Please read chapter 2 of the following article for Wed. Oct 22 (pgs. 8 – 16) climate_food_commission-final-mar2012
Then look through the rest of the article where specific recommendations for change are made.
Discussion questions:
1.
Environmental Economics
A City Tech OpenLab Course Site
Climate change is adversely responsible for the accessibility of certain resources that humans need to sustain their own longevity. We are faced with certain limitation depending on what part of the world we are located. Producing the crops that nourishes our reproductive system can only strive under favorable weather conditions. Therefore, production of crop in hot and extreme conditions plays a role in depleting the population. Agriculturists from those climates will not be equipped with the expertise nor the equipment to mass cultivate crops to support their population.
Cows are no longer cost efficient in emissions vs. caloric value to produce. The same space that is used to raise cows you can plant tofu, which has one twentieth the emissions value for a 900% increase in caloric value. Cultivation of the Soy been is best in climates with hot summers, between 68° to 86° F, so even with the on set of climate change it would still be a viable crop.
Today I think climate does not affect food production a lot due to the fact that pretty much everything is produced in the factories. Besides fruits and vegetables that contain less than 20% of the consumption market. This relates mostly to the countries with an extreme high population and relatively high income, like United States. With today’s tech machinery and inventions government and corporations are able to grow corn every day through out the year. Corn is main ingredient in wheat and flour products and even meat, which comes from a cattle corn that is feed to the cows that are produced in government facilities and not farms.The countries like Africa is affected a lot by a climate change due to its extreme high temperatures all around the year, high population and corrupted government, where people are undergoing everyday hunger when in US, one third of the population is overweight, suffering from all kinds of health issues that come from bad foods.
Poverty is always followed by food insecure. People with lower income tend to relay on agriculture as a source of income. Over a billion people go hungry, where people continue to destroy agriculture land for many reasons. There are over 1.3 billion tonnes of produced food for human consumption lost or wasted annually. So the problem start when we don’t practice sustainable agriculture, human population rises every year and agriculture land decreases as well. Climate changes is another problem that was caused by unregulated uses of resources, people tend to propose solutions for specific problem like “ Climate Change “ without going back to the main source of the problem and try to stop it. Agriculture is both a solution and a problem, and the only way to make it part of the solution is to practice sustainable agriculture.
Climate changes are affecting food production in an unimaginable scale. As the global population increase, the demand for more food increase, which makes the GHG emissions increase as well. These climate changes are presenting serious threats of social, economical, and ecological consequences. Many of the food that we produce are produced in areas that the climate is hot. These climate changes can affect our agricultural lands that we have today. In which having unnatural weather will diminish drastically the production that farmers annually make. This can affect the population in a great deal due to the reason that already more than 1 billion people in the world are undernourished, and at this time in life we produce more than enough food to sustain everybody. Farmers are making changes in the way of producing foods. They cannot rely on the past studies of the climate to estimate when to grow crops. Also, over consumption of people and production of artificial foods increase our risk to health issues. In which does not help in the undernourishment amount that has been recorded lately.
It is disturbing fact that our earth has sufficient food for all but a billion people go hungry, another billions overconsume, increasing risks from chronic diseases. The unequal distribution of food not only exist between the developing countries and the developed countries, but also within one country. Many low to middle income countries are facing a double burden of malnutrition and overweight people. The continuously climate change even make unequal distribution of food worst. Extreme weather, high water and geographic shifts in storm and drought patterns and warmer temperatures hash the agriculture and influent the income of people who rely on agriculture. Rich people have enough money to buy the import food product in the low agriculture output year, however, poor people suffer from hungry and food insecurity. The developed countries contributed to the most of GHG, but the developing counties bear the most consequence of climate change.
Sustainable agriculture will be the solution for climate change in the future.
This article is clear evidence of how humans are damaging the world by the exploding the resources that nature is giving us. While time passes by, the global population increase and so its demands, which makes farmers to produce more fruits, vegetables and meats. This demands make the competition grow and farmers start to add pesticides and other non- organic products in order to make their production to grow faster and so they can sell it faster. This pesticides damage the land and water which leads to food insecurity. As a result we end up with food that is high on carbohydrates and fat, low on proteins which is equal zero nutrients and empty calories. Organic food in a new trend that involves the use of organic farming and biodynamics. If farmers will adapt this organic farming techniques to their production, the food insecurity would decrease. However, the big question can this massive farms survive by implementing this changes? Can farmers afford this changes?
The article “Understanding the current food system in the context of climate change major components and drivers” was certainly both interesting as well as informative.Many individuals are aware of the fact that we humans damGe the nature of food in one way or another.Due to weather changes that affect farmers and the growth of food this has a great impact on what we eat. Climate changes affect the producer (farmers) and the receiver (the purchaser). We are aware that pesticides are added in order to grow more and grow faster.In the end the customer wants the bigger steak , not thinking realistically and even allowing the idea that maybe pesticides and growth hormones were used in order to produce it.This issue of hormones being added to our food supply is an on going issue thaT needs much more attention and discussion.
The article states the obvious that our food is horrible. I dont see the point in trying anymore. We dont have the money or resources to fix this and the few people that do, are the people who are most greedy. I agree with some of my other classmates when I say this, rich people are just making up a bunch of stupid excuses and over exaggerating how big the problem is so that when they make somewhat of a very little action to help us out we buy into it thinking we are being saved because someone is doing something to help the situation. Yet nothig is really being done to fix the problem. No many how much articles like this is made. No one is going step up and fix the problem directly. Everyone is just running around fixing all the little details around the problem. The article and some of my classmates were referring to sustainable production of food. Yea, sounds like around way to die from the show a thousand ways to die. I strongly dont believe that we as humans can survive off of sustainable resources especially food becuase there are always going to be a few who will always want more. A perfect example of this is those obese people. Even i love to eat like an animal too. Trying to please fat people and people like me is pointless because there will never be enough we will always want it all plus more. So trying to fix this problem by trying to make foos production sustainable is also pointless. When i hear someone say the words sustainable production of food. All i really hear is more chemicals in my food to kill people fast then it would technically be a problem solved since there will be less people in the world to provide for. Anothing the article mentioned is the limited land and the bad climate are huge problems for us. If we build buildings with the bulbs that mimic the sun. Then we can use a piece of land the size on the football field to build a 20 floor building so the we can multiply that small football field space 20 times. Electricity is renewable and can be bery cheap. Then we wont need to worry about how hot or cold the weather is or about running out of space.