The United States of America is a prosperous country gaining its wealth from businesses, bartering, exporting goods and services and agriculture. However, the world’s food agriculture may witness unforeseeable changes in the future due to global warming and inflation. According to Harf, the main culprits affecting food agriculture is the rising cost of wheat as well as the growing impact of biofuels. As a consumer, I personally have seen the prices increased not only in wheat by product but meats, eggs and dairy as well which has affected the amount of resources that would be allocated to feed the hungry. Moreover, many articles suggested that the United States is one of the largest food donors worldwide however due to high cost of fuel and drought many have been impacted and suffer great lost including farmers and world donation. In recent news, the rising temperatures in the climate and insufficient distribution of rainfall are suggestions that global warming is near and will influence the production of agriculture.
The impact of the climate changes on the stability of the food supply forming challenges with the farmers as they seek to find a resolution to this crisis. In 2015, it was reported by Weather.Com that California amongst other states experienced a severe drought creating wildfires damaging many crops and livestock. In most cases, experiencing a drought can be very devastating to the economy whether directly or indirectly the farmers are losing money and the United States has lessen trading internationally all due to the consequences of global warming.
The future of agriculture seems very bleak for the yield in production in competition with the rapid growth in human population over time in relation to food shortage. The United Nation Food Agriculture Organization argued that the supply demand will have to increase by 70% to meet demand by 2050. Additionally, the new evolution and innovated way to promote improvements within the fuel and energy industry called biofuel also shares its resources with agriculture which will likely add to the deficiency in the food shortage. We live in an economic state of supply and demand the more valuable the product the higher the demand so in turns the higher the cost for goods sold so I pose the question “How will we be able to afford it?”.
It’s disheartening to know that the world’s agriculture will decline over the next decade since we already have an epidemic with battling third world hunger. World hunger has stricken the lives of many individuals living in a third world nation were resources to the necessities i.e. clean water and food are not easily accessible without the aid of volunteers and programs to help those in need. The article brought forth an interesting visualization of the two groups with civilization at different level of the socioeconomic scale. The first group portrayed small children in Africa suffer from the lack of nutrient and often dying from malnutrition whereas the second group is a wealthy couple dining at a lavish restaurant.
As we continue to grow as a population my hopes are that we can dismantle the belief that our nation will undergo unforeseeable changes in agriculture and be able to put forth better efforts in improving the current state of world hunger. As we know the inflation in prices today is steadily rising which discourages most people from buying the necessities in turns I suggest we start a community garden. Although I never had a “ green thumb” this article gave me a new perspective on the future and I believe it’s a good start to a bigger epidemic in general growing our food not only satisfies our own needs but it helps the economy grow.
