This week’s question from the Georgia Climate Project Roadmap is on food security. Making sure Georgia citizens have access to good, healthy and reasonably priced food is a major concern in times of increased extreme weather, including both floods and droughts. Scientists need to know how these weather extremes will impact supply chains, prices, and nutritional content of crops in the state. You can see all of the Roadmap questions at https://roadmap.georgiaclimateproject.org/.

17. How will climate change impact food security in Georgia?

Why this question is important: Climate change could affect multiple links along food supply chains, including the viability of existing crops (Berardy and Chester 2017), the costs and accessibility of transportation channels (Chapman 2007), and patterns in consumer demand (Wicker and Becken 2013), as well as the prices for competitive products from other regions (Ziska et al. 2016). Besides food price and availability, climate-driven changes in food supply chains can affect public health due to their impact on food affordability. Information is needed to assess the current state of food security in Georgia, develop projections of future food supply and pricing scenarios, identify points of impact for vulnerable communities and citizens, and devise solutions that are locally significant, but can also be linked synergistically to other efforts in the State.

 

Source: Robert Kaufmann, FEMA Library