Item Link: Access the Resource
Date of Publication: April 14
Year of Publication: 2022
Publication City: London, UK
Publisher: The Guardian
Author(s): Nina Lakhani, Alvin Chang, Rita Liu, Andrew Witherspoon
The world’s farms produce only a handful of varieties of bananas, avocados, coffee, and other foods – leaving them more vulnerable to the climate breakdown.
The climate breakdown is already threatening many of our favorite foods. In Asia, rice fields are being flooded with saltwater; cyclones have wiped out vanilla crops in Madagascar; in Central America higher temperatures ripen coffee too quickly; drought in sub–Saharan Africa is withering chickpea crops; and rising ocean acidity is killing oysters and scallops in American waters.
All our food systems – agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture – are buckling under the stress of rising temperatures, wildfires, droughts, and floods.
Even in the best-case scenario, global heating is expected to make the earth less suitable for the crops that provide most of our calories. If no action is taken to curtail the climate crisis, crop losses will be devastating.
Read the full (interactive) article here.
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