The Impact of Global Warming on Agricultural Production Dissertation

The Impact of Global Warming on Agricultural Production - Dissertation Example The significance of this portfolio lies with my genuine interest to identify the relationship between crop farm level agriculture and global warming in China. The underlying inspiration behind this exploration is my experience in Bayer CropScience Ltd in Northeast China. In the changing global context, sustainable agricultural forecasting and irrigational developments require rather collaborated efforts. The production of crops including soybean, wheat, and corn becomes more difficult as the predictability of weather and climate decreases. The aftermath of global warming is very evident in Northeastern China where drought and rain failure is severe. Other challenges those have a direct impact on agriculture are inconsistency in rainfall, increasing temperature, floods, and hurricanes. Global warming inflicts wide range of calamities including rising temperature, climate change, glacier retreat and disappearance, ocean and social system issues, and health problems. Recent studies show that global warming and thereby significant climate changes have dreadfully affected agriculture production across the globe. Many countries have abandoned their agriculture production as they do not get adequate returns to cover capital invested and efforts taken. Improved agriculture production is essential for the human existence; and hence, it is necessary to find out possible ways to mitigate the impact of global warming. China, the world’ most populated country with 7% of the world’s arable land available to feed 22% of the world’s population is more likely to be affected by climate change. Among various crops, soybean is the most vulnerable one to temperature fluctuations. The suitable temperature for soybean is 15-22  °C at emergence, 20-25  °C at flow ering, and 15-22  °C at maturity (Liu et al., 2008). The Context I have long years’ experience in agricultural farming and have worked in Bayer CropScience Ltd in Northeast China. The Bayer CropScience is well known for its leadership in the area of crop protection, non-agricultural pest-control, seeds and plant biotechnology around the world. Bayer vehemently tries to prevent climate changes as part of its sustainability strategy through a series of improvement programs in its own production operations. Therefore, the author is familiar with agriculture production, climate changes, and variation in the volume of farming outcomes over the past several years. The adverse effect of global warming is easily visible in Chinese Soybean industry. China is one of the world’s largest Soybean producers. However, the country has faced a considerable decline in quantity and quality of soybean produced and distributed over last few years. The concept of sustainable agriculture h as become very vital to meet the basic needs of next generations. Sustainable agriculture indicates the practice of agricultural activities based on the principles of ecology. Global warming is defined as â€Å"a continuing increase in Earth’s overall temperature† (Farrar, 2007, p.7). The instrumental temperature record indicates that average global surface temperature has been increased by 0.74 degree Celsius during the 20th century. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that global surface temperature may rise in 21st century from 1.5 to 1.9o C (for lowest emissions scenario) or 3.4 to 6.1o C (for highest emissions scenario). These estimations were made by applying the techniques of sensitivity to greenhouse gas