Yesterday at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its report on the relationship between climate change and food security.
The report is titled Climate Change, Global Food Security, and the US Food System, and I am one of its (many) authors. Click here for the full report; click here for the report’s page on the website of the USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist. (Incidentally, USDA chief economist Rob Johansson is one of the alums of our PhD program.) Here is a video made to promote the report.
I learned a lot from working on this report, both about the topics it covers in general, but also about the strict standards of evidence to which government reports are held. As we were going through the many drafts this report, whenever a claim could not be substantiated by research findings, it was mercilessly struck out of the draft. The report also underwent peer review, and as those things go, it eventually went out for public comments. The end result is as comprehensive an assessment as can be of the presumed effects of climate change on global food security, and the role of the US food system in mitigating those effects. And last, but not least, I finally got to write something with my good friend Ed Carr.
Update: It turns out the New York Times has a story about the report, which you can read here.