What is Climate Change? – What are the Future Impacts that Climate Change is Likely to Have on Global Food Security? (Reading)

Required Reading: Climate Change Threatens the World’s Food Supply, United Nations Warns

Anticipated Time Commitment: 20 Minutes

Please read the following article and using the following reading guide be prepared to offer a comparative analysis in your weekly Discussions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/climate/climate-change-food-supply.html 

Reading Guide:

1. The destruction of what two resources coupled with what dire situation is impeding the ability of humanity to feed itself?
2. This article delivers some dire statistics about “global” food security. The author states:

   “Overall if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, so will food costs, according to the report, affecting people around the world. “You’re sort of reaching a breaking point with land itself and its ability to grow food and sustain us,” said Aditi Sen, a senior policy adviser on climate change at Oxfam America, an antipoverty advocacy organization. In addition, the researchers said, even as climate change makes agriculture more difficult, agriculture itself is also exacerbating climate change.”

3. How does industrial agriculture contribute to climate change? And is industrial agriculture a way to “feed the world”? What must happen in order for food security to happen at the household, community, and local level?
4. The article shows a picture of cattle in Lagos, Nigeria. Methane is a powerful GHG. Industrial agriculture is apparently feeding the world with an ever-growing desire for meat-based diets for the affluent growing upper classes in the global ‘south’. However, local meat suppliers are also feeding their local consumers but without the deleterious emissions involved in shipping their products worldwide. Industrial agriculture that produces coconuts and palm oil is also contributing to climate change and rain forest degradation…I just think about how my coconut chips are produced. Please choose the food group that you most identify with. This course is meant to be inclusive and respectful of all personal choices and all diets .
5. I am probably beginning to sound like a broken record about small-scale agriculture vs large scale agriculture. However, what is your personal opinion about mitigating against climate change, and adapting to climate change? This is a BIG question with many facets and dimensions that one course can simply not address but try to engage some of the theories we have learned together as a group thus far.