Climate and Food - how serious is the link?

Climate refers to a region’s average weather. The average climate of the world’s regions is the earth’s climate. Therefore, climate change is the change in the Earth’s overall climate. Changes in climate have been noted throughout history, but perhaps the most prominent effect of climate change is temperature rise across the world.

The earth’s climate affects us all, thus is very important. By changes in the climate, it can threaten food security and eventually our health. In today’s post, I’ll be exploring how climate affects our health. In particular, this post will talk about the different medical outcomes of climate-affected food security.

Food security is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as a ‘situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’.

Food security has different aspects within it: availability, stability, access, and utilization. With regards to climate change and food security implications, the FAO looks at two kinds: the impact on availability, and on access.  

Throughout history, we have seen climate’s imprints on humanity. For example, the Viking settlement in Greenland is thought to have fallen from climate change, particularly by the falling temperatures in Europe. Adjustment to this changing climate is difficult – especially considering the Viking’s conservative lifestyle of being livestock dependent. With colder temperatures, agriculture became progressively more difficult resulting in a threatened food security. The colder climate resulted in more obstructive sea ice, thus food importation was also not an easy option. Although the Viking settlement’s cause of demise is one that is heavily debated, climate is a highly suggestable cause.

Food security is important for a population to thrive. Without adequate food security, it may lead to inflation in food prices and consequently lead to a starving population. Throughout history, climatic changes have also been the catalyst for social unrest: for example, the Great Medieval Famine (1315-1317). The Great Medieval Famine saw drastic changes in climate with colder and wetter summers, and earlier autumnal storms. Because of this change, agricultural growth was difficult which led to lower harvest. Due to food price inflation, many of those who could not afford the new prices ended up with malnutrition, and eventually death. Social unrest such as cannibalism occurred, alongside animal diseases that killed over half the sheep and oxen, which further decreased possible food sources. 

So let's go on to the health aspect. (I won't delve too much into the medical aspects, and rather give an overview of this as I'm trying to keep this as geographical as possible.) 

How does food insecurity impact human health? Besides the obvious lower muscle and tissue mass, it also weakens the immune system. With a weakened immune system, it increases the likelihood of a mother, infant, or child to die early. Furthermore, food insecurity increases the probability of developing iron deficiency anemia which impacts the pulmonary function which increases the likelihood of respiratory failure. Additionally, Black (2012) found that iron deficiency anemia has been found to hinder socioemotional, motor, neurophysical, and cognitive development. Food insecurity can lead to pregnant women giving birth to children with a lower birth weight, which also increases the likelihood of learning problems due to developmental delays. 

Food insecurity and its associated hunger has consequences on mental health too. For example, McIntyre et al. (2012) used Canadian National Survey of Children and Young data from 1994 to 2009 and proposed a link between child hunger, depression, and suicidal ideation later in life. McIntyre et al. has suggested that this link may be due to nutritional deprivation, which highlights child nutrition to be a key priority. Similarly, symptoms such as anxiety and hostility are common in food insecure children. 

The link between food security on health is hard to deny, and has been one that has threatened civilizations before. To sum this post up, it's clear that climate has huge impacts on health as it alters food security. We've not talked about how climate influences food security, but we will be exploring this in my next post.