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A matter of life and death

“AND it’s a glorious Highveld winter’s day!” burbles the talk show host on the radio. No, it’s not. It’s way above the average of the ‘normal’ temperatures recorded between 1960 and 1990, which was 16 degrees for June.

This June we’ve only dipped below 20 for a handful of days, following a May that was far warmer than average too.

In fact, unusually warm weather has become the norm. Globally, “May 2014 was the 39th consecutive May that was warmer than average.

"This was also the 351st consecutive month where the global temperature was hotter than the 20th century average, meaning if you are 29 years old, you have never experienced a colder-than-average month in your life.”

This is serious; and finally, I’m seeing signs that some crucial industries are taking it that way.

In April, I was at a meeting at the University of Pretoria presented by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. The audience was packed with scientists and stakeholders in the food and nutrition world.

One represented a farming body. He asked the panel: “What is government doing about the infrastructure for agriculture? When we have to shift crop-growing from the traditional areas due to climate change, we’ll be growing crops in areas that don’t have basic agricultural infrastructure like silos and train lines for freight.”

When, not if

When, not if. That kind of straightforward, no-nonsense acceptance of the realities is becoming commonplace among people strategising within the world of food.

Here’s another recent – and significant – example: agribusiness Cargill is the largest privately-owned company in the United States. (Along with Archer Daniel Midlands, Bunge and Dreyfus, it accounts for between 75% and 90% of the global grain trade, writes well-known agriculture writer Felicity Lawrence).

And Gregory Page, CEO of Cargill, participated in a recent bipartisan (Republicans and Democrats) report on the impact of climate change on USA business, and spoke to the Wall Street Journal about both the risks and opportunities for the company in the near to midterm future.

This puts Cargill in stark contrast to the second biggest privately-owned group in the USA, Koch Industries.
“Jimmy Carter has criticised the Koch brothers for distorting the climate change debate through multi-million dollar donations to sceptic organisations.

"Speaking in Paris yesterday, the former US president said that there was an ‘unpleasantly successful’ campaign to undermine the science on global warming.

"This is backed by the donations of the country’s wealthiest, he said, including the fossil fuel magnate Koch brothers, whose net worth was recently valued at over US$ 100billion.

“’The Koch brothers are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into every political campaign to support candidates that will support their position,’ said Carter.

“According to figures collected by Greenpeace, the Koch brothers donated over US$ 67million to think-tanks and organisations working on anti-climate agendas between 1997 and 2011.”

But then the Koch brothers get a lot of their income from petroleum and energy – they are invested in maintaining the status quo at all costs.

Their support, and that of others whose livelihoods depend on fossil fuels, has funded many-pronged propaganda campaigns which have politicised and obscured the clear and abundant science on this matter, so that it’s become almost a religious position: if you support a free market, you ‘don’t believe’ in climate change.

But climate change is not a belief system, it’s a fact, one that top execs in agriculture across the world have woken up to.

Agribusiness has to be more clear-sighted and accustomed to long-time horizons; their profits depend on their ability to predict the future. (Like the reinsurance industry, which has become something of a Cassandra, warning a deaf business world of the climate change risks coming down the pike for well over a decade.)

Greg Page’s involvement with ‘Risky Business’ is a sign of his business savvy.

Dire and drastic consequences

The report looked at economically significant risks: damage to coastal property and infrastructure from sea-level rise and resultant storm surges; climate-driven changes in agriculture; and the impact of rising temperatures on both labour productivity and public health.

All of these will affect us and our agriculture, in spades:

 • The east of the country will take the brunt of heavier storms and flooding exacerbated by sea-level rise. The Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) at UCT says that storm surges may also contaminate coastal groundwater with salt water - bad for agriculture.

 • Longer summers, temperature increases of 3.4 degrees Celsius and significant decreases (up to 23%) in rainfall will impact on staple crops.

"…research conducted by Long, a professor of crop sciences […], shows that any gains from CO2 fertilization will be offset by damage to plants from higher air temperatures, increases in atmospheric ozone, and the greater efficiency of crop pests in a CO2-enriched world".

 • And as for productivity: “…heart and lung illnesses will most likely increase as ground-level ozone (a toxic gas), smoke and airborne dust increase in response to warmer temperatures,” says the CSAG.

Higher daytime temperatures will reduce the productivity of agricultural labourers and could even be a killer, said Professor Tord Kjellstrom, Professor at the National Institute of Public Health, Stockholm, on a visit to South Africa in 2011.

As the world’s population heads towards 9 billion in less than 40 years, this is a life-and-death issue. About time we took it seriously.

 - Fin24

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.
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