Washington, Feb 15 (IANS) Scientists are urging world leaders to avert a major starvation catastrophe by the end of the century.
Specifically, they urged policymakers to begin thinking in dramatically different ways to meet food needs, in a significantly warmer world, regarding crops genetically modified to produce greater yields in harsher conditions.

Yields from some of the most important crops begin to drop sharply when average temperatures exceed 30 degrees Celsius.

Projections are that by this century end, much of the tropics and subtropics will experience growing season temperatures above that level.

“You’re looking at a 20 percent to 30 percent decline in production yields in the next 50 years for major crops between the latitudes of southern California or southern Europe to South Africa,” said study co-author David Battisti, University of Washington (UW).

The study was led by Nina Federoff, science and technology adviser to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I grow increasingly concerned that we have not yet understood what it will take to feed a growing population on a warming planet,” said Federoff, biology professor at Pennsylvania State University.

The challenge is becoming more difficult, the scientists said, because the world’s population is likely to have increased more than 30 percent, to nine billion people, by 2050.

Even without climate change, feeding all of these people will require doubling the grain production in the tropics, Battisti said.

But warmer climate will reduce yields because the temperature will be too high to achieve the most efficient photosynthesis, said a UW release.

The findings were published in the journal Science.