From Food Production to Food Security - Global Environmental ...

water) are used, and reduce negative externalities such as soil degradation, water pollution,loss of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions (van Ittersum and Rabbinge, 1997;Gregory et al., 2002).Meanwhile, as the climate change agenda has gathered momentum, research on the impactson food production has rapidly increased. It is now clear that climate change will affect cropgrowth in many parts of the world, with the most deleterious impacts anticipated in thedeveloping world (Parry et al., 2004; Parry et al., 2005; Foresight, 2011). Changes in averagetemperatures, and in rainfall amounts and patterns will have positive and negative effects onyields and/or change production costs, depending on location, but increases in weatherextremes are particularly worrying: an increase in double droughts or prolonged elevatedtemperature at critical stages of crop growth will be locally devastating and of major concernif widespread. Livestock and fisheries will be affected both directly through heat stress andindirectly through impacts on grazing and other feed stocks. Climate change will also haveindirect impacts on food production through alterations to pests and diseases, and on demandsfor water. Negative impacts on crops will only be marginally offset by the fertilisation effectsof elevated CO 2 , with perhaps a 8-12% gain for a double pre-industrial CO 2 concentration(Gregory et al., 1999); but a world with such elevated CO 2 would experience such massiveclimate change that all efforts must be made to avoid this.While agricultural research is moving towards addressing the twin goals of producing morefood while simultaneously reducing negative environmental feedbacks (or even increasingpositive environmental feedbacks e.g. though carbon sequestration), a major motive for mostsuch research remains the need to increase food production yet further. This research efforthas gained impetus from the increasing realisation of the (mainly) detrimental impacts thatclimate change and other aspects of global environmental change (GEC; e.g. changes inwater resources, biodiversity, tropospheric ozone, sea level) will have on food production,most notably in the developing world. This is based on a greatly increased understanding ofhow GEC will affect food productivity (yield) at field level.Emergence of more integrated food security researchThe continuing research emphasis on producing food is not surprising given its longestablishedmomentum and on-going investment, and the undeniable need of having toproduce more food in the years ahead. But, despite the fact the world currently producesenough food for all, the number of food-insecure people world-wide currently attests that ourunderstanding and approaches are insufficient. New concepts, tools and approaches areclearly needed to address the broader food security agenda. Their development is all the moreurgent given the additional complications that GEC is already bringing to the many for whomfood security is already far from easy. Yields are now seen to be deleteriously affected byrising temperatures (Lobell et al., 2011); increases in the frequency of floods and droughts(although hard to attribute to climate change per se, but which are widely anticipated in4