Article Image

IPFS News Link • Climate Change

Food and Water Worries Are Not Reasons to Fight Climate Change

• https://www.nextbigfuture.com, by Brian Wang

UN Food and Agriculture Organization study from 2015, under a high-emission climate scenario, harvest reductions by 2100 of between -20 and -45 percent are expected for maize (corn), between -5 and -50 percent for wheat, between -20 and -30 percent for rice, and between -30 and -60 percent for soybeans. The study ignores offset by the beneficial effects of CO2 fertilization since plants grow more vigorously in high-CO2 conditions.

Greenhouses have been built and produce crops in the hottest deserts now. They have climate and humidity control. They use 7% of the water to grow crops compared to open-air farming.

Climate Change is something to be minimized. However, climate change only impact open-air farming. All food production can be brought indoors where it will be virtually immune to climate change.

China is planning to have over 2 million hectares of greenhouse buildings by 2025 with mechanized-automation of farming. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Monday issued a guideline to promote the country's facility-based agricultural planting, outlining goals for infrastructure upgrades and mechanization to boost output and farmers' income. By 2025, China will maintain over 2 million hectares of facilities, including plastic greenhouses, and achieve above 50 percent mechanization for facility-based planting, a sector of the so-called controlled-environment agriculture (CEA), or protected agriculture.

The world already has about 500,000 hectares of climate-controlled greenhouses. China has 4 million hectares of crude plastic sheeting covering land in partially enclosed conditions. The plastic sheets lie over simple metal poles and crude framing.

IF there was a need, the entire world could bring all agriculture indoors and under temperature and humidity control by 2035.

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by trevor
Entered on:

Here's a tidbit. Seems small but seems mega important to me. Do some web-fu and see what level of CO2 is optimal for plant growth. It's measured in PPM or Parts Per Million of CO2 molecules in our atmosphere (mostly nitrogen, CO2 and O2). I think you will see scientific consensus as a 500ppm threshold and below that, we see reduced plant growth. Reducing CO2 further reduces growth until photosynthesis STOPS around 200ppm. At that point all life on Earth has ceased to exist. We are at 500ppm right now.



PurePatriot