According to a study carried out by researchers from the Campus of International Agrifood Excellence (CeiA3), published in the journal Nature Climate Change , the increase in temperature on the planet will reduce the world production of wheat.
The research indicates that, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the global harvest of this cereal during the last agricultural year has been 724.9 million tons, which is a slight increase over the previous year. This a priori seems reassuring for the international community, given the food dependence on wheat of a significant part of the world population . However, the prospects for the immediate future are not so optimistic, according to the aforementioned study carried out by an international team of researchers, including Elías Fereres and Margarita García-Vila, from the University of Córdoba (UCO) and the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture of the Higher Council for Scientific Research, and both members of CeiA3.
The authors of the work warn that for each degree that the temperature rises on the planet, the production of this cereal will decline by 6% . The conclusion has been obtained from analyzes carried out with 30 simulation models of the wheat crop in which the temperatures ranged between 15 and 32 ºC, combined with the production prediction systems used by the main international organizations. Incidentally, the study points out that it is necessary to improve these predictive models, which still do not take into account global warming. Researchers consider the fact that rising temperatures have already begun to affect crops in some areas to be proven, and urge countries to adapt their crop prediction systems to be able to confidently cope with the decline in grain reserves. Elías Fereres emphasizes that ” there are too many uncertainties regarding how climate change will affect food production, but there is a certainty: we will have to study how to adapt our agriculture to the increase in temperature and the more that is invested in this research, the less it will be the impact of global warming in the future. “
