Food Production Shocks Increasingly Common; For S/SE Asia, In Crops; For E. Europe, Fisheries

Extreme weather is imperiling food security across the globe with greater frequency, according to new research released Monday highlighting the impact of worsening weather disasters on global markets and food systems. A study by researchers at the University of Tasmania published January 28 in the journal Nature Sustainability found that food production is becoming increasingly susceptible to climate and weather volatility.

These “food shocks” — or, sudden losses to food production — are hitting local communities hard, in addition to impacting the global economy, with long-term implications. “Critically, shock frequency has increased through time on land and sea at a global scale,” the study notes. “Geopolitical and extreme-weather events were the main shock drivers identified, but with considerable differences across sectors.”

Weather events including floods, droughts, hurricanes, and other shocks have taken a toll on agriculture and growing systems. Across 134 nations over a 53-year period from 1961 to 2013, researchers identified 226 food production shocks across all sectors, including crops, livestock, fisheries, and aquaculture.

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Not all regions have been impacted equally. South Asia, for example, is already among the regions most at risk, with floods and heat waves becoming more common across countries like India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Food shocks hitting crops were most common in that region, while Eastern Europe has seen major blows to its fisheries and South America’s aquaculture has suffered. And while weather events take up much of the report, the impact of geopolitical events is also noted as a driver of food shocks, with the fall of communism in Soviet Russia and a series of wars in Afghanistan among the examples. Those two factors — weather and political crises — have combined to throw off food production, and, in turn, threaten people around the world.

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https://thinkprogress.org/climate-change-food-shocks-agriculture-report-28c80cb01297/