Spreading deserts threaten world food supply

Africa, Latin America and parts of Asia — where the climate is already more extreme and arid regions are common — will be most affected as rainfall declines and its timing becomes less predictable, making water more scarce. Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, would also suffer from heat waves like those that this summer have led to devastating fires in Greece.

Increasing climate variability would create major problems for farmers, who are likely to see their growing seasons getting shorter and crop yields cut, especially in areas near already arid and semi-arid regions.

Spreading deserts and degradation of farm land due to climate change will pose a serious threat to food supplies for the world’s surging population in coming years, a senior United Nations scientist warned on Friday.

M.V.K. Sivakumar of the U.N.‘s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the crunch could come in just over a decade as all continents see more weather-related disasters like heat waves, floods, landslides and wildfires.

“Should we worry about land being degraded? Yes,” Sivakumar, who leads the WMO’s agricultural meteorology division, told a news conference in Geneva.

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Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found...