Climatic variability is the single most important factor that limits agricultural productivity. All climate factors face continuous change and these are posing a serious threat to the food production systems across the world. Those areas are facing worst situation where food productivity depends on the helpless nature. The short-term change in the climatic factors (rainfall, light, temperature, snow fall) is termed as variability in climate. During the last fifty years, this planet has observed the biggest vulnerabilities in the climate. This single most important limiting factor i.e. climate has a lot to do in crop production for our generations to come.
World Meteorological Organization has reported: “The world experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes during the 2001-2010 decade.”
The extreme temperature rise in the plains, Polar Regions resulted in floods and wide droughts to our food production systems. Even during the last few years, floods in sub-continent, heat waves in Australia and Europe, storms in some continents, recent cold wave in United States and Canada have left farmers unsafe due to the natural conditions.
Humans are the main source for this climate change. From 1750 to 2010, CO2 concentration increased from 280 to 389 parts per million. This is 39 per cent increase in CO2 concentration during that period. From 1750, the industrial era started in the European countries and the world moved more and more on to industries. Methane level also increased by 158 per cent to the current level of 1808.0 parts per billion during in the same period. The concentration of nitrous oxide also rose by 20 per cent and all these are causing green house effect in our planet.
Worlds population is rapidly increasing which demands more and more food than ever. The current agricultural systems running in the world are sufficient to produce the highest amounts of food in the human history but climatic factors are limiting this systems efficiency.
The variability in the intensities and duration of seasons demand change in cropping pattern and adjusting the levels of practices done to grow crops to get more productivity while sustaining it.
It is predicted that arid areas will get affected the most which are dependent upon the weather and climatic factors for growing crops worldwide. These areas will have to face any of the following conditions:
Either short term or long term drought conditions
Intensive and short duration rainfall spells
Floods
Increased CO2 concentration
Drought in some areas of the world has led towards hike in food prices in other parts of the world too. Some major droughts in Australia and African countries led to disturb the balance of food and shortages can affect human population. These can be both in terms of quantity and quality of the food material that human consumed.
In the sub-continent, areas that fall under monsoon rainfalls are receiving very short-term rainfall spell that leads to floods. Recent floods in the last five years in Pakistan are the best example when rainfall intensities were the highest and resulted in floods that hit cities and agricultural fields from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Sindh. The amount of rainfall is increasing along with its severity. The rainfall that has to be precipitated in five months is coming in just two months.
The temperature has risen to more than 1o¬ C in the previous century and scientists are predicting an increase of 4o C in this century. This change will affect directly to those who are directly linked to agriculture and indirectly to those who consume the food produced by the agrarians.
Climate change can affect the total food production of the world and can impact the poorer people to buy the food commodities.
The farming community has been critically hit by the recent changes in climate change. Rainfall occurrence is more intensive or there is too less rainfall to have a crop on that area. The occurrence of floods and droughts are increasing and agriculture systems demands changes.
Research organizations have developed varieties specific for those areas that have shortage of rainfall and these perform best in such areas. For irrigated areas where there are less chances of variability in climate, different varieties are grown. So, the most vulnerable areas are those where there is no adequate supply of irrigated water either through canals or pumping the ground water up.
Most of the cereal crops, Wheat, Maize and others, if face high temperature at its an thesis and grain formation stages then the size of grain are highly affected. This usually happens when short term climate changes take place.
The Northern Hemisphere has been investigated and a record high CO2 level at 400 parts per million and this is the highest level of CO2 in the world ever recorded. Its time for the world to act and preserve our climate otherwise the harsh conditions will ruin the livelihood of generations to come. We must act in a positive manner to minimize the level of CO2 -as much as possible and same is to be done with all the green house gases (GHG).
The act to preserve our environment will help us to live on this planet and to retain the ability of this land to produce food for centuries to come. We have to change our lifestyles that pose less environmental damage and make our earth green.
The writer is associated with the Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. He can be reached at <muddassirayaz@gmail.com>