̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - food security

Snakes in potted olive trees ‘tip of the iceberg’ of ornamental plant trade hazards

jg533 — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:44:12 +0000

Invasive pests are slipping unnoticed into northern Europe in huge shipments of cut flowers and potted plants, say researchers, with potential to damage food crops and the natural environment

Global timber supply threatened as climate change pushes cropland northwards

jg533 — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:49:54 +0000

̽��ֱ��sight of vineyards in Britain is becoming more common as hotter summers create increasingly suitable conditions for growing grapes. But behind this success story is a sobering one: climate change is shifting the regions of the world suitable for growing crops.

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have uncovered a looming issue: as the land suitable for producing our food moves northwards, it will put a squeeze on the land we need to grow trees. ̽��ֱ��timber these trees produce is the basis of much of modern life – from paper and cardboard to furniture and buildings.

They say that the increasing competition between land for timber production and food production due to climate change has, until now, been overlooked – but is set to be an emerging issue as our demand for both continues to increase.

Under the worst-case scenario for climate change, where no action is taken to decarbonise society, the study found that over a quarter of existing forestry land – around 320 million hectares, equivalent to the size of India – will become more suitable for agriculture by the end of the century.

Most forests for timber production are currently located in the northern hemisphere in the US, Canada, China and Russia. ̽��ֱ��study found that 90% of all current forestry land that will become agriculturally productive by 2100 will be in these 4 countries.

In particular, tens of millions of hectares of timber-producing land across Russia will become newly suitable for agriculture – more than in the US, Canada and China put together – with conditions becoming favourable for potato, soy, and wheat farming.

“There’s only a finite area of suitable land on the planet where we can produce food and wood - 2 critical resources for society. As climate change worsens and agriculture is forced to expand northwards, there’s going to be increasing pressure on timber production,” said Dr Oscar Morton, a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences who co-led the study.

“We’ve got to be thinking 50 years ahead because if we want timber in the future, we need to be planting it now. ̽��ֱ��trees that will be logged by the end of this century are already in the ground – they’re on much slower cycles than food crops,” said Dr Chris Bousfield, a postdoctoral researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and co-leader of the study.

Global food demand is projected to double by 2050 as the population grows and becomes more affluent. Global wood demand is also expected to double in the same timeframe, in large part because it is a low-carbon alternative to concrete and steel for construction.

Shifting timber production deeper into boreal or tropical forests are not viable options, because the trees in those regions have stood untouched for thousands of years and logging them would release huge amounts of carbon and threaten biodiversity.

“A major environmental risk of increasing competition for land between farming and forestry is that wood production moves into remaining areas of primary forest within the tropics or boreal zones. These are the epicentres of remaining global wilderness and untouched tropical forests are the most biodiverse places on Earth. Preventing further expansion is critical,” said David Edwards, Professor of Plant Ecology in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and senior author of the study.

To get their results, the researchers took satellite data showing intensive forestry across the world and overlaid it with predictions of suitable agricultural land for the world’s key crops -including rice, wheat, maize, soy and potato - in the future under various climate change scenarios.

Even in the best-case scenario, where the world meets net-zero targets, the researchers say there will still be significant future changes in the regions suitable for timber and crop production.

̽��ֱ��study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Timber production contributes over US $1.5 trillion (about £1.1 trillion) per year to national economies globally. Heatwaves and associated wildfires have caused huge recent losses of timber forests around the world. Climate change is also driving the spread of pests like the Bark Beetle, which attacks trees.

Climate change is expected to cause areas in the tropics to become too hot and inhospitable for growing food and make large areas of southern Europe much less suitable for food and wood production.

“Climate change is already causing challenges for timber production. Now on top of that, there will be this increased pressure from agriculture, creating a perfect storm of problems,” said Bousfield.

“Securing our future wood supply might not seem as pressing as securing the food we need to eat and survive. But wood is just as integrated within our daily lives and we need to develop strategies to ensure both food and wood security into the future,” said Morton.

Reference

Bousfield, C G, et al, ‘Climate change will exacerbate land conflict between agriculture and timber production.’ Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02113-z

Climate change will move and reduce the land suitable for growing food and timber, putting the production of these 2 vital resources into direct competition, a new study has found.

Gianluca Cerullo

Timber/farming contrast in the USA

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Transition Live: Park Farm

plc32 — Tue, 14 May 2024 14:18:35 +0000

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's Park Farm hosted one of the most important new agricultural events on the UK farming calendar this month.

Fish bellies, fava beans and food security

plc32 — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:20:27 +0000

Cambridge Zero and Cambridge Global Food Security gather academics and experts to share solutions for the planet’s looming food production problem.

Farm to factories

plc32 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:51:02 +0000

Cambridge Zero collaborates with Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network for two research events in March 2024 that look at industry decarbonisation and food security.

Celebrating Women in STEM

plc32 — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 11:33:15 +0000

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science , two of our academics speak about their research careers and how they ended up using their STEM interests to tackle climate change.

Meet Cambridge's mussel man

ps748 — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 13:05:04 +0000

How new ways of shellfish farming could help meet future food needs.

Current conservation policies risk damaging global biodiversity, warn researchers

jg533 — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 15:15:55 +0000

These ‘Green’ farming policies risk worsening the global biodiversity crisis by reducing how much food is produced in a region, driving up food imports and increasing environmental damage overseas.

In an article published today in the journal Nature, Professor Andrew Balmford at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and Professor Ian Bateman at the ̽��ֱ�� of Exeter, urge policy-makers to consider a bolder approach known as ‘land sparing’ - which they argue is cheaper, more effective, and avoids displacing food production and worsening the loss of wildlife habitats overseas.

Land sparing involves finding lower-impact ways to boost yields in farmed areas, and allow larger, non-farmed areas of the landscape to be put aside for nature - without increasing imports and damaging overseas wildlife.

̽��ֱ��researchers say the approach has been overlooked by policymakers because of a failure to consider the wider consequences of changes in land management. They argue that changes that boost wildlife locally seem superficially attractive, but if food production is reduced there are unavoidable knock-on effects elsewhere that must also be taken into account.

They also cite the influence of the ‘Big Farm’ lobby in maintaining the status quo in agricultural policy, with land-sharing subsidies allocated using a flat rate per hectare, which disproportionately benefits the biggest farms – resulting in the largest 12 per cent of farms taking 50 per cent of all UK taxpayer subsidies.

Their article debunks some of the benefits to biodiversity of three widely-advocated green farming approaches.

They argue that while policy funded measures such as reducing the use of pesticides and fertilisers can sometimes increase populations of more common animals and plants on farms it does little for endangered birds, invertebrates, plants and fungi species that need larger stretches of non-farmed habitat – and by lowering yields can also make matters far worse for overseas biodiversity.

Rewilding initiatives, where large areas of land are taken out of farming, can indeed benefit locally endangered species. But unless other areas see compensating increases in food output then this reduces local production, increases demand for food imports, and so damages biodiversity overseas.

They also argue that organic farming, where crops are produced without manufactured fertilisers and modern pesticides, is even more likely to be damaging. Relatively few species will benefit in the farmed area, and the substantially lower yields from this type of farming risk greatly increasing the need for food imports, and hence a country’s impacts on biodiversity elsewhere.

Land sparing, in contrast, involves retaining or creating sizeable blocks of unfarmed land containing larger populations of the many species that depend on natural habitats, as well as boosting farm yields elsewhere in the region so that overall production is maintained or even increased.

Promising methods to boost crop and livestock yields more sustainably than current high-yield practices include genomic screening and gene editing to accelerate animal and crop breeding; using new advances in aquaculture to produce high value foods with much lower environmental impacts; and, in tropical countries, greater access to improved pasture and veterinary care.

̽��ֱ��researchers point to field studies on five continents that consistently show how land sparing delivers far greater biodiversity gains than conventional ‘nature friendly farming’ policies.

They say it is likely to cost a great deal less as well: a survey of UK farmers last year found that land sparing could deliver the same biodiversity outcomes for birds as conventional approaches but at 48 per cent of the cost to taxpayers, and with a 21 per cent lower impact on food production.

Professor Bateman, a Professor of Environmental Economics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Exeter Business School who has advised seven UK secretaries of state for the environment in the past decade, said:

“ ̽��ֱ��stakes are too high for policymakers to continue to ignore the promise of land sparing when so much research demonstrates that it is a far more effective approach than many of the strategies being deployed.

“Unless researchers and policymakers assess the overall, global effects of interventions aimed at addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, poor decisions that are unsupported by the data will at best under-deliver, and at worst exacerbate existential threats posed by the extinction and climate crises.”

Andrew Balmford, a Professor of Conservation Science at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge who has led 20 years’ work investigating how to reconcile food production with biodiversity conservation, added:

“This issue has become even more urgent since last December when many countries agreed to help meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s goal of protecting 30 per cent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030.

“Exactly how this 30 per cent will be put aside - and how we meet humanity’s growing needs on the rest of planet - will in large part determine the biodiversity consequences of this ambitious commitment.”

Reference

Bateman, I. and Balmford, A.: ‘Current conservation policies risk accelerating biodiversity loss.’ Nature, June 2023.

Adapted from a press release by the ̽��ֱ�� of Exeter.

Rewilding, organic farming and the so-called ‘nature friendly farming’ measures included in some government conservation policies may accelerate global biodiversity loss, say two leading researchers.

Joyce G on Unsplash

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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