There are many factors and challenges that arise when overlooking the management of world food supply. It is easy for one to visit the supermarket once a week and go about our everyday food shop, without even thinking or taking note about where our food comes from, or the efforts and constraints that arise along the way. Not to mention ever having the worry of food security. Food security refers to a household where there is no fear of hunger or starvation. In modern Britain we have been spoilt with the luxury of such rarity of these instances and tend to take it for granted. However, across the world others aren’t so fortunate.
“Worldwide around 852 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty.” (FAO Food Security Statistics)
In this article I intend to investigate one of the main challenges of world food supply that cause shortages and the measures in place to help prevent it. The Challenge of global food security through the twenty first century is partnered with several global issues. One of the main factors being climate change, but also growth in population and the worlds rapidly growing demand for energy and water.
It is said that most significantly to our problems in world food supply is the ever rising issue of global warming. Climate plays an important role in the rate of crop growth and their quality. There are numerous important factors that contribute to this that are directly connected to agriculture.
• Increase in temperature
• Changes in rainfall and its patterns
• A rise in concentrations of CO2
• Change in climate variability and extremity
A change in average temperature can have a profound effect whereby it lengthens the growing seasons in certain regions with relatively cool springs and fall. This could be seen as a benefit but with the
References: (U.S. Global Change Research Information, www.gcrio.org) (IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability) (FAO Food Security Statistics) (Dr David Dennis, the chief executive of Performance Plants Incorporated in Kingston, Ontario).