Changing climate could change the way we eat

Climate change could make many of the foods we now take for granted unaffordable in the future.

Everything from rice and wheat to meat and fresh vegetables could become far more expensive if average global temperatures rise by more than 2 degrees C, according to researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK. Meat in particular, which requires large inputs of grain to produce, could end up being priced out of reach for many.

“It is absolutely essential scientists and decision-makers see the bigger picture,” said Alice Bows, who led the two-year study for the university’s Sustainable Consumption Institute. “Climate change will likely raise the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. If governments like the UK’s want to take action to avoid a 2-degree C temperature rise, they must reassess their targets to both take account of climate change impacts, and secondly, better understand how UK consumption is linked to the emissions right down global supply chains.”

While policy-makers in places like the UK have focused on reducing carbon emissions from sources like energy production, they have neglected the potential for larger emissions from agriculture as climate change worsens, Bows said.

Rising temperatures would drive the need to use more fertilizer and reduce the productivity of some livestock. Both those impacts would lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions from food production.

Bows and her team developed a series of scenarios based on a future where average temperatures are 2 degrees C or 4 degrees C higher, and used those to examine possible outcomes. Among the options they considered were such strategies as indoor farms, lab-grown meat and community cooking centers to replace household kitchens and reduce industrial and agricultural emissions.

The researchers concluded that, while a smarter use of technology and some shifts in how and what people consume could prevent a rise to 4 degrees C, restricting the rise to just 2 degree C is impossible without a significant contribution from changes to consumption.

“The authors have vigorously engaged with a wide range of people — it was intriguing to be one of them — as they strived to create some unnerving narratives,” said Peter Baker, senior scientist at the non-profit organization CABI. “A dip into the report should start you thinking; the future won’t be quite like any of the presented scenarios — so where are we going, what will it be like, and why?”

Early expectations of a bumper crop from places like the US are already falling this summer in the wake of record-breaking heat and devastating drought across the nation, leading to rising futures prices for agricultural commodities. Numerous other recent weather-related extremes — from large wildfires in Colorado and Siberia to catastrophic flooding in India and freak “derecho” storm systems in the eastern US — are consistent with what scientists have predicted would occur as the climate changes.