A recent article was published by the Washington Post titled "Wheat, one of the world’s most important crops, is being threatened by climate change". Wheat is one of the most significant crops in feeding the world, and if it becomes threatened, a large number of people could be impacted. The article explains how a recent study done by Nature Climate Change, shows that all the researchers agree that rising temperatures is going to be really bad for wheat production. The scientific facts can be read in the actual article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/09/12/climate-change-is-really-bad-for-wheat-which-is-really-bad-for-us/?utm_term=.4cd3aa2f9d0b, but for the purposes of this blog I'm going to focus more on the effects this problem could bring.
The prediction for the 2016/2017 year is 741 million tons of wheat produced, 500 million of which will be directly consumed by humans. Some statics from the study showed "China will see yield reductions of about 3.0 percent per 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperature. And India was projected to experience much greater declines of about 8.0 percent.". The statistics are different for every area of the world, but they all show one common thing; the amount of wheat production will decreases as the global temperature increases. This decrease in production will cause countries to find new ways to produce food to feed their citizens, some of which might be more expensive or need more land or equipment to produce. This will cause many new problems in ending world hunger, and create major setbacks. Personally, I already think global warming is an alarming issue that needs to be addressed, but this article has just furthered my concern.
I encourage you to read the article and respond with your thoughts in the comments :)
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