Climate deadline looms for African food crops

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Researchers have produced a timescale of how projected climate change is set to alter the face of agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change is widely projected to have a significant adverse impact on food security if no adaptation measures are taken, they explain. In their study, the team provides timings of the "transformations" needed to help minimise these impacts. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Agricultural activities are considered to be one of the main drivers to reduce poverty and improve food security among the planet's undernourished population, which is estimated to be 800-850 million people. Climate change is widely expected to have a destabilising effect on food production systems, the authors observe, and previous studies have concluded that adaptation "will be required if food production is to be increased in both quantity and stability to meet food security needs during the 21st Century". Co-author Julian Ramirez-Villegas from the University of Leeds, UK, said the study carried out by the CGIAR research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) set out to quantify for the first time when changes to food production were likely to happen. "Rather than focusing on what we need to do by a certain time, we know that there is a range of options and then we put deadlines on these options," he told BBC News.