One of the greatest concerns facing the world as the impact of climate change begins to emerge is the global food supply. Already large areas of cropland are turning to desert and, in addition to drought, many areas will face higher temperatures, severe storms, flooding and prolonged drought.
To make matters worse, at current rates of fishing, the world’s oceans could be devoid of seafood by 2048 and, as agricultural lands fail, people are more likely to turn to the sea; increasing the amount of fishing rather than conserving.
Today the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) announced that they have taken an important step toward food security with the introduction of 30 new varieties of beans designed to withstand global warming.
Beans, the so-called “meat of the poor” are an important food source for many of the word’s poorest people. The new lines of “heat beater” beans could keep agricultural production from crashing in large parts of Africa and Latin America.
“This discovery could be a big boon for bean production because we are facing a dire situation where, by 2050, global warming could reduce areas suitable for growing beans by 50 percent,” said Steve Beebe, a senior CGIAR bean researcher, who shared the findings at a development conference organized by the German government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a statement.
“Incredibly, the heat-tolerant beans we tested may be able to handle a worst-case scenario where the build-up of greenhouse gases causes the world to heat up by an average of 4 degrees Celsius (about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Even if they can only handle a 3 degree rise, that would still limit the bean production area lost to climate change to about five percent. And farmers could potentially make up for that by using these beans to expand their production of the crop in countries like Nicaragua and Malawi, where beans are essential to survival,” Beebe continued.
Researchers from CGIAR have previously warned that climate change is a threat to bean production in Haiti, Brazil, Honduras, Nicaragua, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“As a result of this breakthrough, beans need not be the casualty of global warming that they seemed destined to be, but rather can offer a climate-friendly option for farmers struggling to cope with rising temperatures,” said Andy Jarvis, a CGIAR climate change expert.
According to the researchers, many of the beans are crosses between common beans and the teary bean, which was once commonly grown in the American southwest and northern Mexico.
The beans are just the first step in a urgent project being undertaken by CGAIR to develop new crop varieties ahead of dramatic changes to the earth’s climate.
“The payoff we are seeing from these bean breeding efforts underscores the vital importance of investing in CGIAR’s genebanks–a front-line defense in the race to adapt crops to climate change to protect the staple food supplies of poor farmers and consumers and avert food crises around the world. The development of these heat-defying beans also highlights what can be achieved when we invest in modern science to find solutions to urgent challenges, with expected economic benefits vastly exceeding the costs of investment in the research,” said Jonathan Wadsworth, a CGIAR Executive.
The researchers report that some of the bean varieties have also been bred to increase the iron content, as a further step to fend off malnutrition as food supplies decrease.
