A team of scientists has developed a new based model that incorporates the decline of agricultural labor into the analysis of future food security, the ability to produce and stably supply the food needed by the population.
In new, published this month in Nature Sustainabilityresearchers show that in the future, a shortage of agricultural workers could pose an obstacle to the use of agricultural land in most regions of the world.
According to , research into food security and climate change has focused mainly on the amount of agricultural land that can be secured. The approach was to predict the future, calculating whether the climate and soil were suitable for agriculture and to what extent the demand for food would increase.
The team used five future scenarios that combine the SSP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) e o RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways), tables of representative international scenarios that predict the evolution of society and climate change.
The SSP presupposes the direction of social changessuch as population and economic growth and technological development. The RCP shows how the climate will change depending on gas emissions greenhouse effect.
The model reflected the reality that food production can be limited if agricultural labor is insufficient, even if agricultural land and climate conditions are suitable.
In the future, the area of agricultural land that can be effectively utilized will decrease due to the shortage of agricultural workers in most regions of the world. In some regions, the lack of agricultural workers was considered a more important limiting factor than climate or soil.
The research team explained that the labor problem may not be easily solved, even in a future of rapid technological development.
As industries grow, more people migrate to the manufacturing and service sectors, which in turn accelerates the cognitive decline of the rural population, leading to a reduction in labor and a more restricted use of agricultural land.
Furthermore, it has been confirmed that if international migration is restricted, developed countries will face a shortage of agricultural workerswhile the agricultural population in some low-income countries could increase excessively. This demonstrates that the migration policies are also linked to food security.
This study also looked at future food issues, taking into account not only climate and land, but also changes in population.
Finally, it demonstrated that social problems, such as low birth rates and the abandonment of rural areascould have a significant impact on future food security and responses to climate change.
