Thursday, November 18, 2010

Food Security Action Fund Miserly Compared to "Clean Coal"

Reuters reports a global fund of $20 million a year for 10 years has been established to research how to feed the world population in the face of worsening floods and droughts. By 2050, global "potential to produce food" could decline by 5 to 10 percent, after an average increase through 2020, according to Andy Jarvis, an agriculture policy expert at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, based in Colombia. The program will use an Australian climate model to look at how rising temperatures and rainfall changes affect 50 major crops worldwide including sorghum, millet, sweet potato, wheat, rice and maize. Climate models point to accelerating declines in production of rain-fed wheat worldwide of 2.2 percent by 2020, 4 percent by 2050 and 18.6 percent by 2080, unless climate change is curbed or effective adaptive measures are put in place, scientists told reporters.
Maintaining adequate food production in the face of climate pressures may require some societies to switch their staple crops, if varieties more tolerant of drought, floods and pests cannot be successfully developed.
The amount of funding applied to this project compared with the billions spent on coal technology is revealing of distorted priorities. (Source: Climate Spectator)

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