Climate Act to diversify crops at risk
FRANCE: Farm chiefs have a narrowing chance to diversify vital
crops at rising threat from drought, flood and pests brought by climate
change, food researchers warned on Monday.
The world’s nearly seven billion people are massively dependent on a
dozen or so crops that, thanks to modern agriculture, are intensively
cultivated in a tiny number of strains, they said.
When climate change gets into higher gear, many of these strains
could be crippled by hotter and drier — or conversely wetter weather and
exposed to insects and microbial pests that advance into new habitats.
“Farmers have always adapted, but the pace of change under climate
change is going to be much greater than in the past. There’s going to be
a real need to move fast,” Bruce Campbell, head of a research programme
called Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), told AFP.
In a series of studies, the experts highlighted the risk for staples
such as wheat, corn, bananas and cassava. They described the example of
the potato, whose starch is a vital nutrient to hundreds of millions of
people.
Although it is a hardy tuber, the potato is vulnerable to heat
stress, which curbs growth and starch formation.
Warming will make potato-growing more hazardous in southern Africa
and tropical highlands, and encourage the spread of an insect pest, the
potato tuber moth, into more northerly latitudes. On the other hand,
“late blight” — the fungus that unleashed the Irish potato famine of the
mid-19th century — will be less of a threat. At least $7 billion per
year in extra funding will be needed for irrigation investments,
agricultural research and rural infrastructure, according to the
estimates.
To diversify crops, seed banks and genome libraries will play a key
role.
Drawing on knowledge of DNA traits in wild plants will help breeders
splice in genes to help cope with harsher conditions.
Genetic engineering, contested by many green groups, is also an
option but using it “is a question that is left to society to answer,”
said Campbell cautiously.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) estimates
Earth’s surface will probably warm by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees
Celsius (3.24-7.24 degrees Fahrenheit) over the 21st century.
Campbell said many scientists suspect that climate change is already
well on the march, as evidenced by shifts in rainfall patterns and
growing seasons in many observed locations.
He cautioned against “waiting 10 years” before the world moves to
diversify plant strains.
AFP |