Food prices offer a good proxyfor agriculture’s health, notes Gerald Nelson, an economist with the InternationalFood Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. Rising prices signal increasingresource scarcity, he explains, which can be triggered by expandingpopulations, growing incomes and declining crop yields. Recent food-priceshocks and yield shortfalls initially surprised analysts, note IFPRI’s DerekHeadey and Shenggen Fan in a November 18 report. Government officials had beenlulled into complacency by decades of falling food costs. But prices bottomedout around 2000 and have since begun climbing in response to commodities speculationand a string of poor harvests. Nelson and his colleagues have now used computermodels to get some grasp on how crop yields and prices might respond, severaldecades out, to Earth’s continuing low-grade fever. The team considered threescenarios of income and population growth that might reasonably be expected tooccur between 2020 and 2050. Then they applied four “plausible” climatescenarios with warmer temperatures and anywhere from slightly to substantiallywetter weather. They also included an “implausible fifth scenario of perfect mitigation(a continuation of today’s climate into the future).” The resulting scenariosall indicated that in contrast to the 20th century, when food prices fell, the21st century would see prices rise. Probably by a lot. Even with today’sclimate, food prices would rise over the next 40 years in response to pressuresfrom growing populations and incomes. Rice prices, for instance, would increaseroughly 11 to 55 percent. Throwing in additional warming, prices can risesubstantially more—a minimum of 31 percent for rice and perhaps a doubling for corn.The analyses clearly point to “climate change as a threat-multiplier,”concludes Nelson. Lighter wallets are hardly the most dire fallout of risingfood costs. An analysis that Nelson’s group issued last year projected thatfood affordability by 2050 will likely trigger a decline in intake throughout thedeveloping world. This could hike childhood malnutrition rates 20 percent abovewhat would occur in the absence of climate change. Investments could be made tooffset the negative impacts of climate on agriculture and childhoodmalnutrition. But they’d be high, IFPR I estimated: more than $7 billion annually.Last year’s greenhouse-gas releases have been fueling pessimism that nationswill be able to brake their emission trajectories soon. Owing to the globalrecession, people had expected 2009 greenhouse-gas releases to dropprecipitously, notes climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein of the Universityof Exeter in England. “Global emissions did decrease 1.3 percent, but that wasonly equivalent to four days of emissions.” “The globe essentially faces adaunting task in terms of climate change,” notes Bruce Campbell, director of aclimate and food program of the Consultative Group on InternationalAgricultural Research. Despite climate’s impacts on food production,agriculture remains largely ignored in international negotiations of climateand emissions policies. “What we’re hoping,” Campbell says, “is thatagriculture gets to put on the agenda.”
The word “proxy” in line 1 is closest in meaning to “_________”.
A.example B.reason C.signal D.result正确答案C
