The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) jointly hosted the International Conference on Climate Change and Food Security (ICCCFS) November 6-8, 2011 in Beijing, China. This conference provided a forum for leading international scientists and young researchers to present their latest research findings, exchange their research ideas, and share their experiences in the field of climate change and food security. The event included technical sessions, poster sessions, and social events. The conference results and recommendations were presented at the global climate talks in Durban, South Africa during an official side event on December 1.

1. International Conference on Climate Change and Food Security
Model-based Assessment of
Potential Risks of Food Insecurity
at a Global Scale
Wenbin WU(吴文斌)
Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning,
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China

2. What is food security?
 Food security—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 (FAO,1996).
“让所有人在任何时候都能在物质上和经济上获得充足的、
安全的和有营养的食物，来满足其积极和健康生活的膳食需
要及食物喜好”

3.  The food security status of any group can be normally
considered as the principle outcome of food systems.

4. Four components of food security
 Food availability: the availability of sufficient food, i.e., to
the overall ability of the agricultural system to meet food
demand.
 Food accessibility: the ability of a unit of individuals to
obtain access to acquire appropriate foods for a
nutritious diet.
 Food utilization: individual or household capacity to
consume and benefit from food.
 More recently, as climate change issues have caught great
attention from the world, food stability is also
considered one important component of food security.
 individuals who are at high risk of temporarily or permanently
losing their access to the resources needed to consume adequate
food.

5. Understanding food security is of great implications
 Many countries (in particular developing countries) are
fighting against the food crisis in different ways.
 These are usually based on a better understanding of the
dynamics, risks and forces that shape the factors
affecting food security .
 Assessment of food security status is thus high on the
policy agenda of most countries.
FAO, 2009 IFPRI, 2009

6. What about the future situation?
 There has been considerable progress in assessing food
security at different space and time scales.
 We have little knowledge about the future food security
situation:
 How it will evolve over time and what are the major
impacts of these future changes?
 It is not possible to predict future food security status
due to uncertainties in future social, political and
economic development.

7. What about the future situation?
 It is possible to explore what might happen given certain
assumptions about societal and environmental changes
through scenario construction:
 Improved foresight of food security can help better inform policy
decisions.
 Scenario-based studies provide an appropriate tool to
develop plausible visions of future pathways of food
security
 This research attempts to assess the potential risks of
food insecurity under given future scenarios.

8. Methodology in this study
 Those studies, which focus only on crop production,
provide only a partial assessment of food security.
 A holistic approach for assessment of food security is
used in this study to cover the major components of food
security as many as possible.
 A multi-factor, multi-model and spatially explicit
assessment method is proposed in this study.

9. A spatially explicit assessment method
 Traditional method: assessment of food security are
normally conducted at a national or regional level.
Time1 Time2
Secure or
Security grades?
 These analyses of food security have some limitations：
3
 Not reflect the considerable variations in the food security
situation within a particular country or region.
 Coarse results and lower spatial location description.

10. A a spatially explicit assessment method
 This study: specific attention is paid to develop a spatially
explicit assessment method for food security.
Time1 Time2
Secure or
Security grades in
each pixel
3
 Spatial information technologies (Remote sensing, GIS
and Spatial models) are used for method development.

11. A multi-factor and multi-model method
Biophysical Social factors Economic factors
factors
Factors
Food production Population Gross Domestic
status Product (GDP)
Per capita food Per capita GDP
Indicators
availability
Food availability Food accessibility
and stability and affordability
Crop yields Crop sown areas Crop price and
trade
Models
GIS-based EPIC Crop choice IFPSIM model
model decision model

12. Crop area model—crop choice decision model
 The crop choice decision model was used to analyze the
changes in crop areas by investigating changes in crop
choice decisions among a variety of available alternatives.
Natural ecosystem Crop choice decision
Land user
Landscape
Socio-economic system

13. Crop yield model—GIS-based EPIC model
 The GIS-based EPIC was used to estimate the potential
yields of different crop types under a given biophysical
and agricultural management environment.
Soils
Planting date
Wheat
Harvest date
Maize
Cropping system
Rice
Global land use
Soybean
Topography
Irrigation

14. Crop price model—IFPRIM model
 Crop price was assessed by the International Food Policy
and Agricultural Simulation (IFPSIM) model.
Food supply
(In collaboration with the University of Tokyo, Japan)

15. Future scenario setting
Scenario
development
Scenario
analysis
Time period for scenario
analysis: 2000-2020

16. Socio-economic scenarios: describes the key elements, such as demography,
economic development, technology, and policy interventions, which together provide
the description of a possible future state of the world.
IPCC SRES: A1 scenario Total population for countries
Global total GDP
High economic growth rate
Growth rate of urban population for countries
Global total population
Relatively low population growth
Growth rate of GM crops for major countries
Average growth rate of global
urban population

17. Climate change scenarios:
 Defines the major features of future climate change, which may strongly drive
changes in the crop yield and cropping systems in future;
 Monthly maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation data
between 2000 and 2020 were obtained from the high resolution projections of
MIROC (developed by the University of Tokyo, Japan).
MIROC simulated CRU observation MIROC simulated
data for 1901-2000 data for 1901-2000 data for 2000-2020
(1.1 degree) (0.5 degree) (1.1 degree)
Downscaling Downscaling Downscaling
(0.1 degree) (0.1 degree) (0.1 degree)
100 1800 100 1800 20 1800
year year year
3600 3600 3600
Grid by grid regression
Method for climate data calibration Grid by grid bias correction

18. Steps for assessing potential risks of food insecurity
Step 1: Based on the simulated crop yields and crop areas,
the changes in total food production were assessed by
comparing the food production in 2020 with that in 2000.
Change ratio of total food production (CR_p) was calculated
with the following Equation:
4
∑
i =1
Yi 2020 * Ai2020
CR－ p－ 4
∑
i =1
Yi 2000 * Ai2000
Y is the crop yield for crop type i; A is the crop areas for
crop type i; n is the total number of crops.

19. Steps for assessing potential risks of food insecurity
Step 2: To understand whether the projected changes in
total food production will influence the overall food
availability, relative changes in per capita food availability
(CR_a) for the same period were calculated:
4
∑
i =1
Yi 2020 * Ai2020 POP 2020
CR－ a－ 4
∑
i =1
Yi 2000 * Ai2000 POP 2000
Y is the crop yield for crop type i; A is the crop areas for
crop type i; POP is the total population; n is the total
number of crops.

20. 4. Steps for assessing potential risks of food insecurity
Step 3: A separate analysis for the changes in per capita
GDP were undertaken because it can strongly impact the
purchasing power and determine whether a country or
region is able to import more food from outside.
 First computed the overall increase in per capita GDP between
2000 and 2020.
 Then calculated the relative difference between the growth rate of
per capita GDP in a grid cell and the average per capita growth rate.

21. Steps for assessing potential risks of food insecurity
Step 4: The changes in per capita food availability and the
changes in per capita GDP were combined to examine the
hotspots of potential risks of food insecurity for the study
period through identifying the areas:
 With decreased per capita food availability.
 With a slower growth rate of per capita GDP than the
average growth rate.

22. Simulation results--changes in crop yields
Rice
Yi 2020
CR－ 2000
Yi
CR: change ratio;
Y: crop yield for
crop type i;
Maize

23. Simulation results--changes in crop yields
Wheat
Yi 2020
CR－ 2000
Yi
CR: change ratio;
Y: crop yield for
crop type i;
Soybean

24. Simulation results--changes in crop areas
2000
2020

25. Simulation results--changes in crop areas
Sown Area (in million hectares)
160
2000 2020
120
80
40
0
Wheat
Wheat
Wheat
Wheat
Wheat
Wheat
Soybean
Soybean
Soybean
Soybean
Soybean
Soybean
Rice
Maize
Rice
Maize
Rice
Maize
Rice
Maize
Rice
Maize
Rice
Maize
Africa Asia Europe Latin-America North-America Oceania
Sown areas of rice, maize and wheat were predicted to
increase in each continent.
Soybean areas declined in Africa, Asia and North-
America, but slightly increased in other regions.

26. Changes in total food production
Changes in
total food
production
4
∑Y
i =1
i
2020
* Ai2020
CR－ 4
∑Y
i =1
i
2000
* Ai2000
CR: change ratio;
Y: crop yield for
crop type i;
A: crop areas for
crop type i.
Climate change will result in a reduction in total food production
during 2000–2020 in several regions such as southern China,
southern and south-eastern Asia, western and eastern Europe,
Northern Great Plains in USA, Brazil and some African countries.
Climate change will lead to an increase in total food production in
some regions in northern China, northern India, northern Europe,
Central USA, Argentina, Australia and some eastern African
countries such as Kenya and Zimbabwe.

27. Changes in per capita food availability
Change in per
capita food
availability
Total 2020 / POP 2020
CR－
Total 2000 / POP 2000
CR: change ratio;
Total: total food
production;
POP: Total
population.
A substantial increase in per capita food availability can be found
in Northeast China, eastern and southern Europe, USA and Brazil.
Noticeable increase can also be found in southeastern Asia,
Argentina, south-eastern Africa and Australia.
Decreases in per capita food availability are located in Northern
and Southern China, most southern and south-eastern Asian
countries, western Europe, USA, Brazil, Argentina, and most
African countries.

28. Changes in per capita GDP
Change in per capita GDP with respect to the global average
Areas with the highest growth rate of GDP per capita are located in
developing countries such as China, south-eastern Asian countries and
Latin-American countries, and some south-eastern and northern African
countries such as Botswana, Mozambique, Morocco and Egypt.
The areas located in southern Asian countries and most African
countries are likely to experience a dramatic decrease in the capacity to
import food on a per capita basis than currently as the growth rates of
GDP in these areas are 35-50% lower than the world average.

29. Potential risks of global food insecurity
Improve the food security situation: either an increase in per
capita food availability or an increase in the capacity to
import food.
Remain the hotspots of food insecurity: a decrease in both the
per capita food availability and the capacity of being able to
import food.

30. Potential risks of global food insecurity
Developed countries will still be food-secure:
their populations less rely on subsistence agriculture, have
higher financial support and purchasing power, the
substantial adaptive capacity and proactive food
management systems.

31. Recommendations for reducing food insecurity risks
Protect the quantity and quality of farmlands and invest
more to improve land productivity so as to provide enough
food supply (Food Availability).
Build efficient agricultural subsidy systems to improve the
farming income and strengthen purchase power(Food
Affordability).
Reform the food circulation and agricultural commodity
trade systems to enlarge food supply by linking to outside
international and domestic market (Food Accessibility).
Actively improve the adaptive capability of agriculture in
response to climate change to ensure a stable food
production(Food Stability).

32. International Conference on Climate Change and Food Security
Thank you very much for your attention!!!
wwb@mail.caas.net.cn