The rise in the planet’s temperature not only affects soils’ ability to support and sustain life; it is also affecting human farmers’ ability to produce food.
A team of researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, in an article published in the journal Global Change Biology, warns that the future of global food production is being threatened by global warming, which, in turn, is affecting the productivity of manual agricultural labor at a time when the Earth is getting hotter.
The authors project that, by 2100, the productivity of agricultural workers could fall by as much as 40% in regions fundamental to food production, such as Pakistan and India. Impacts could be even larger, reaching 70% in Southeast Asia, in regions of Africa, and in South America.
Gerald Nelson, of the University of Illinois and the first author of the article, states, in a press release, that “assessments consistently conclude that climate change will reduce crop yields, exacerbating the challenges of food security.”
“But it is not only crops and livestock that are affected. Agricultural workers who plant, till, and harvest much of the food we need will also suffer from heat exposure, reducing their ability to carry out their fieldwork,” he warns.
The scientists explain that this reduction in capacity limits what workers can physically do, even if motivation remains high, meaning that farms may need to hire more labor to perform tasks that used to be done by a single worker. The alternative would be to reduce cultivated areas.
The study notes that many agricultural workers are already operating below 86% capacity and, therefore, presents solutions, including changing working hours to the cooler parts of the day or even at night, something they say could increase productivity by 5% to 10%.
“Understanding the full impact of climate change on worker productivity allows us to predict the economic impact of climate change and guide mitigation efforts to ensure we keep our workers safe while limiting productivity losses,” argues George Havenith of Loughborough University and one of the article’s authors. He adds: “We hope that the suggested adaptations can help guide investments to support agricultural workers and food security as climate change makes outdoor work environments increasingly uninhabitable.”
