Climate Change: Increasing Temperatures, Sea Level and Your Monthly Grocery Budget?

Agricultural field and tractor in Pretoria, South Africa

By Erik Mencos Contreras, Climate and Society ’13

We’ve all been there, you walk into your local grocery store and notice that the one staple item on your grocery list has suddenly gone up in price. Many possible explanations for this grave injustice probably run through your mind, but is climate change one of them? Could climate change really be the reason your favorite 7-grain, 100 percent whole wheat bread just went from $2.99 to $3.25 a bag? In short, yes, it very well could be.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration named last year the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S. These record-breaking high temperatures resulted in major drought for most of central North America, a very important agricultural region. Corn, wheat and soybean crops were particularly affected, resulting in a 10 percent increase in global food prices and, just in the United States, a multi-billion dollar loss. This year has been unkind to crops in the U.S. so far as well, with extreme rainfall and flooding delaying corn planting in places like Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, forcing farmers to plant soybeans instead, a crop that tends to provide lower returns.

This is where AgMIP comes into play. What is AgMIP you ask? The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project is a major international effort linking climate science, agriculture and economics to improve model predictions of global agricultural production and world food security under the conditions of a changing climate.

For the past 10 months, I have worked as an intern at the Center for Climate Systems Research, a department of Columbia’s Earth Institute and home to AgMIP’s Coordination Office. During my time at AgMIP, I have been fortunate enough to work alongside Cynthia Rosenzweig, Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and head of the Climate Impacts Group at the Earth Institute. Dr. Rosenzweig is a pioneer in the study of climate change impacts, particularly in agriculture (and in urban environments, but that’s a story for another blog post). She is truly enthusiastic about her work and her energy is so contagious that it’s hard not to give a little extra when you’re working with her (I have certainly spent a few late nights in the office this summer).

Cynthia Rosenzweig in Nepal during AgMIP Mid-Term Workshop

During my time at AgMIP, I have been assigned many different activities that cover a wide range of areas. One day, I would write a report analyzing the results from a paper recently written by Dr. Rosenzweig and her colleagues, which concluded that crop yields in the tropics are more vulnerable to climate change and that for the first time, crop models are showing agreement on the directionality of the change in yield in some of the major agricultural regions of the world. The next day, I would help in the organization of the upcoming 4th Annual AgMIP Global Workshop, an event that brings together AgMIP participants from around the world to present their latest results and discuss on the next steps for the project.

I also had the rather interesting experience of working remotely with Dr. Rosenzweig and other AgMIP members that, for two weeks, attended the AgMIP Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia Midterm Workshops. No matter whether she was six hours ahead in Pretoria, South Africa or nine hours and forty-five minutes away in Kathmandu, Nepal, Dr. Rosenzweig would call in almost every day, providing an update from her side of the world and making sure everything on the East Coast was going smoothly. These workshops are a vital part of AgMIP as they provide an opportunity to train local scientists in the use of the different climate, crop and economic models participating in the project. This capacity building is particularly important in developing countries, as it allows local communities to better prepare and adapt for changes in the growing seasons of regional crops due to anomalies in the climate.

Rice fields in Nepal

Next time you buy your groceries, take a moment to think about all the people and processes involved in bringing your favorite foods from the field into your local store. That’s a long trip to make, and climate change is certainly not making it any easier. But there are many scientists and farmers out there making sure those products are still available to you every day. Paying a few extra cents for that bag of bread doesn’t seem like such a big deal now, does it?

All images by Shari Lifson/AgMIP