Farmers must adapt to climate change
Farmers must urgently adapt to our changing climate to deal with extreme weather that will likely become more frequent, says the UK’s global food security champion.
Climate change is already happening and extreme temperatures that was historically a one in 30,000 years episode, could now be expected to happen every 40 years, warned Tim Benton, UK champion for food security and professor of population ecology, University of Leeds.
“Over the next decade, I predict there will be at least one year where worldwide production of major crops will decrease by up to 25%, due to extreme weather from climate change”, said Prof Benton, speaking at Holt Farmers’ Club in Norfolk on Wednesday (12 December).
Looking back over 2012, Prof Benton said this year’s intense rainfall experienced by farmers in most UK regions had not been unusual, but the changeable pattern of the weather had.
He warned that failure by world leaders to act on climate change at the latest round of climate talks in Doha meant the planet was looking at a possible 4-6C rise in temperature by the end of the century.
“The hottest summer we’ve ever had could become cooler than the average summer by the end of the century”, said Prof Benton. “So imagine if a UK summer was hotter than 40C day after day, and imagine what it would do to crops”.
Prof Benton warned that UK agricultural colleges were not doing enough to prepare young farmers for the challenges of farming more sustainably and dealing with increasing variability and extremes of weather.
And across the industry, there was still a mentality of “business as usual” in many institutions, he said.
To help ensure food security and a sustainable farming system, Prof Benton advised farmers to concentrate on managing soils, reducing waste, using new knowledge such as precision farming and recycling, and valuing ecosystem services.
He also urged farmers to pressurise government to urgently tackle climate change.
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