One topic that we haven’t discussed so far in our Climate Change Collective posts is food security. It is an important subject which affects everybody so it is great to see this month’s lead post tackle this delicate matter.
As the world’s population grows and temperatures increase, suffering harvests are starting to have a massive impact on food supplies and will continue to create shortages in future.
Caroline (@environlineblog) has produced a very thorough and useful article about many of the ways that food security is altering, largely due to climate change.
My Thoughts
I live in an agricultural area and come from a family of arable farmers. The Fenland region of East Anglia is covered in Peat which makes it a brilliant landscape for growing many different vegetables and fruits.
The land was reclaimed from marshland in the 1800s by a network of drainage ditches originally designed by Dutch engineer Vermuyden. Lots of market towns and villages are now scattered across this beautiful but flat countryside.
Sadly, with most of it being very close to sea level, predictions state that much of the Fens is likely to be returned to wetland by 2050. This will greatly affect the availability of food for lots of European countries. One third of the UK’s harvested food comes from here.
If the area is drowned once more, this will impact on wheat production as well as the provision of: carrots, onions, potatoes, sugar beat, lettuce, oil seed rape, peas, strawberries and many other types of fresh produce.
In A Nutshell
Caroline has put together various suggestions of how to do your bit in helping us secure our food supplies. Environmentally, considering the food miles of products we buy can help to reduce pollution as well as supporting local farmers.
Of course, if our farmland shrinks or is continually flooded, we may have to consider growing different crops. Reducing the amount of livestock we rear could also make room for more arable fields.
The Climate Change Collective is a group of bloggers who write one lead post every month linked to global warming and sustainability. The rest of us then create link posts, such as this article.
For one of my previous articles in the group, check out Warmer Weather – What’s not to like?. Please take time to check out Caroline’s article and drop some comments with your views on this matter.
