{"id":2108,"date":"2013-01-14T20:27:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T03:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/idrnblog\/?p=2108"},"modified":"2013-01-19T17:04:08","modified_gmt":"2013-01-20T00:04:08","slug":"solving-the-global-food-crisis-new-research-good-reads-and-ann-idrn-video-interview-with-dr-navin-ramankutty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/idrnblog\/2013\/01\/14\/solving-the-global-food-crisis-new-research-good-reads-and-ann-idrn-video-interview-with-dr-navin-ramankutty\/","title":{"rendered":"Solving the Global Food Crisis | New research, good reads and an interview with Dr. Navin Ramankutty (video)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In October of last year, the UN warned<\/a>–ominously–of a new global food crisis threatening to hit sometime in 2013.<\/p>\n

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Food stocks have been dwindling.<\/p><\/div>\n

Apparently, 2012’s record heatwaves and droughts brought crop reserves down to historic lows. While those of us in the global North are largely insulated from the vagaries of these fluctuations, at least 870 million people in the global South remain chronically malnourished, while grain supplies in the politically volatile Middle East and North Africa are precariously diminished.<\/p>\n

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Click here<\/a> to jump to our video interview with\u00a0<\/em>Dr. Navin Ramankutty<\/a>,\u00a0McGill University’s\u00a0Tier II Canada Research Chair in Land Use and Global Environmental Change. Or keep reading, below.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Given current trends,\u00a0<\/span>the picture seems unlikely to get any rosier, with no less than 2 billion people projected to suffer from malnourishment by 2050, at which point the planet will be home to 9-10 billion people.<\/p>\n

The Guardian’s Global Development blog\u00a0reported<\/a> last week on a new\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0(Hawkins et al., Global Change Biology, in press<\/em>)\u00a0predicting the looming negative impact of record heatwaves and droughts on global food security.<\/p>\n

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Projected climate change effects on global agriculture, via the World Bank (2010). (Click to enlarge)<\/p><\/div>\n

Drawing on historical French maize data, Hawkins et al. find that for every day with temperatures over\u00a032\u25e6C, there have been serious reductions in crop yield. They infer that the only way to mitigate potentially catastrophic shortfalls in coming, hotter years is to somehow boost European yields by no less than 12%, ostensibly through some yet-to-be developed technology.<\/p>\n

But while developed nations innovate ways to boost their heavily subsidized, irrigation-and-fertilizer buoyed yields even higher, countries in the South still struggle to achieve even subsistence levels of productivity.\u00a0And these processes are often directly linked.\u00a0In the news just this month:<\/p>\n