Climate change will likely push food prices up 20 to 40 percent, regardless of cuts to future carbon emissions, new research in the journal Climatic Change concluded. Staple crops like rice, wheat, and grains — which make up the vast majority of global diets, especially for the poor — could see the biggest hits, with big costs for global economic welfare.
As The Carbon Brief reports, the researchers built their projections off of two different future scenarios provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The A1B scenario assumes greater technological and economic advances, less inequality, and a more diverse energy mix with lower carbon emissions. The A2 scenario assumes a more fragmented world in which local identities are better preserved, but technology and income distribution advance more slowly, and carbon emissions remain higher. The researchers also used a modeling system able to distinguish between rained and irrigated agriculture, and the consequences of changing water availability for the latter.
“By midcentury, staple foods like cereal grains, sugar cane and wheat are expected to be around 40 per cent more expensive than at present,” according to The Carbon Brief’s summation. And “fruit and vegetable prices are expected to rise 30 per cent by 2050, while the cost of rice is likely to be almost 20 per cent higher than today.”
