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Climate change influences the most basic elements in our lives: food and energy. Agriculture is the biggest victim. Although some area is experiencing an increasing yield due to rising temperature, the overall impact of climate change on agricultural yield is negative. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, some areas are undergoing serious hunger and food shortage. The decreasing supply drives up the price, doing harm to the whole economy. The rising level of carbon dioxide is also expected to reduce nutrition like zinc and iron in crops.
Here are some ways climate contributes to Africa’s food crisis:
Average temperatures are rising faster in Africa than in the rest of the world.
Rainfall is increasing in Africa by 30% in wet regions and decreasing by 20% in dry regions.
95% of Africa’s farmers rely on rainfall and do not have irrigation systems.
Climate change also brings extreme weather like droughts and floods, which are detrimental to the agricultural sector. Droughts dry the topsoil while floods wash it away. In both ways yield of a season will be destroyed and future productivity decreases. Farmers are living under uncertainty and fear.
In addition, the temperature rise favors certain pests and killed their predators. Changing ecosystem enables pests to thrive and do more damage to crops. In some areas, farmlands depend on melting glaciers. However, climate change makes glaciers begin to recede, doing a huge impact on those areas. Agricultures cannot get regular irrigation. When glaciers melt fast, the crops will be flooded, and when most glaciers are molten, there will be little irrigation.
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