A look at climate change, food and farmer’s perspectives

A changing food demand and growing population are affecting the way farmer’s used to work. Crop yield levels are struggling to keep up, ocean health is diminishing and the availability of natural resources and biodiversity are alarmingly limited.

This challenge is even more difficult because farmers are affected by climate change. Climate change is already here, higher temperatures, more extreme weather and shifting agroecosystem boundaries. On farms, climate change is decreasing crop yields, the nutritional quality of cereals, and lowering livestock productivity.

The issue is also known the other way around. Agriculture is a problem for climate change. Managing landscape and livestock in different ways is inevitable and most of all necessary. For livestock it is needed to achieve goals like; lower emissions for each calorie or kilo of food produced, avoid deforestation from agriculture and identify ways to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. For crops the challenge is to obtain higher levels of nutrition per kilo and increase biodiversity.

The risks are rising. At Vossen Laboratories we’d like to offer guidance to our customers. The adaptation of climate change has to be done.