Climate Change to Plunge 200 Million Africans into Severe Hunger by 2050
Prediction:
An article published in BNN Breaking News by author Aqsa Younas Rana, titled “Climate Change to Plunge 200 Million Africans into Severe Hunger by 2050” asserts that climate change will result in widespread hunger, starvation, and agricultural revenue decline in Africa by 2050. The claims are unsubstantiated and contrary to real world data and trends on food production and revenue.
Outcome:
Crop production and yields have improved dramatically in most places in Africa during the recent period of modest warming. One recent article by Linnea Lueken, Wrong, Washington Post, Warming Hasn’t Harmed African Crop Production, shows the extent to which climate change has benefitted African farmers:
This graph showing agricultural yields and production for primary cereal grains dramatically increased since 1990 at the same time that climate change was supposedly warming the continent of Africa:Rana mentions Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi as specifically threatened by crop losses, yet since 1990 foundational cereal crops and roots and tubers have increased dramatically in each of those countries. Since 1990 (1993 Ethiopia), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that:
- In Ethiopia, despite civil strife, cereal crop production grew by approximately 496 percent, and root and tuber production increased by a little over 176 percent;
- In Kenya, cereal crop production expanded by about 35 percent, and root and tuber production enlarged by almost 97 percent;
- In Malawi, cereal crop production expanded by about nearly 185 percent, and root and tuber production grew by an astonishing 3,082 percent. (see the figure below)
