Production synchronizes or destabilies global food systems "the worst-case scenario is the loss of one third of major crops"

While the teams are neat and paced to "fight for the good", the opposite may be true
global
food production.
, population growth, climate change and sustainable strengthening have all but dominated the discussion of meeting future food needs, but another potential influence on global
crops
supply has been little known. A paper published recently in Nature - Ecology and Evolution suggests that this risk stems from the fact that future food supplies may become more synchronized than they are now.
, this could mean that we lose up to a third of our main food products at some point, keeping crop yields well below target supplies, " he said. Even if significant efforts are made to increase the resilience of local crop production systems, the volatility of global food supplies will be strongly affected by the synchronization of crop production systems. Zia Mehrabi, a co-author of the paper and an assistant researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, told China Science.
" global synchronization of crop production is actually a problem of the increasing concentration of global crop production. Although food crops are widely grown around the world, global food production is concentrated in a few regions. "The global food production failure that this article focuses on is one of the risks posed by the increase in the concentration of global food production, so the reason for the synchronization of crop production is partly due to the concentration of global crop production Pu Pu, Ph.D., Of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said in an interview with China Science Daily "
food production "dancing in step"?
the past 100 years, humanity has experienced enormous climate, economic and political shocks to food systems. These shocks have led to food shortages, soaring prices and food insecurity in the region. In recent years, scientists, governments and related industries have joined forces to try to identify future food risks.
Mehrabi team suggested that a better understanding of the historical stability and synchronization of global food production could help better predict future losses under simultaneous production cuts and develop appropriate strategies to mitigate the impact.
"The global crop production is characterized by increasing geographical concentration, and the geographical distribution of production means that the agricultural resource endowment conditions of most of the global crop production converage, and the agricultural farming system and agricultural production methods are very similar, thus showing the phenomenon of global crop production synchronization." Pusaid.
Sulser of the International Food Policy Institute's Department of Environment and Production Technology agrees. He told China Science that corn is produced mainly in the northern temper zone at the same time; most rice, especially traded rice, comes mainly from the tropics and is subject to local growth conditions; and wheat and soybeans are most out of step at latitude.
Mehrabi, on the other hand, likens observing global food production trends to watching a dance performance: every production location in the world has a dancer, and when all the dancers move together, it has a big impact - if they all move up, supply surges, and when they all move down, supply decreases. However, if the movements between the dancers are completely out of step, they complement each other.
, we didn't have a good theater to watch these shows, and we didn't know what role synchronization played in destabilized the global food system in the real world," he said. Now, with the help of a lot of data, we've seen global crop yields change over time. Mehrabi said.
production cuts, global hunger
.Analysis by the Mehrabi team found that over the past 50 years, instability in the global food system has been largely caused by synchronization. Moreover, future food supplies may become more synchronized than they are now. Under the assumption of a fully synchronized failure, the researchers estimated that the simultaneous loss of global production of rice, wheat, soybeans and maize was between -17% and -34%.
when things started to sync, we saw the world's biggest crop failures, such as a 20 per cent drop in corn production in 1983, a 14 per cent drop in soybean production in 1976 and a 7 per cent drop in rice production in 2007," he said. As a result, Mehrabi said, the synchronization of food production requires more international attention.
.that such global production synchronization due to geographical concentration of production does have potential risks. One of the major threats is that concentration of production can lead to the risk of poor harvests being difficult to disperse and resolve effectively, threatening global food security.
"In the context of food production synchronization due to high concentration, the regional risk of production reduction in the main producing areas will be magnified into a global systemic production reduction risk, resulting in a 'partial reduction in production and global starvation'." The crisis, which began in 1973, for example, occurred after two consecutive years of unusual weather in 1971-1972, when the prices of wheat, corn and rice rose by 180 per cent, 80 per cent and 225 per cent over the past, threatening the safety of 14 per cent of the population's food rations, Mr. said.
, however, Mr that another risk, the risk of circulation, should be added, mainly in terms of trade restrictions. In previous food crises, trade restrictions in major producing countries have further exacerbated food insecurity. In the 2010 food crisis, for example, the Black Sea region's severe drought-reduced production led directly to Russia's ban on grain exports and the cancellation of contracts for some 5 million tons of wheat exports. At the same time, countries in the Black Sea region, such as Ukraine, have restricted exports through quotas. These mandatory trade restrictions have led to further strains on global food supplies, exacerbated the food crisis and led to increased instability in the world.
there are no real cases, Sulser believes that modeling is not needed to imagine the impact of simultaneous failures in multiple major food-producing regions. "If most of the world's food depends on a few sources, it will be very difficult to fail all of them at the same time." He told China Science Daily.
't work out, but there's no need to worry about
based on research that Mehrabi says could offset the impact by increasing average global food production by three to five times. In addition, people need to better grasp the role of markets, climate, and the simultaneous human impact on food production, and find out if people can design and maintain "insistency" in food systems.
Pu' point out that production synchronization problems cannot be completely solved, and may not need to be completely resolved. Production synchronization has the regular development of agricultural production, which is of great significance to improve the efficiency of global agricultural resource utilization. But the risk adjust caused by production synchronization does need to be guarded against. "Food production in non-major producing areas can be moderately developed and agricultural technology can be relied upon to improve the stability of global food production." Pu said.
For example, for major food-producing areas, efforts need to be made to address problems such as atro-ecological degradation, the accumulation of pests and diseases, the development of green production technologies and new pest-resistant varieties;
, while Sulser is more optimistic, "we're a long way from full synchronization." Moreover, he noted, a key factor not included in the analysis is that humans are often highly adaptable and can switch between available calorie sources when needed.
In any case, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the decline in the number of hungry people worldwide has reversed, rising since 2015 after reaching a low of 780 million in 2014, reaching 820 million in 2017, back to the level of a decade ago. Therefore, the problem of global hunger cannot be underestimated.
experts say that global crop production is a prerequisite for food security, and that the sustainability of global crop production and the overlapping effects of extreme weather and social conflict are two major factors of concern.
from the perspective of world food security, ensuring food security needs to be viewed from both inside and outside agriculture, from a technical, economic and political perspective. For example, increase investment in research and development and transformation of agricultural technologies, promote efficient global food flows and equitable distribution, and deepen international cooperation. said.
relevant paper information: DOI:10.1038/s41559-019-0862-x.