Climate Change Uproots Global Agriculture

https://eos.org/features/climate-change-uproots-global-agriculture

Source:  By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: In much of the world, climate change is altering regional growing conditions and making them more unpredictable. ...Small farms, which account for about 90% of the world’s 570 million farms, are particularly vulnerable to changes in seasonal climate. Land tended by families for generations may suddenly become nonarable. A change in the timing or intensity of yearly rainy seasons or the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), for example, could bring rains or drought that wipe out a family’s crops. In early May 2020, the Nzoia River burst its banks. The floods that resulted in western Kenya capped off particularly heavy long rains that killed 237 people and adversely affected more than 800,000. Floods and landslides destroyed homes, schools, roads, bridges, and more than 8,000 acres (32 square kilometers) of Kenyan farmland. Kenya’s March-May rainy season (the long rains, as opposed to the short rains of October-December) provides vital moisture to the country’s croplands—indeed, maize production was at least 10% above average in 2020—but most Kenyans continue to face some level of food insecurity. In the past few years especially, climate change has caused a geographical shift in which areas receive rain and which suffer drought. ...Farmers in Iran, for example, share similar problems anticipating cycles of drought and floods despite being separated from their Kenyan counterparts by more than 7,000 kilometers. “The recent harsh droughts and heavy floods in the [Middle East] region ruined a major part of food resources,” explained Mohanna Zarei, a water resources engineer at the University of Kurdistan in Sanandaj, Iran. Sporadic precipitation cycles not only reduce crop yields but can also lead to secondary impacts that worsen food security, like the wildfires that have ravaged the western United States, Australia, Brazil, and elsewhere....