1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:00:04,180


2
00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:08,360
[ music ]

3
00:00:08,380 --> 00:00:12,500


4
00:00:12,520 --> 00:00:16,590


5
00:00:16,610 --> 00:00:20,630
Will climate change drastically reduce our food production, or will it change what we produce?

6
00:00:20,650 --> 00:00:24,810
So, to answer this quesiton you have to think about it

7
00:00:24,830 --> 00:00:28,990
in two parts. We have climate change, and food production.

8
00:00:29,010 --> 00:00:33,170
We know that climate change is likely to affect temperature and precipitation 

9
00:00:33,190 --> 00:00:37,290
over the coming decades. And when we think about how

10
00:00:37,310 --> 00:00:41,360
those changes will affect agriculture, we are pretty sure that

11
00:00:41,380 --> 00:00:45,380
an increase in temperature and changing precipitation patterns

12
00:00:45,400 --> 00:00:48,170
will affect the way farmers make a living.

13
00:00:48,190 --> 00:00:53,750
But farmers don't decide what to plant depending on what the weather is.

14
00:00:53,770 --> 00:00:57,910
They look at what will get them the best price,

15
00:00:57,930 --> 00:01:02,040
what will make them the most amount of money, what is feasible,

16
00:01:02,060 --> 00:01:06,100
and the kind of investments they've already made in previous years.

17
00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:10,140
So that's the kind of broad-scale macro-economic drivers that we can't really anticipate

18
00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:12,320
when we're looking at climate change.

19
00:01:12,340 --> 00:01:17,490
When I do research what I'm interested in doing is taking the last thirty years that we have

20
00:01:17,510 --> 00:01:22,590
satellite observations here at NASA and then connecting those trends

21
00:01:22,610 --> 00:01:26,700
to what has happened with agriculture

22
00:01:26,720 --> 00:01:30,730
and with populations and what people are eating and the economics

23
00:01:30,750 --> 00:01:34,900
and food prices. Because if we can make connections with what we've seen

24
00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:39,080
happen with the climate, climate variability, over the last thirty years,

25
00:01:39,100 --> 00:01:43,250
and try to connect that to the economic conditions

26
00:01:43,270 --> 00:01:47,380
and to what people are eating, then we can have a better basis for projecting into the future.

27
00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:51,430


28
00:01:51,450 --> 00:01:53,994