How Climate Change Makes Our Food Less Safe (and less abundant)

• An EU study looked at how climate change is impacting our food safety now and projected what global warming could mean for the future of food safety. How will climate change affect the future of our food supply?

The four-year study included research from 23 universities, experts, research centers, and companies. The research spanned ten different countries. They studied different contaminants — like e. coli and salmonella — on food crops to determine how climate change was changing food production.

We’re already seeing some food safety repercussions from climate change. The Wageningen University and Ghent University researchers gave some examples in a press release about the research. They point to flooding, which can concentrate harmful bacteria on food crops. Warmer, damper conditions also create the perfect growing conditions for toxic fungi.

This look at climate change and food safety was part of the EU Veg-i-Trade Project, which is mapping climate change’s impacts all along the food supply chain. This kind of mapping is aimed at mitigating the potential damage that climate change could have on food safety. Here’s a good example from the press release:

“A preliminary study into toxic substances from fungi shows, for example, that an increased risk of contamination of tomatoes may be expected at the end of the 21st century in Poland. In Spain, however, it will be too hot then for this kind of fungi, so the risk of contamination will be lower.”

If these projections are correct, folks in the EU will be buying tomatoes from Spain in the 2090s, not from Poland. This kind of flexibility is going to be key to safer food production as climate change gets worse.

This is the first large-scale research looking at how climate change will impact food safety, but it’s not the first time we’re seeing how global warming affects our food supply.

Climate change is already hurting food production. The Guardian released a list last fall of crops that will be less plentiful as climate change gets worse. Corn, coffee, chocolate, seafood, maple syrup, beans, cherries, and wine all made the list. Rising CO2 levels, fewer “chilling hours,” and water shortages due to climate change is already making it harder to produce these foods.

A 2014 study published in the journal Nature found that climate change will also make our food less nutritious. Plants exposed to elevated levels of CO2 contained five to 10 percent fewer nutrients and even had lower levels of protein.

Climate change will mean food that’s less safe, less nutritious, and less abundant, but it is also impeding food distribution. Severe weather is making it harder to get food from farm to market. According to a piece from Truth Out, 40 percent 0f food in developing countries already goes to waste because of problems transporting it. And we’re not immune to these problems in the developed world. Flooding, hurricanes, and blizzards all disrupt our current system of food distribution.

From farm to fork, we’re already seeing huge climate change-related consequences to our food system

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/how-climate-change-makes-our-food-less-safe-and-less-abundant.html#ixzz3V4IFzYrH