The Effects of Climate Change on Food Security

Climate change can threaten global food security in several ways.

Firstly, by intensifying the water cycle, climate change causes regions with precipitation to have even more precipitation and places scarce in precipitation to have even less of it. This results in places with floods – which kill crops via flushing them out of their place in the soil – and places with droughts – which also kill crops via dehydrating them. Thus, climate change causes global food insecurity.

The heat brought by climate change also kills crops, especially a special type of crop named C4 crops. C4 crops are adapted to drier places due to their special photosynthesis mechanism. They are designed so that their rubisco has a higher usage for photosynthesis instead of photorespiration, leading to a reduction in their need to open their stomata. While this means they lose less water in arid locations, this also means that they are less vulnerable to heat stress as less of their heat in their leaves are passed to the environment via the opening of their stomata and the evaporation of water from their mesophyll cell surfaces.

Thus, climate change can cause crop failure around the world and threaten global food security.