Climate change is hitting food production, IPCC warns

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, and Christopher Field , lead author of latest report
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, and Christopher Field , lead author of latest report
CHRISTOPHER JUE/EPA

Rising global temperatures are damaging food production and pushing prices higher, scientists have concluded in the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Food prices are likely to go up somewhere in a wide range of 3 per cent to 84 per cent by 2050 just because of climate change, the report said.

The last time the IPCC reported on the effects of warming in 2007, it said it was too early to tell whether climate change would increase or decrease food production, and many climate sceptics talked of a greener and more productive world.

But in the past several years the scientific literature has been overwhelming in showing that climate change hurts food production, the report says.

“The impacts are