Oxfam said it prepared a study for the Institute of Development Studies by surveying farmers around the world, who report that changing seasonal patterns were already affecting their ability to plan the sowing and harvesting of crops. The results, it said, were "strikingly consistent across entire geographies."
SHOOT: I was having dinner in 2008 with a group of journalists from around the world. I began to ask them how they were perceiving the weather in their corner of the planet in order to establish a trend.
One of them, Sarah McDonald, a young woman from New Zealand, suddenly launched a storm of vitriol. How could I be so stupid to suspect that climate change was real? How could I be so susceptible to the propaganda? Of course, I wasn't allowed to conduct my poll to satisfy my curiosity any further because she evidently had already decided I was mistaken. This dogmatic and frankly arrogant confidence in intangibles is how a problem got so out of hand despite it being in the public eye. Create enough doubt and you create, also, lazy entropy.
Farmers have begun changing their crops in the tropics, where a 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) temperature shift can make traditional crops unsustainable. Unpredictable rainfall makes their choices of new crops a gamble, the report said.
Among the worst hit are nations that grow rice, the world's most common food. Yields are predicted to drop an average 10 percent for every 1 degree C rise in temperature in countries like the Philippines, where production could fall 50-70 percent as early as 2020. At the same time, China will grow more rice as the area of warm temperatures spreads, it said.
Corn is another staple that will be widely affected by climate change since it is particularly vulnerable to water stress, it said. Corn is the main source of food for 250 million people in east Africa and is used as animal feed around the world.
SHOOT: Been saying this for a few years now. AMSTERDAM – Chronic hunger may be "the defining human tragedy of this century," as climate change causes growing seasons to shift, crops to fail, and storms and droughts to ravage fields, an advocacy group said.
Oxfam International released a report Monday as leaders of the Group of Eight wealthiest nations prepare to meet in Italy this week, with an agenda to include both food security and climate change.
It says that as the weather changes, millions of people in areas suffering food scarcity will have to give up traditional crops, possibly leading to social upheavals such as mass migrations and possible conflict over water resources.
The report, "What Happened to the Seasons?" was meant to add urgency to the G-8 meeting and to a broader group of 17 countries, the Major Economies Forum, which convenes later in the week to try to unblock negotiations on a new climate change agreement due to be completed in December.
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