Impact of climate change and water quality degradation on food security and agriculture

Abstract The gradual increase in climate change leads to a serious concern toward food security and agriculture production. Despite considerable progress, around 800 million people are malnourished, 161 million under age of five are considered obese and 2 billion do not receive the essential micronutrients in their healthy life. The United Nations Population Fund describes a rapid increase in population from 1.6 billion people to 6.1 billion people in the 20th century. For this rapidly expanding population world to be properly fed, food production has to be speed-up several times faster. As reported in the International Fund for Agricultural Development (2011), 70% of the poorest people living in rural areas depend on agriculture. But the current crop-cultivating system and agriculture system has been challenged by various emerging forces like climate change, soil fertility degradation, water crisis, energy crisis, and so on. Regional climate and irrigation water can be considered as supporting pillars for sustainable agriculture and any negative alterations in these two factors may result in collapsing the entire agricultural system of a region. This, in turn, will adversely affect the local and national food availability. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge of the predicted climate change and water quality assessment studies. It also analyses the impact of these changes on the major sets on the agricultural system at risk and examines the inferences for global food security. Finally, it presents an overview of major mitigation strategies that can contribute in responding to these global challenges effectively.