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Wednesday, March 21st, 2018

Disasters causing billions in agricultural losses, with drought leading the way

Author:    
Source:     Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations
Publication Date:     15 March 2018
 Link: Disasters causing billions in agricultural losses, with drought leading the way
Stephan:   Researchers have been predicting for at least a decade that one of the biggest and first impacts of climate change will be seen in agriculture. And so it is. Food and social unrest go together, but then one has to factor in climate change itself and the migrations it is causing. It is projected these mass movements will become hundreds of millions perhaps even a billion people becoming refugees. Now imagine the dimensions of change facing us.

Coastal fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu, India, sift through the wreckage of their village following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

ROME/HANOI — Natural disasters are costing farmers in the developing world billions of dollars each year, with drought emerging as the most destructive in a crowded field of threats that also includes floods, forest fires, storms, plant pests, animal diseases outbreaks, chemical spills and toxic algal blooms.

According to a new report  from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), between 2005 and 2015 natural disasters cost the agricultural sectors of developing country economies a staggering $96 billion in damaged or lost crop and livestock production.

Half of that damage — $48 billion worth — occurred in Asia, says the report, which was launched today at a conference in Hanoi convened by Viet Nam’s government in collaboration with FAO.

Drought — which recently has battered farmers in all corners of the globe, North, South, East and West — was one of the leading culprits. Eighty-three percent of all drought-caused economic losses documented by FAO’s study […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Thursday, March 22, 2018 at 9:35 pm

    I still say that eventually all of us must change to a vegetarian diet, since the fish are disappearing and the meat takes too much water to produce; water that we humans need to drink.