Three new scientific studies find that agriculture could go into
steep declines in some regions in the coming decades. Julie Grant
reports that the authors of these studies say they’re looking at
complications that until now have not been adequately considered:
Transcript
Three new scientific studies find that agriculture could go into
steep declines in some regions in the coming decades. Julie Grant
reports that the authors of these studies say they’re looking at
complications that until now have not been adequately considered:
Global warming predictions often assume steady changes to the
environment. But these new studies’ authors say previous predictions
fail to account for seasonal extremes of drought or rain. or spreading
weeds and diseases.
Francesco Tubiello is an agricultural expert with NASA. He was a co-
author of all three of the studies published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. Tubiello says previous studies have
found that global warming might actually increase food production. But
these new studies find those gains will be offset by loss of tropical
farmland – and eventually tip the whole world into food shortages.
Tubiello says things could happen suddenly – and that the potential for
bigger, more rapid problems remains largely unexplored.
For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.