With climate change, even food is at risk

Climate change is already happening and is having consequences on our territories, especially with extreme events such as cold or heat waves. We see the changing climate every day as we leave our homes, and we know that in large part it is the fault of human actions and society, which produces too much waste that is often carelessly released into the environment.

But climate change also has big effects on food, which is affected by the climate gone mad and could shrink dramatically if the right measures are not implemented in time, the way we eat is changed, and the relationship we have with food is not improved.

We only must think about how much the price of food has gone up to see that we cannot ignore the issue now and think that food shortages are a problem that does not affect us. Experts are devising special campaigns "to denounce how the climate has dramatically affected the production of some typical Italian products and prices have skyrocketed. Huge damage for Italian production in 2021, with declines of up to 95 percent for honey and 80 percent for oil in some central and northern regions. With potential repercussions also for the availability of agri-food products in local markets: consumers could be severely affected by rising prices of food items such as fruits and vegetables, the basis of sustainable diets."

As food quantities decrease with climate change, as a result, prices rise and the weaker segment of the population finds itself in trouble, no longer being able to afford healthy, balanced food.

Food and climate change, after all, are two crises that go hand in hand. As temperatures rise, soils have fewer nutrients and therefore crops also decline, adding to this the terrible effect of extreme weather events, prices rise, and fewer and fewer people can afford to eat healthily.

The relationship between climate and food is a two-way street: agriculture and the entire food supply chain are among the primary causes of climate change, which, in turn, affects food systems particularly severely, constituting one of the main factors in the rise of world hunger in recent years. The great volatility of food pieces is a symptom that something on our planet is not working, that something is not going in the right direction. Food prices are very important; the health of the poorest people depends on them. If food costs go up a lot, these people will find themselves unable to buy food and will swell the number of those who are forced to turn to public soup kitchens.

Recent wars, first in Ukraine and then in Israel, have rendered unusable much land that used to be cultivated and allowed food for all. Less food resources means that so many people are forced to live in poverty, depending only on international aid.

Unfortunately, due to climate change, food has fewer nutrients and is therefore less suitable for our sustenance. Our relationship with food has always been unbalanced: we cultivated and worked the land until it became infertile; eventually we had to get more by deforestation and deforestation. This has increasingly put our planet at risk, and now the soil is increasingly exposed to erosion and landslides.

There is an urgent need to understand that this attitude is putting mankind in a situation from which we later cannot get out. To harm the planet is to condemn ourselves because it takes away our ability to feed ourselves and be healthy.

In conclusion, we should no longer think of food as a given: having a good relationship with food, not wasting it, and treating the planet better is the only way to ensure everyone has access to healthy food.

Translated by Denise Praticò.