Tag Archives: CO2

Wheat prices spike due to climate change: Study

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Rising temperatures are harmful to wheat yields. However, crop yields do not provide a holistic vision of food security. The impacts of climate change on wheat price, livelihood and agricultural market fundamentals are also important to food security but have been largely overlooked.

An international research team has now estimated the comprehensive impact of climate change and extreme climate events on global wheat supply and the demand chain in a 2 ℃ warmer world by using a novel climate-wheat-economic ensemble modelling approach.

The effect of CO2 fertilization could cancel out temperature stress on crops, with a slightly greater wheat yield under 2 ℃ warming as a result. However, increases in global yield do not necessarily result in lower consumer prices. Indeed, the modelling results suggest that global wheat price spikes would become higher and more frequent, thus placing additional economic pressure on daily livelihood.

The findings, by scientists from six countries, were published in One Earth on August 19.

“This counterintuitive result is initially driven by uneven impacts geographically. Wheat yields are projected to increase in high-latitude wheat exporting countries but show decreases in low-latitude wheat importing countries,” said lead author ZHANG Tianyi, an agrometeorologist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Co-author Karin van der Wiel, a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, further explained: “This leads to higher demand for international trade and higher consumer prices in the importing countries, which would deepen the traditional trade patterns between wheat importing and exporting countries.”

Earlier researchers pointed out that trade liberalization would help mitigate climate stress via improving market mobility. The current research team revealed that such policies could indeed reduce consumers’ economic burden from wheat products. However, the impact on farmers’ income would be mixed. For example, trade liberalization policy under 2 ℃ warming could stabilize or even improve farmers’ income in wheat exporting countries but would reduce income for farmers in wheat importing countries.

“These results would potentially cause a larger income gap, creating a new economic inequality between wheat importing and exporting countries,” said WEI Taoyuan, co-author and an economic scientist at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research. ZHANG further explained more dependence on imports could lower the wheat self-sufficiency ratio, thus causing a “vicious negative cycle” for wheat importing and less-developed countries in the long term.

“This study highlights that effective measures in trade liberalization policies are necessary to protect grain food industries in importing countries, support resilience, and enhance global food security under climate change,” said Frank Selten, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and co-author of the study.

Millions may face protein deficiency because of carbon dioxide emissions by Humans

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Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions lower the nutritional value of staple crops, increasing the risk for dietary deficiencies among the world’s most vulnerable people.
This study provides further evidence for the need to curb human-caused CO2 emissions.
Boston, MA – If CO2 levels continue to rise as projected, the populations of 18 countries may lose more than 5% of their dietary protein by 2050 due to a decline in the nutritional value of rice, wheat, and other staple crops, according to new findings from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Researchers estimate that roughly an additional 150 million people may be placed at risk of protein deficiency because of elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the first study to quantify this risk.

“This study highlights the need for countries that are most at risk to actively monitor their populations’ nutritional sufficiency, and, more fundamentally, the need for countries to curb human-caused CO2 emissions,” said Samuel Myers, senior research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health.

The study will be published online August 2, 2017 in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Globally, 76% of the population derives most of their daily protein from plants. To estimate their current and future risk of protein deficiency, the researchers combined data from experiments in which crops were exposed to high concentrations of CO2 with global dietary information from the United Nations and measures of income inequality and demographics.

They found that under elevated CO2 concentrations, the protein contents of rice, wheat, barley, and potatoes decreased by 7.6%, 7.8%, 14.1%, and 6.4%, respectively. The results suggested continuing challenges for Sub Saharan Africa, where millions already experience protein deficiency, and growing challenges for South Asian countries, including India, where rice and wheat supply a large portion of daily protein. The researchers found that India may lose 5.3% of protein from a standard diet, putting a predicted 53 million people at new risk of protein deficiency.

A companion paper co-authored by Myers, which will be published as an Early View article August 2, 2017 in GeoHealth, found that CO2-related reductions in iron content in staple food crops are likely to also exacerbate the already significant problem of iron deficiency worldwide. Those most at risk include 354 million children under 5 and 1.06 billion women of childbearing age–predominantly in South Asia and North Africa–who live in countries already experiencing high rates of anemia and who are expected to lose more than 3.8% of dietary iron as a result of this CO2 effect.

These two studies, taken alongside a 2015 study co-authored by Myers showing that elevated CO2 emissions are also likely to drive roughly 200 million people into zinc deficiency, quantify the significant nutritional toll expected to arise from human-caused CO2 emissions.

“Strategies to maintain adequate diets need to focus on the most vulnerable countries and populations, and thought must be given to reducing vulnerability to nutrient deficiencies through supporting more diverse and nutritious diets, enriching the nutritional content of staple crops, and breeding crops less sensitive to these CO2 effects. And, of course, we need to dramatically reduce global CO2 emissions as quickly as possible,” Myers said.