ipl-logo

Final Essay

1611 Words7 Pages

Two widely fought over and controversial issues that are often the cause of many political battles is the shortage of food resources and climate change. Thus it is important to look at how these two issues are linked together and the consequence one can have on another. In specific, take a look at the impact of climate change on agriculture. One theory is that climate change will have a presumably overall positive impact on agriculture. Climate change brings with it vast changes in temperature, these changes could greatly affect the agricultural system. Everything in the environment is designed to function at its optimal level under optimal conditions. This is in particular to crop yield all around the world, explaining why some products …show more content…

In Canada, the temperature has increased by 1.3°C which has resulted in greater precipitation levels, specifically 12% increase all over Canada (Government of Canada, 2014). This increase in temperature and precipitation is significant because they are important abiotic factors that determine the outcome of crop quality and yield. Crop yield refers to the amount of harvest that can be produced per hectare of given land (Bullis, 2014). For example, wheat, which is the number one grown crop in Canada requires several conditions in order for the crop to be grown properly, such as between 420 and 480mm of water (Government of Alberta, 2011). If this condition is not met it could prove for great drawbacks in wheat production. Other possible areas of concern due to climate change with respect to crop yield include high heat conditions causing damage to crops and soil erosion. One of the ways in which this can happen is from having warmer winters, which will decrease the amount of protective snow cover and make the soil more susceptible to erosion (Government of Canada, 2014). This decrease in soil quality has led Canada to see a decrease in land for agricultural purposes to 7.3% (Statistics Canada, 2014). Looking at the issue on a more global scale, the U.N. reports that the world’s largest crops such as corn, wheat and rice could decrease harvest …show more content…

Climate change can greatly change the supply of produce that is available to consumers due to droughts and extreme weather conditions a fore mentioned. This reduction will evidently lead suppliers to hike the prices of goods, with higher prices, consumption levels decrease causing the rise of many health factors in humans (Adams et al., 1998). Statistics Canada outlined the decrease in household spending on food between 1969 and 2009 with increasing food prices annually by 4.3%, amounting to a fall from 18.7% to 10.2% respectively (Davison, 2011). Likewise, as seen in Table 2, fragile countries as in those that lack the tools for a stable economy and industrial infrastructure have the greatest percentage of expenditure on food compared to developing countries (Brinkman & Hendrix, 2011). This point helps to shape the importance of climate change on agriculture in Canada as well as globally as the changes in growing patterns will affect spending patterns of global citizens. Furthermore, with fewer resources to provide for the growing population, civil conflicts over limited supplies are bound to occur. To prove this fact even further, it is shown that many countries that have a lack of resources providing for poor nutrition and health are seen to be greatly

Open Document