Weather-related hazards are increasing in frequency and intensity and pose a threat to our food security. But rising climate concerns don’t seem to stop with floods, droughts, delayed or early monsoons, and above or below average annual rainfall. There is another layer on top of the already competing interests of policy responses to address climate impacts: the lack of nutrients in food caused by the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. More and more research suggests that the higher concentration of CO2, which helps plants grow larger and faster, often producing a lot of carbohydrates, also directly affects the overall nutritional content, especially protein, iron, zinc, calcium and other essential nutrients. .
Health links
The problem of nutrient deficiency will worsen in the future due to the lack of significant progress in reducing global emissions, despite repeated promises made at international climate summit meetings. This will harm low-income countries like Nepal, which are already facing the consequences of micronutrient deficiency. According to the 2016 Nepal National Micronutrient Status Survey, about 21 percent of children under five and 24 percent of non-pregnant women between the ages of 15 and 49 are already zinc deficient. About 20 percent of non-pregnant women also suffer from iron deficiency.
Predictably, these nutrient deficiencies cause health problems. For example, zinc and iron deficiencies are known to cause chronic health problems in children, often associated with slowed growth, impaired physical and cognitive development, weakened immune function, increased susceptibility and severity to infection, anemia, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and neurobehavioral problems. abnormalities. Zinc is also important for skin health. In addition, rice and wheat, which are the staple foods of a significant part of the population, are more affected by high CO2 concentrations. Controlled experiments have shown that vegetables are similarly affected; Calcium in green beans dropped significantly, vitamin A levels in asparagus dropped by nearly half, and broccoli stems appeared to contain less iron.
Until now, nutrient deficiency was thought to be a result of malnutrition, poverty and poor access to food. However, this will change as food will have less nutritional value due to the effects of climate on the nutritional content of grains, legumes and vegetables. Even if a person has access to a proper diet and adequate amounts of food, it can still cause nutrient deficiency due to fewer nutrients in the food. The article titled “Micronutrient deficiency, a hidden hunger in Nepal: Prevalence, causes, consequences and solutions” published in 2015 shows that the underlying cause of zinc deficiency is the low content of vitamins and minerals in foods.
The far-reaching consequences of nutrient deficiencies are that existing micronutrient deficiencies will worsen as floods, droughts and heatwaves reduce agricultural productivity, and higher atmospheric CO2 levels reduce the concentration of essential micronutrients in food, leading to greater numbers of people becoming malnourished. According to one estimate, economic loss in Nepal is currently around 2 to 3 percent of GDP due to existing vitamin and mineral deficiencies alone.
Solution options
There are various ways to respond to these emerging food and nutrition issues. Some are fast, some take time to get results. One of the most sought-after solutions is the addition of micronutrients directly to the seeds. However, this is only a quick fix and does not provide a permanent change because the technique focuses on one or two micronutrients at a time, whereas the status of other micronutrients will continue to be affected by higher CO2. It will also take away farmers’ freedom to produce seeds, instead making them dependent on imported seeds that are out of reach of small farmers. This also raises the question of what happens to crop varieties that adapt to the local environment.
Another way is to apply nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments to provide plants with certain minerals. An effective and low-cost way to boost growth by processing seeds and using biofertilizer already exists in Nepal. But adding nutrient-rich fertilizer without addressing soil erosion is unlikely to help. Numerous studies conducted in Nepal since the 1970s have highlighted soil erosion as a major obstacle to increasing agricultural production, but no effective measures have been taken to address it. Erosion tends to deplete soil of both major and micronutrients. As a result, we began to see the consequences of not responding to the call for soil conservation.
Farming is being abandoned due to continued loss of farm productivity, largely due to erosion of soil nutrients. Institutionally, the responsibility for formulating soil conservation policies and advocating for their implementation lies with the forestry sector, which currently has no responsibility for the management of agricultural soil. If we address uncontrolled soil erosion in agricultural fields before applying nutrient-rich fertilizers, we can help remove nutrients from foods in both the short and long term. To do this, we must facilitate better soil management, including soil conservation, on a large scale.
A third approach could be selective plant breeding; This is suggested as an effective way to develop seeds that are less affected by higher CO2 levels. Nepal’s institutional structure and pool of expertise in plant breeding is well positioned for this purpose. To protect crops against inundation and drought, they developed flood- and drought-resistant varieties of rice, maize, and millet. The combination of soil conservation supported by plant cultivation will be a better response to the effects of higher CO2 concentration.
Expanding the scope of adaptation
In summary, our food security is threatened by a range of issues ranging from water scarcity, floods, windstorms, landslides and plant diseases to impacts on the nutritional content of food. Food security will no longer just be a matter of access to food as commonly understood; It will be a matter of availability of food containing the required amount of nutrients. National policies and strategies on nutrition highlight the current problem of nutrient deficiencies and their impact on health, which increases with increasing CO2 concentration.
Many people are already nutrient deficient, and the possibility of future nutrient depletion due to increasing CO2 concentrations raises serious concerns about our food security. This is an emerging problem that is not yet part of our climate response. Given that we face a multitude of climate-related agricultural challenges, it is time to start identifying and incorporating feasible measures to address the nutritional content of food into our adaptation plans.