Rice and Climate Change

It looks like the many effects of climate change will have a major impact on rice production in a negative way. The things that could affect rice growers is that with climate change, the temperatures will be hotter, relating to rising sea levels. There will also be extreme climate and weather patterns, making it unpredictable for farmers to know when the right time is to plant crops. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report, Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation, predicts that by the year 2050, the costs of rice will increase anywhere from 32 to 37 percent, just as a result of climate change. Also yield losses in rice could be as high as 15 percent. It is predicted by scientist experts that due to melting ice caps and glaciers, seawater levels on average may have risen by a meter, by the end of the 21st century. Rice is grown in big low-lying areas in Asia. This means that sea levels rising would put lots of rice production at risk. As an idea, the wonderful country of Vietnam would be affected by climate change hugely as more than half of their rice is grown in the Mekong River delta, which would make it vulnerable to sea level rise.

Rice is different in the way that it can flourish in wet conditions, where other crops could be at risk, but the problem is that rice cannot survive if it is drowning under water, for a long period of time. At the moment, around 20 million hectares (a hectare is almost two and a half times larger than an acre, 2.47 times bigger) of the rice growing area on earth are at risk of occasionally being flooded to a level of completely submerged, especially in main rice producing countries like India and Bangladesh. Higher sea levels will also bring saline water farther in, exposing even more rice growing areas to salty conditions, as rice can only deal with low amounts of salt. The effects of salinity can spread throughout entire deltas and change hydrological systems.

Climate change and the planet heating up with carbon dioxide affects rice production it can reduce rice yields as rice flowers can become sterile, which leads to NO RICE being produced. I love rice! This is terrible.

- Prepared by Henry