Climate change and its implications on stored food grains

Abstract

Safe food grain storages are considered as a measure to adapt to the changing global climates and as a channel to food security, particularly in periods when agriculture fails. However, grain storage themselves can be heavily affected by changing global climates. One main aspect of the ‘climate change’ is the rise of global temperature that may lead to an increase in atmospheric humidity. This climate change, warm and humid, are not suitable for grain storage. At such a scenario, stored grain is at a risk due to the favorable conditions developed for the growth of insect pests. Predicting the future ecological impact of climate change drivers requires understanding how these same drivers have acted in the past on the dynamics of insect's population. In the past ten years there has been a detailed documentation on the biotic and abiotic conditions of two storage sites in Israel. This historical ecological data can reveal long-term consequences of multiple drivers of climate change. The changes can be evident at the level of the species and at the level of the societies of insect-pest in the grain storage. The differences between two storages located at different climate regions in Israel further predict the direction current IPM practice may lead to. Following this understanding, we hope to develop feasible mitigation strategies that might overcome the changes ahead of us.

Keywords

• climate change
• historical ecology
• grain storage insects