Trees And Food Security – A Simple Link But A Complex Relationship

By Author: Gulnaz
Total Articles: 12
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In the last two decades, we have been hearing and reading much about trees and Food Security. We are also spectators and sometimes affected by floods, raising temperatures, loss of crops, landslides, barren landscape extension, wild fires and farmer suicides. And we also keep hearing and getting influenced by Save environment, Save the planet, Save the river etc campaigns. Are there any linkages of the above said calamities & campaigns to Food Security?
The answer is bit complex and usually Yes and No, based on the perspective. But it remains that it’s a fact of losses and is impacting us.
Now let’s understand this complex cycle.
We all understand, raising Carbon and Greenhouse gas emissions led by industrialization have played pretty significant role in temperature changes. Global temperatures on an average have risen by ~1 degree centigrade in the past 140 years.
We have also cut down forests, turned to chemicals driven monoculture which have made land unusable in few decades for food generation.
Once the land is barren, We leave the barren land and move on. As we move on to another piece ...
... of land, the green cover continues to reduce (slash and burn land claim) and the cycle to reduce the harmful gases by the role of trees further reduces as the tree cover becomes lesser.
Due to raise in surface temperature, crops pattern changes and get affected by either pests or drought. If a crop fails and if it’s a monoculture landscape, hardly any route for a farmer to escape the drastic impact and leading to suicides as the land parcels owned are marginal (