The National Environmental Information Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States recently announced that July 2021 became the hottest month since the global weather observation record.
Accompanied by record-breaking high temperatures, extreme weather phenomena and natural disasters frequently occur in many places around the world: persistent heat waves in North America, torrential rains in many European countries, rare low temperatures in Brazil, and forest fires in many countries in the northern hemisphere … …
Under the influence of climate change and extreme weather, the global food security problem has become increasingly prominent in recent years; However, for countries and people with different economic conditions, its actual impact is not the same — — The new "inequality" is quietly staged.
one
Since the summer of this year, Russia, the United States and Canada, the world’s major wheat producers, have been hit by extremely dry weather.
According to the August supply and demand forecast report of the US Department of Agriculture, the output of Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, fell by 15%, and the spring wheat harvest of the United States, the world’s second largest wheat exporter, fell by 41% year-on-year, the lowest output in 33 years, while the wheat output of Canada, the world’s third largest wheat exporter, will drop by 24%.
According to the latest forecast value of world grain output released by FAO, the forecast value in July was slightly lowered to 2.817 billion tons compared with that in June, mainly due to the continuous dry weather.
At the beginning of this year, Brazil suffered the worst drought in decades, which caused many crops to be lost. Since July 20th, Brazil has been affected by severe cold weather, and the temperature once fell below 0℃, the lowest in nearly 25 years.
Sudden cold snap and frost caused the death of crops in several major coffee bean producing areas, and affected crops such as sugarcane and corn in central and southern Brazil.
The recent torrential rains in western Europe have affected the harvest of crops such as barley and wheat that mature in summer. In addition to yield, agricultural experts are more worried that rain will make crops pathological and affect crop quality.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other institutions have issued reports that since 2009, the probability of extreme weather phenomena such as drought and high temperature is much higher than that in the 1980s and 1990s, which has seriously affected the global food supply.
According to the research results released by Finnish scientists not long ago, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current rate, one-third of the world’s food production will be threatened by the end of this century.
two
Extreme weather caused by global climate change has severely hit crop yields and pushed up food prices, which has a particularly serious impact on low-income countries and people and may even endanger the survival of many people.
The global food price index released by the United Nations in May rose by 40% compared with a year ago, reaching the highest level in the past 10 years. Bloomberg analysis pointed out that drought, floods and severe cold weather threaten food production, which may further push up future food prices.
The report "World Food Security and Nutrition Status" released by the United Nations in July shows that in 2020, about one tenth of the world’s population will face food shortage. Among them, the population facing food shortage in Asia is 418 million and that in Africa is 282 million.
According to the report, due to conflicts, climate change and the economic recession caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, the global hunger level has risen sharply, and one fifth of the children in the world are stunted. In 2020, the number of people affected by chronic hunger increased more than the sum of the previous five years, an increase of 161 million over 2019.
The United Nations Food Program warned that an "imminent disaster" was coming, and about 34 million people around the world were on the verge of famine.
The organization pointed out that climate change is the main reason for the sharp increase in the number of hungry people, and stressed that the trend of rising food prices is intensifying.
In the report "World Food Security and Nutrition in 2021" jointly released by FAO, WFP and IFAD, many UN agencies regarded climate change as one of the important factors that triggered the global food crisis, and believed that frequent climate disasters made it more difficult for the international community to achieve the goal of "zero hunger" by 2030.
three
According to the data released by the International Grain Council not long ago, the global wheat export price has increased by 46% this year. Wheat is the raw material of bread and other major foods. Affected by the sharp reduction in wheat production and the sharp rise in prices, American food processing and baking companies have increased their prices and passed them on to consumers.
However, for high-income countries and families, the rise in food prices usually does not have a serious impact. In fact, the rise in food prices will bring huge profits to grain merchants around the world.
According to reports, the latest fiscal year data of Cargill, an American grain merchant, revealed that in 2020, when global food prices rose, the company’s net profit reached nearly 5 billion US dollars, setting a record for the company since its establishment 156 years ago.
Some analysts believe that in the food security crisis caused by climate change, the inequality in different countries and regions around the world and within regions will be further amplified.
According to FAO’s calculation, climate change makes the global average annual loss nearly $170 billion. As far as agriculture is concerned, on the one hand, climate change affects the national income of countries (mostly developing countries) with agricultural products as their economic pillars, on the other hand, it also affects the global food supply chain and food trade.
Facing the inequality of food security aggravated by global climate change, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls on governments and enterprises of all countries to work together to prevent the "systemic risk" of food problems.
According to the organization, although the impacts of climate change and food security risks are different in different countries and regions in the short term, these problems have conduction effects, and no country or class can be immune to climate issues and food issues for a long time.