Filtered by: Scitech
SciTech
PARIS, France – Climate change is on track to reduce by 11 percent in 2100 the yields that today provide two-thirds of humanity’s calories from crops, even taking into account adaptation to a warming world.
As soon as 2050, this “moderate” scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions peak around 2040 and slowly taper off — a trajectory aligned with current trends — would see global losses of nearly eight percent.
And if carbon pollution worsens, the loss of calories across the same six staples — corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, sorghum and cassava — rises to nearly a quarter by century’s end.
More generally, every additional degree Celsius of warming reduces the world’s ability to produce food from these crops by 120 calories per person per day, or nearly five percent of current daily