The prices of food crops like wheat, rice and maize will rise between 121 per cent and 194 per cent by 2050 due to climate change, according to a study.
This, coupled with decreased yields of these crops, will threaten food security of some 1.6 billion people in South Asia and render 25 million more children malnourished by 2050.
This has been revealed by a comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on agriculture made by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The report was released on Wednesday to coincide with an international meeting on climate change in Bangkok.
It has estimated that an additional annual investment of $1.5 billion in agriculture and rural development will be needed to counter the impact of climate change in South Asia while $7 billion will be needed to achieve this on a global scale. Almost half of this investment will have to go into development of irrigation facilities. More investment would be required in farm research and rural roads to provide market access for poor farmers.
The report has categorically stated that south Asian countries, especially India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan, are particularly vulnerable to declining crop yields due to glacial melting, floods, droughts and erratic rainfall, among other climate change-related factors.
The yield of wheat may drop by as much as 50 per cent by 2050 from 2000 levels in South Asia. The productivity of rice is projected to dip by 17 per cent and that of maize by 6 per cent by that time.
On food prices, the IFPRI report has stated that these will rise even without climate change, but the global warming will make the problem worse. “Prices are useful single indicator of the effect of climate change on agriculture”, the report said.
Wheat prices are projected to swell by almost 40 per cent without climate change. But with climate change, the rise could be as steep as 194 per cent, it said.
Rice prices are projected to rise by 60 per cent without climate change and up to 121 per cent with climate change. Maize prices are forecast to surge 60 per cent without climate change but up to 153 per cent with climate change.
As a result of climate change and price rise, the cereal consumption is projected to decline in Asia by 24 per cent by 2050 compared to a no-climate-change scenario. Similarly, the average calorie (food energy) availability may plummet by about 15 per cent by then.
In the absence of climate change, the number of undernourished children would fall in South Asia from 76 million in 2000 to 52 million in 2050. But climate change would erase some of this progress, causing the number of malnourished children to rise to 59 million in this region, said the report.
This study, entitled ‘Climate change: Impact on agriculture and costs of adaptation’, has been described by IFPRI as the most comprehensive and the first of its kind in the world. It combines climate models that project changes in rainfall and temperature and a crop model to capture biophysical effects with IFPRI’s economic model of world agriculture. The latter projects changes in production, consumption and trade of major agricultural commodities.
The report recommends more open agricultural trade to ensure that food reaches the poorest in times of crisis. This is apart from additional funding for agricultural research, irrigation and rural development.
IFPRI is one of the 15 centres supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an alliance of 64 countries, private foundations and other global and regional organisations.
