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♤ Climate Change can affect crop yield as well as the types of crops that can be grown in certain areas, by impacting agricultural inputs such as water for irrigation, amounts of solar radiation that affect plant growth, as well as the prevalence of pests.
♤ Rise in temperatures caused by increasing green house gases is likely to affect crops differently from region to region. For example, moderate warming (increase of 1 to 3°C in mean temperature) is expected to benefit crop yields in temperate regions, while in lower latitudes especially seasonally dry tropics, even moderate temperature increases (1 to 2°C ) are likely to have negative impacts for major cereal crops. Warming of more than 3°C is expected to have negative effect on production in all regions.
♤ The Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, 2001 concluded that climate change would hit the poorest countries severely in terms of reducing the agricultural products.
♤ The Report claimed that crop yield would be reduced in most tropical and sub-tropical regions due to decreased water availability, and new or changed insect/ pest incidence.
♤ In South Asia losses of many regional staples, such as rice, millet and maize could top 10 per cent by 2030.
♤ As a result of thawing of snow, the amount of arable land in high-latitude region is likely to increase by reduction of the amount of frozen lands.
♤ At the same time arable land along the coast lines are bound to be reduced as a result of rising sea level.
♤ Erosion, submergence of shorelines, salinity of the water table due to the increased sea levels, could mainly affect agriculture through inundation of low lying lands.
♤ In a recent study, the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSE) reported that Himalayan glaciers - that are the principal dry-season water sources of Asia’s biggest rivers - Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Yellow - are shrinking quicker than anywhere else and that if current trends continue they could disappear altogether by 2035.
♤ If agricultural production in the low-income developing countries of Asia and Africa is adversely affected by climate change, the livelihoods of large numbers of the rural poor will be put at risk and their vulnerability to food insecurity will be manifold.
Do you know?
A conifer usually has a conical appearance and has an excurrent stem; i.e., its main stem is thickest at the base and gradually tapers toward the apex, with lateral branches in an acropetal succession.