Agriculture and Human Population Growth Flashcards
What are some of the impacts of Climate Change?
- Hydrologic cycle
- Heat
- Crop Biodiversity
- Economic consequences
- CO2
How will the Hydrologic cycle change?
- The Hydrologic cycle now includes more frequent and intense droughts and floods in many agricultural regions.
- They can damage and destroy crops
How will Climate change affect heat?
- Over the next 30 - 50 years, average temperatures will increase by 1 degree.
- Increasing heatwaves and warm nights, and decreasing the number of frost days, and making a longer growing season in temperature zones.
How will Climate change affect C02 levels?
- Over the next 30 - 50 years, C02 will increase to about 450 parts per million by volume.
- Studies have shown weeds respond well to elevated levels of C02, meaning increased weed pressure and reduced crop yields.
How is climate change going to Affect Biodiversity?
- The distribution of wild crop relatives, an increasingly important genetic resource for the breeding of crops, will be severely affected.
How is Climate Change going to affect the economy?
- price will rise for most important agricultural crop-rice, wheat, maize, and soybeans.
- Leading to higher feed and therefore meat prices - The multiplier effect.
Therefore it will reduce the growth of meat consumption slightly and cause a more substantial fall in cereals consumption.
How can farmers adapt to these changes?
- Crop breeding for the development of new climate tolerant crop varieties is a key tool.
- Cropping system development is another tool that can help agriculture adapt, these determine how crops are grown, by determining the arrangement of crops in time and space and the way in which they are planted.
What does global food security rely on?
- Both sufficient food production and food access
What will happen to water used in food production?
- It will become more scarce due to increased crop water use and drought.
What is another effect of climate change that is going to harm crop production?
- Extreme weather events will cause sudden reductions in agricultural productivity leading to rapid price increases.
What is an example of an extreme weather event that occurred affected agricultural
- Heatwaves in summer 2010 led to yield losses in key production areas including, Russia Ukraine, and Kazakhstan leading to rapid price increases.
- This forced growing numbers of local people into poverty.
What have advancements in agriculture allowed?
- Every major advance in agriculture has allowed the global population to increase.
- The development of farm machines powered by fossil fuels allowed people to grow more food and transport it to where it was needed.
What was the main major stage in the growth of the human population?
- The Industrial Revolution, which started in the late 1700s, marked when products were mass-produced and when fossil fuels were first widely used for power.
What is the Green revolution?
- Has allowed the addition of billions of people to the population in the past few decades.
How has the Green revolution improved agricultural productivity?
- Improving crops by selecting for traits that promote productivity - ge crop introduced.
- Increasing the use of artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides
