Climate Change - The Effect on Farming

Some experts are predicting that by 2060 the British climate will be more like that of the Loire Valley, France. This means that crops of sunflowers, oil seed rape (for cooking oil and cattle feed) and vineyards (growing grapes for eating and for making wine) are becoming more popular in some parts of the UK – they like a warm, dry climate like parts of France.

So that is the good news. However, the bad news is that a lot of pests like locusts are now spreading into areas where they never used to be found. Aphids, (greenfly) are hatching earlier in the year and eating young, delicate seedlings.

Around the world, climate change is already having a negative effect on agriculture. In 2014  the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report saying that the world may reach "a threshold of global warming beyond which current agricultural practices can no longer support large human civilizations." by the middle of the 21st century. In 2019 it published reports explaining that  millions of people already suffer from food insecurity due to climate change.