The causes and effects of global warming on agriculture and food supply
Agriculture is the largest sector that provides a nation with food and employment. It is thus the backbone of a stable nation, socially and politically. Agriculture is currently being affected by climate change and it is also a contributor to climate change. A question asked is how does agriculture affect climate change when climate change affects agriculture? Agricultural activities like breeding of livestock, deforestation, ploughing of fields and the use of pesticides and other agrochemicals contribute to climate change through their output of greenhouse gas emission and carbon footprint. Agriculture is facing droughts, flooding, sea level elevations, natural disasters and health hazards for employees.
As a result of these exponents, crop failure that leads or creates famines transpires thus leading food to rise. Agriculture and climate change are an interrelated process that exists mutually making it harder to reduce one without affecting the other. Climate change disrupts and affects the quality and supply of food. Climate change is very likely to affect food at a global, regional and local level. The severe weather also interrupts the delivery of food and resulting spikes in food prices. The increasing temperatures can contribute towards the spoilage and contamination of food. This therefore affects businesses in such a way that they loose large amounts of stock which then leads them to the price increase of what they can supply to generate a profit which then affects the food affordability of consumers.
In South Africa, vulnerability to climate change and variability is intrinsically linked with social and economic development. When looking at the farming sectors, farmers in the Western Cape will be confronted with high exposure to extreme events and climate change/variability; however, their adaptive capacity (particularly of commercial farmers) is high due to its greater wealth, infrastructure development and good access to resources. Furthermore, in Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape it will only take moderate climate changes to disrupt the livelihoods and well-being of the rural inhabitants, who are largely subsistence farmers thus climate change will increase the burden of those who are already poor and vulnerable.
Alongside but linked to the climate crisis is a growing global food crisis. This is a systemic crisis built on a profit-driven, globalized and carbon-based food regime which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, undermines the food needs of a billion hungry people, has contributed to widespread food inequality and has caught at least two billion people in a transition to diets that are based on cheap and fast food, resulting in obesity and a host of attendant diseases such as sugar diabetes and heart disease. These crises are set to get worse. The most valued crops in South Africa are maize, which is exported, and wheat, which is not enough to provide the country’s needs. Fresh fruit and wine bring in the most foreign earnings. All of these are under threat from increased temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. This as a result has become strenuous our economic well-being.
Stressors such as population growth may magnify the effects of climate change of food security. Climate change affects each and every country’s agriculture differently due to its geographical location. In South Africa, fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) are by far the largest contributor to climate change. Climate change could reduce the availability of labor and productivity costing South Africa up to 11% of GDP per capita by the end of the century. However, with the right set of policies, changes in the job market related to rising temperatures might contribute to reducing the gender pay gap in rural communities.
Common constraints to successful small-scale and emerging commercial agriculture include lack of access to finance, challenges regarding land governance in the communal areas, access to water, the need for effective extension services, and poor infrastructure, such as roads, electricity and access to markets.
In conclusion, climate change is inevitable, and if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. The perceptions and behaviors, the processes and factors leading to decision-making, and the goals and convictions of individuals and communities appear fundamental to the adaptation of human systems because it is humans who will, in the end, make the right or wrong decisions influencing the future.
