Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-5 (section)

== 5.8 Future challenges to food security ==

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A particular concern in regard to the future of food security is the potential for the impacts of increasing climate extremes on food production to contribute to multi-factored complex events such as food price spikes. In this section, we assess literature on food price spikes and potential strategies for increasing resilience to such occurrences. We then assess the potential for such food system events to affect migration and conflict.

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=== 5.8.1 Food price spikes ===

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Under average conditions, global food system markets may function well, and equilibrium approaches can estimate demand and supply with some confidence; however, if there is a significant shock, the market can fail to smoothly link demand and supply through price, and a range of factors can act to amplify the effects of the shock, and transmit it across the world (Box 5.5). Given the potential for shocks driven by changing patterns of extreme weather to increase with climate change, there is the potential for market volatility to disrupt food supply through creating food price spikes. This potential is exacerbated by the interconnectedness of the food system (Puma et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1323|1323]]</sup> ) with other sectors (i.e., the food system depends on water, energy, and transport) (Homer-Dixon et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1324|1324]]</sup> ), so the impact of shocks can propagate across sectors and geographies (Homer-Dixon et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1325|1325]]</sup> ). There is also less spare land globally than there has been in the past, such that if prices spike, there are fewer options to bring new production on stream (Marianela et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1326|1326]]</sup> ).

Increasing extreme weather events can disrupt production and transport logistics. For example, in 2012 the USA Corn Belt suffered a widespread drought; USA corn yield declined 16% compared to 2011 and 25% compared to 2009. In 2016, a record yield loss in France that is attributed to a conjunction of abnormal warmness in late autumn and abnormal wet in the following spring (Ben-Ari et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1327|1327]]</sup> ) is another well-documented example. To the extent that such supply shocks are associated with climate change, they may become more frequent and contribute to greater instability in agricultural markets in the future.

Furthermore, analogue conditions of past extremes might create significantly greater impacts in a warmer world. A study simulating analogous conditions to the Dust Bowl drought in today’s agriculture suggests that Dust Bowl-type droughts today would have unprecedented consequences, with yield losses about 50% larger than the severe drought of 2012 (Glotter and Elliott 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1328|1328]]</sup> ). Damages at these extremes are highly sensitive to temperature, worsening by about 25% with each degree centigrade of warming. By mid-century, over 80% of summers are projected to have average temperatures that are ''likely'' to exceed the hottest summer in the Dust Bowl years (1936) (Glotter and Elliott 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1329|1329]]</sup> ).

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'''Figure 5.17'''

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'''Underlying processes that affect the development of a food price spike in agricultural commodity markets (Challinor et al. 2018).'''
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[[File:a19576f10c3acb639f51a0c646fa33e4 Figure-5.17-1024x611.jpg]]

Underlying processes that affect the development of a food price spike in agricultural commodity markets (Challinor et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1468|1468]]</sup> ).

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How a shortfall in production – or an interruption in trade due to an event affecting a logistics choke-point (Wellesley et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1330|1330]]</sup> ) – of any given magnitude may create impacts depends on many interacting factors (Homer-Dixon et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1331|1331]]</sup> ; Tadasse et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1332|1332]]</sup> ; Challinor et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1333|1333]]</sup> ). The principal route is by affecting agricultural commodity markets, which respond to a perturbation through multiple routes as in Figure 5.17. This includes pressures from other sectors (such as, if biofuels policy is incentivising crops for the production of ethanol, as happened in 2007–2008). The market response can be amplified by poor policies, setting up trade and non-trade barriers to exports, from countries seeking to ensure their local food security (Bailey et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1334|1334]]</sup> ). Furthermore, the perception of problems can fuel panic buying on the markets that in turn drives up prices.

Thus, the impact of an extreme weather event on markets has both a ''trigger'' component (the event) and a risk ''perception'' component (Challinor et al. 2016, 2018). Through commodity markets, prices change across the world because almost every country depends, to a greater or lesser extent, on trade to fulfil local needs. Commodity prices can also affect local market prices by altering input prices, changing the cost of food aid, and through spill-over effects. For example, in 2007– 2008 the grain affected by extreme weather was wheat, but there was a significant price spike in rice markets (Dawe 2010 <sup>[[#fn:r1335|1335]]</sup> ).

As discussed by Bailey et al. (2015) <sup>[[#fn:r1336|1336]]</sup> , there are a range of adaptation measures that can be put in place to reduce the impact of climate-related production shortfalls. These include (i) ensuring transparency of public and private stocks, as well as improved seasonal forecasting to signal forthcoming yield shortfalls (FAO 2016a <sup>[[#fn:r1337|1337]]</sup> ; Ceglar et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1338|1338]]</sup> ; Iizumi et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1339|1339]]</sup> ), (ii) building real or virtual stockholdings, (iii) increasing local productivity and diversity (as a hedge against a reliance on trade) and (iv) ensuring smoother market responses, through, for example, avoiding the imposition of export bans.

In summary, given the likelihood that extreme weather will increase, in both frequency and magnitude (Hansen et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1340|1340]]</sup> ; Coumou et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1341|1341]]</sup> ; Mann et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r1342|1342]]</sup> ; Bailey et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1343|1343]]</sup> ), and the current state of global and cross-sectoral interconnectedness, the food system is at increasing risk of disruption ( ''medium evidence, medium agreement'' ), with large uncertainty about how this could manifest. There is, therefore, a need to build resilience into international trade as well as local supplies.

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