in 2008

1. Drought led reduction in wheat production in Australia,

2. Snow storm in China reduced grain production

India withheld rice stock

Vietnam withheld rice stock

International market price shootup to 40%

Rice price shoots up in Thailand in response of global rice demand leading to prison riots and theft of rice farms

Source data: Asian Disaster Preparedness Center

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The large resulting gap between food supply and demand can be bridged by simultaneously applying three general approaches. (1) Avoiding losses in current productive capacity can include actions to adapt to or mitigate climate change, to reduce land and water degradation and to protect against emerging pests and disease. (2) Increasing agricultural production per unit land area can be achieved through use of improved technologies, practices and

policies, more efficient use of existing agricultural land and targeted expansion of agricultural land and water use (where negative environmental impacts are minimal). (3) Reducing food demand can be accomplished through efforts to promote healthier and more sustainable food choices and to reduce food waste across supply chains.

None of these three approaches alone are sufficient and all three require substantial innovation in the food system. Source: B Keating, CSIRO Sustainable Agriculture, based on Keating and Carberry (2010).

How to ensure food security in the wake of increasing population and climate change?

1. Stop waste2. Give priority to human food over

animal feed3. Improve varieties4. Go organic5. Use alternate food

a. artificial meet,b. sea weeds

6. Go technical, go DESERTEC

Food losses and waste within the food System. a) Per capita food losses and waste (all agriculture products) at consumption and pre-consumption stages., b. Part of

initial cereal production lost or wasted at different staged of food supply chain. The figure do not include losses due to animal feed

Per capita food losses and waste (Kg year-1 )

Food lossesCereals

1. Stop waste

2. Stop using cereals for animal feedBy 2050, 1,573 million tones of cereals will be used annually for non-food of which at least 1.45 million tones can be estimated to be used as animal feed.

Each tone of cereal contain 3 million kcal. This means that the yearly non-food use of cereals represents 4,350 billion kcal. Assuming daily need as 3,000 kcal, this will translate into about 1 million kcal/year needed per person. The non-food use of cereals is thus enough to cover the calorie need for about 4.35 billion people.

If we assume that 3 kg of cereals are used per kg animal product and each kg of animal product contains half the calories in one kg cereals (≈ 1,500 kcal per kg meat),this means that each kg of cereals used for feed will give 500 kcal for human consumption and one tone cereals used for feed will give 0.5 million kcal, and the total calorie production from feed grains (1.45MT) will thus be 787 billion kcal.

Subtracting this from the 4,350 billion calorie value of feed cereals will gives 3,563 billion calories. Thus, taking the energy value of the meat produced into consideration, the loss of calories by feeding the cereals to animals represents the annual calorie need for more than 3.5 billion people.

The "green" in Green Super Rice means environmentally friendly. Researchers say it will produce at least as much grain as other rice plants but with fewer inputs. "Super" means the rice is designed to better resist droughts, floods, salty water, insects and disease.

Chinese plant breeder Zhikang Li, worked for 12 years with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the International Rice Research Institute in Philippinesdeveloped GREEN SUPPER RICEa series of rice varieties which produce more than conventional varieties. Green super rice, which could increase yields in Asia enough to feed an extra 100 million people, will be rolled out in the coming years. Several varieties should be available to farmers about two years from now in parts of Asia and Africa.

3. IMPROVE VARIETIES: THE GREEN SUPPER RICE

Europe and central Asia

East Asia and Pacific

4. Go organic

What causes bio-fuel expansion?

a. Industrial farming

A study made by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2002estimated that, using our current system, on the average

Three calories of energy were needed to create one calorie of edible food.

Grain-fed beef requires thirty-five calories for every calorie of beef produced

John Hopkins study didn’t include the energy used in processing and transporting food.

Other studies that included food processing, storage and transportation estimated that it takes an average of

7-10 calories of input energy to produce one calorie of food.

b Growing practices

5. Use alternate food a. Sea weeds (Grow Algae when we cannot vacate

land to produce more food crops)Under optimum conditions, commercial algae farms can produce 5,000-10,000 gallons of oil per acre, compared to just 350 gallons of ethanol biofuel per acre grown with crops like maize. In addition, algae could feed millions of animals and act as a fertilizer. Replacing all US ethanol (biofuel) production with algae oil would need around 2m acres of desert but, it would allow 40 million acres of cropland to be planted with human food and save billions of gallons of irrigation water a year.

Algae are at the bottom of the food chain but they are already eaten widely in Japan and China in the form of seaweeds, and are used as fertilizers, soil conditioners and animal feed.

They range from giant seaweeds and kelps to microscopic slimes, are capable of fixing CO2 in the atmosphere and providing fats, oils and sugars.

They are eaten by everything from the tiniest shrimp to the great blue whales. They are the base of all life and must be

the future food," says Edwards.

Source: Professor Mark Edwards of Arizona State University

SEAWEED HARVESTING IN BALI. FROM SEAWEED TO SLIME, ALGAE IS THE FUTURE OF FOOD,

SAYS PROFESSOR MARK EDWARDS PHOTOGRAPH: ED WRAY/AP

B. ARTIFICIAL MEATIt looks like meat, feels like meat and it is meat, although it's never been near a living, breathing animal. Instead, artificial or "cultured" meat is grown from stem cells in giant vats.

Demand for meet is increasing, needs to open up new farmland. Cattle now occupy nearly 1/4 of all cultivable land, and growing crops for animal feed takes up another 25%.

Much of the research into artificial meat is being done in Europe where scientists are developing edible tissue grown from stem cells in laboratories. But while the first artificial hamburger could be developed next year, it might taste of nothing at all.

Meat needs blood and fat to give it color and taste, and while stem cells for blood and fat have been identified, the process is complex and expensive work.

Artificial meat is environment friendly as it uses far less water, energy and land and few ethical objections largely because mass production of animals in factory

farms and use of growth hormones and antibiotics is already considered questionable.

b. Artificial meet

6. Go technical Go DesertechMuch of the world is arid, with its only nearby water being the sea.

So could there be a technology to green coastal deserts in places such as Chile, California, Peru and the Middle East using salt water?

Yes: seawater greenhouse (SWGH) is the answer

In the natural water cycle, seawater is heated by the sun, evaporates, cools to form clouds, and returns to earth as rain.

Similarly, in SWGH, hot desert air goes into a Greenhouse, cooled and then humidified by seawater. This humid air nourishes crops growing inside and then passes through an evaporator. When it meets a series of tubes containing cool

seawater, fresh water condenses and is then collected. Because the greenhouses produces more than five times the fresh water needed to water the plants, some of

it can be released into the local environment to grow other plants.

Seawater greenhouses have been shown to work and this year a large-scale pilot project backed by the Norwegian government will be built near Aqaba in Jordan.

The Sahara Forest Project will combine different technologies to grow food and biofuel crops and be running by

2015.

But this is just one of many technologies being developed to enable food to be grown in unlikely places. One of the simplest, but most ambitious plans, may be the long-mooted Great Green Wall of Africa. This linear forest would be 15km wide and 7,775km long, and stretch from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in east Africa.

It would, say the 11 countries through which it would pass, will help stop southward spread of the Sahara, slow soil erosion and wind speeds, help rain water filter into the ground and create micro-climates to allow fruit, vegetables and other crops to be grown.Charlie Paton, a British inventor,

DESERTEC cont.

The desertec concept offer a solution to many of the problems faced by the mankind. It demonstrate a way to provide climate protection, energy security and development by generating sustainable power from sites where renewable resource are at their most abundant

The sun rich deserts of the world play special role . Within Six hours, deserts receive more energy form the sun than humankind consumes within a year.

In addition, 90% of the world’s population lives within 3000 km ofdeserts which means it is applicable across the world.

Concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) plants are the key to harnessing desert sun: they use heat from the sun to drive steam turbines and generate electricity. This heat can also be stored in heat tanks which means that electricity is available on demand.

The technology is proven and has been in use for years

DESERTEC cont.