Confronting Global Warming Farming And The Food Supply

Book Report

Farming is very important for our lives, without farming we would not have
food, clothes, fuel, and many other important things. We know that our earth
is getting warmer and the question we should be asking ourselves how this
will affect our food supply. This book Confronting Global Warming Farming
And The Food Supply by Debra A Miller explains how global warming will
affected farming and what we should expect to happen.
The earth is changing and many people believe it some dont but what
scientist are calling this is global warming or now the term climate change is
used. Global warming will affect different areas in different ways. This means
that we will experience more unpredictable weather which means more
floods which will strong and worse every time. Droughts which will be more
frequent and last longer. These are just example of some the weather we
many experience. What this all means for the farming world is that many
areas will have decrease production. The areas that already do not have
enough crop production will be hit the hardest by 2080 Africas crop
production will decrease by more than 15% compared to the year 2000 (pg
26).
The book also states that global warming could effects crops positively
to a certain point after that point the effects for crops would all be negative.
Since plants breathe in CO2 and they need it to survive and global warming
means that the CO2 concentrations in the earth rise you would think that
plants would do better. This is correct to a certain point at the time of the
book being published the Co2 concentrations were 380 ppm (parts per
million). Research has being done that found that if the concentrations were
at 550 ppm certain crops including wheat and corn yield increased any from
0-20%. After that point the yield did not change .(pg 25). The same things
happens with temperture with alittle rise in temperature yield will increase
but after that yield will the same or less then now.(pg 25)
The book also talks about water, soil, and pests and how these will be
affected with global warming. Water is key to agricultre and our daily lives .
River run off is projected to increase by 10-40% in high latitudes and wet
tropical areas due to melting glaciers by mid-century (pg 34). In other areas
many which already face water issues should decrease by 10-30% (pg34).
With the shortage of water in some areas means that areas with good
farming land could turn into deserts (pg 38).

Book also touchs on how global warming will affect fish industy aswell
as the livestock industry. I will not good alot in to detail about this because
my project is foucsing on grain farming. The pressure will be put onto
countrys which will not affected as bad such as canada and usa. The
promblem is today we have many people living on the earth and farmers are
facing loss of land due devlopements and many farms are not being past
down because thier kids are not interesed in farming. Farmers are very
important to us and it somthing we should not take forgranted.
I thought this book was very interesting and i got some vauble
information out of it. It was recomend this book to anyone how is
interested in farming. Aswell as anyone who would like to what the
future of farming and our food production looks like. Everyone likes
food and it affects everyone this book tells you what the future of food
production will look like