Scientists race to avoid climate change harvest

By David Fogarty, with additional reporting by Gerard Wynn in London, Erik Dela Cruz in Manila, and Naveen Thukral in Singapore; Editing by Bill Tarrant
10 Jun 2011 CANBERRA (Reuters) – Charlie Bragg gazes across his lush fields where fat lambs are grazing, his reservoirs filled with water, and issues a sigh of relief. Things are normal this year and that’s a bit unusual of late. His 7,000-acre farm near the Australian town of Cootamundra is testament to the plight facing farmers around the globe: increasingly wilder weather is making food production more unpredictable. It’s the new normal they must prepare for. Bragg’s farm in New South Wales state has been in the family for generations and has weather records for the area stretching back 110 years. After seven years of costly drought, the weather switched last year to unseasonably wet with flooding rains. “It’s screaming to me that things are getting hotter and drier at different times of the year,” said the 40-year-old Bragg during a recent visit to his property, about two hours drive to the west of Canberra, the Australian capital. “Our summers are getting wetter and if this trend continues, then we will have to find different means of farming,” he said. Across the globe, rising temperatures and more intense droughts, floods, and storms are forcing a rethink in how to grow food, from breeding hardier crop varieties and changing planting times to complete genetic overhauls of plants. Growing populations, changing diets and insatiable demand for grains, meat and vegetables is putting pressure on global food production and prices like never before. Soaring food prices, civil unrest and worries about weather have spurred a global race to create more productive crops that can thrive in a warmer — and more prosperous — world. The World Bank estimates 925 million people are hungry in the world today. The figure has been rising since 1995-97 due to rising food prices, a succession of economic crises, and a neglect of agricultural innovation, especially relevant to the poor. It is going to get much worse for the hungry because global food prices will more than double within 20 years, aid agency Oxfam International said in a June 1 report. Flat-lining yields, a scramble for fertile land and water, and environmental crises are reversing decades of progress against hunger, it said. …

Special report: Scientists race to avoid climate change harvest