Miller Magazine Issue: 152 August 2022

63 COVER STORY MILLER / AUGUST 2022 lecting that energy and then putting it into the plant and the grain. So, if you rush through your growth stages, by the end of the season, you just haven't collected as much energy.” As a result, the plant produces less total grain than it would with a longer development period. “By growing faster, your yield actually goes down.” “Even under optimistic climate change scenarios, where societies enact ambitious efforts to limit global tempera- ture rise, global agriculture is facing a new climate reality,” Jägermeyr said. “And with the interconnectedness of the global food system, impacts in even one region’s breadbas- ket will be felt worldwide.” Recognizing that corn, rice and wheat play a critical role in achieving global food security, climate change not only cre- ates risks for producing countries but also transmits those risks through agricultural commodity trade to consumers of all kinds, and can do so over significant distances. The corn and rice markets appear to be highly exposed to climate change, and while wheat production seems more stable, the cost of redistributing wheat production to Europe and parts of South America and Asia needs to be taken into account and would likely entail significant negative conse- quences for existing producers. Ensuring that everyone has access to — and consumes — sustainable healthy diets is one of the most significant chal- lenges for today’s food systems. Climate change is expect- ed to adversely affect diets, nutrition, and health through impacts on the quantity, quality (nutrient content), diversity, safety, and affordability of produced food. Production con- straints, in turn, will continue to cause the loss of livelihoods, income, and food security for food producers, processors, and their families and will jeopardize their diets, nutrition, and health. Combined with the impacts of climate change on disease patterns, these effects will continue to dispropor- tionately impact marginalized populations in low- and mid- dle-income countries (LMICs), including those with the least access to resources and tools for adaptation. Shifts toward healthy diets must therefore focus on the dual goals of pro- tecting and improving the nutrition and health of populations while also meeting environmental goals in an equitable way. IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE FOR AGRI-FOOD VALUE CHAINS Climate change will drive responses and adaptations throughout agrifood systems. Changes in growing con- ditions for many crops will alter agricultural production patterns. Along with these shifts in crop production, rising temperatures, changes in humidity levels, and increased extreme weather will also affect the value chains through which agricultural products are traded, aggregated, pro- cessed, and sold to consumers. Climate change can be expected to reshape agrifood val- ue chains in three ways: through gradual changes; through the increased likelihood of shocks; and through increased potential for conflict. While crop production is most obviously affected by climate change, risks of postharvest losses will in- crease and incentives for finance and insurance providers will also change. Threats to livelihoods and food security increase the risk of civil strife and conflict, which can disrupt whole val- ue chains. Consumers may add to the pressures for change across entire value chains not only through changes in diets but also through demand for sustainably produced products. All these changes have implications for value chain actors from smallholders to urban consumers. Agrifood value chains must adapt to climate change. Value chains offer less potential to help mitigate climate change, how- ever. Despite the growing complexity of some value chains, ev- idence on greenhouse gas emissions suggests that the value chain steps between production and consumption — including processing and transporting agricultural products to end markets — only account for 18–29 percent of total emissions from agri-food systems, even for products traded over long distances. Since this range represents a total over a wide range of products and lev- els of value chain complexity, there are no easy fixes for reducing those emissions. For example, research suggests that “buy local” movements will not materially reduce emissions, and instead might increase them, as there are returns to scale in moving bulky agricultural products. Even effective interventions to reduce emis- sions between farms and retailers may have little overall effect. As our climate changes, agrifood value chains must adapt to new cropping patterns and changes in investment and input needs. Governments must safeguard against the risk of increas- ing food and nutrition insecurity, and agrifood value chains must be transformed to address climate security concerns. In the short term, policymakers can focus on ways to reduce food loss and waste in value chains, particularly for perishables, to yield more food from their agri-food systems and potentially to alleviate the local environmental stress associated with food systems devel- opment. In the medium term, investments in climate-smart infra- structure, including new roads and electrification to support the development of cold chains, will be important to safeguard food and nutrition security. To ensure that civil strife and conflict are not fostered by climate change, investments will be needed not only in monitoring but also in ensuring that smallholders and other vulnerable value chain actors can adapt and that both diets and livelihoods are protected and improved. POTENTIAL OF DIGITAL INNOVATIONS TO MANAGE CLIMATE RISKS While global warming is a threat to food systems, there are un- precedented opportunities for technological solutions to contrib- ute to climate change mitigation and adaptation in food produc-