Many definitions of food security exist, and these have been the subject of much debate. As early as 1992, Maxwell and Smith (1992) reviewed more than 180 items discussing concepts and definitions, and more definitions have been formulated since (DEFRA, 2006). Whereas many earlier definitions centered on food production, more recent definitions highlight access to food, in keeping with the 1996 World Food Summit definition (FAO, 1996) that food security is met when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” Worldwide attention on food access was given impetus by the food “price spike” in 2007–2008, triggered by a complex set of long- and short-term factors (FAO, 2009b; von Braun and Torero, 2009). FAO concluded, “provisional estimates show that, in 2007, 75 million more people were added to the total number of undernourished relative to 2003–05” (FAO, 2008); this is arguably a low-end estimate (Headey and Fan, 2010). More than enough food is currently produced per capita to feed the global population, yet about 870 million people remained hungry in the period from 2010 to 2012 (FAO et al., 2012). The questions for this chapter are how far climate and its change affect current food production systems and food security and the extent to which they will do so in the future (Figure 7-1).

Food security and food production systems

Agriculture and climate change are internally correlated with each other in various aspects, as climate change is the main cause of biotic and abiotic stresses, which have adverse effects on the agriculture of a region. The land and its agriculture are being affected by climate changes in different ways, e.g., variations in annual rainfall, average temperature, heat waves, modifications in weeds, pests or microbes, global change of atmospheric CO2 or ozone level, and fluctuations in sea level. The threat of varying global climate has greatly driven the attention of scientists, as these variations are imparting negative impact on global crop production and compromising food security worldwide. According to some predicted reports, agriculture is considered the most endangered activity adversely affected by climate changes. To date, food security and ecosystem resilience are the most concerning subjects worldwide. Climate-smart agriculture is the only way to lower the negative impact of climate variations on crop adaptation, before it might affect global crop production drastically. In this review paper, we summarize the causes of climate change, stresses produced due to climate change, impacts on crops, modern breeding technologies, and biotechnological strategies to cope with climate change, in order to develop climate resilient crops. Revolutions in genetic engineering techniques can also aid in overcoming food security issues against extreme environmental conditions, by producing transgenic plants.

Impact of Climate Change on Crops Adaptation and Strategies to Tackle Its Outcome: A Review.

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1234376/m2/1/high_res_d/Montgomery_Lancet%2520Countdown%25202017%2520Report%2520-%2520121017%2520Accepted%2520no%2520watermark.pdf

The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health

Watts N, Amann M, Ayeb-Karlsson S, et al. The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health. Lancet 2018; 391: 581–630—In this Review (published online first on Oct 30, 2017), Jonathan Chambers, Ian Hamilton, Robert Lowe, and Steve Pye's affiliation has been corrected to UCL Energy Institute, London, UK; Fereidoon Owfi and Mahnaz Rabbaniha's affiliation has been corrected to Iranian Fisheries Science Research Institute, AREEO, Tehran, Iran; Meisam Tabatabaei's affiliation has been corrected to Biofuel Research Team, Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran, AREEO, Karaj, Iran; and Ali Mohammad Latifi's affiliation has been corrected to Applied Biotechnology Research Center, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. In figures 31, 33, and 34, the formatting of the currency in the y-axis title has been corrected to US$2016. In figure 36, the y-axis title has been corrected to “Fossil fuel consumption subsidies (US$2016 billion)”. In figure 37, RGGI has been explained in the figure legend and an asterisk symbol has been removed from the figure. In Table 2, CO2 has been spelled out as carbon dioxide. These corrections have been made to the online version as of Nov 23, 2017, and the printed Review is correct.

The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: from 25 years of inaction to a global transformation for public health (vol 391, pg 540, 2017)

Soybean yield prediction from UAV using multimodal data fusion and deep learning

This paper provides a comprehensive review of literature related to the assessment of climate change impacts on crop productivity using climate, water and crop yield models. The existing studies present that climate change models with higher spatial resolution can be a way forward for future climate projections. Meanwhile, stochastic projections of more than one climate model are necessary for providing insights into model uncertainties as well as to develop risk management strategies. It is projected that water availability will increase in some parts of the world, which will have its own effect on water use efficiency and water allocation. Crop production can increase if irrigated areas are expanded or irrigation is intensified, but these may increase the rate of environmental degradation. Since climate change impacts on soil water balance will lead to changes of soil evaporation and plant transpiration, consequently, the crop growth period may shorten in the future impacting on water productivity. Crop yields affected by climate change are projected to be different in various areas, in some areas crop yields will increase, and for other areas it will decrease depending on the latitude of the area and irrigation application. Existing modelling results show that an increase in precipitation will increase crop yield, and what is more, crop yield is more sensitive to the precipitation than temperature. If water availability is reduced in the future, soils of high water holding capacity will be better to reduce the impact of drought while maintaining crop yield. With the temperature increasing and precipitation fluctuations, water availability and crop production are likely to decrease in the future. If the irrigated areas are expanded, the total crop production will increase; however, food and environmental quality may degrade. 2009 National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier Limited and Science in China Press. All rights reserved.

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Climate change impacts on crop yield, crop water productivity and food security - A review

Predicting climate change impacts on maize crop productivity and water use efficiency in the loess plateau

Climate change impacts on food production and water use efficiency are becoming more and more important. This paper mainly discusses the climate change effects on water use indices and maize yield under rainfed and irrigated conditions projected by three climate models in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia in 2020, 2050 and 2080 under A2 and B2 scenarios. The climate prediction results show that it is similar to the future precipitation and temperature projected by three climate models for the same time slices. For rainfed and irrigated maize, the crop yield, the potential and actual evapotranspiration will increase by 3–32, 3–12, 30–45 and 32–45, 3–15, 6–15% under both scenarios in the future during the maize growth period compared with the baseline respectively. Water use indices of maize under rainfed conditions will decrease and the variable increment will gradually be larger in the future, including evapotranspiration efficiency, crop water use efficiency and total water use efficiency. However, all the water use indices analysed under irrigated conditions will increase. The variation for evapotranspiration efficiency, ratio of evapotranspiration and irrigation is around 20%, but the variation for the other three indices is more than 30%. The projection results also indicate that the indices under the B2 scenario are smaller than those under A2 although the variable tendency and range are consistent. The conclusions suggest that it is significant to develop irrigated agriculture so as to mitigate climate change effects on crop production in the Murray Darling Basin. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Analysing Climate Change Impacts on Water Productivity of Cropping Systems in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia

Climate change impacts on food production have become an interesting topic to most agricultural researchers. This paper mainly discusses the rainfed maize water use indices in the subareas of Loess Plateau under the A2 and B2 future climate scenarios with SWAGMAN® Destiny model. The result shows that evapotranspiration will increase in future under both scenarios while the water use indices will decrease for rainfed maize production in the whole Loess Plateau. Although the study indices mentioned in this paper have the same tendency under both scenarios, the variability under the A2 scenario is higher than that under the B2 scenario.

Yinhong Kang

Papers

Climate change impacts on crop yield, crop water productivity and food security - A review

Predicting climate change impacts on maize crop productivity and water use efficiency in the loess plateau

Analysing Climate Change Impacts on Water Productivity of Cropping Systems in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia

Water use efficiency evaluation of rainfed maize under future climate scenarios in Loess Plateau