The Very Hot, Very Hungry Caterpillar
Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been unwillingly nourishing insects by growing plants that they then devour. Their mandibles consume somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of crops produced around the world. And these losses are likely to grow as the world slowly warms.
By looking at how insects will respond to rising temperatures, a team of researchers led by Curtis Deutsch and Joshua Tewksbury have calculated how rice, maize, and wheat—which provide 42 percent of humanity’s calories—will fare as the globe heats up. The results aren’t pretty.
They estimate that the portion of these grains that’s lost to insects will increase by 10 to 25 percent for every extra degree Celsius of of warming by the end of the century. If that happens, and the team’s calculations are accurate, then every year, the burgeoning legions of insects will deprive the world of a further 19 million metric tons of wheat, 14 million metric tons of rice, and 14 million metric tons of maize. “We’re not talking about the collapse of agriculture, but we’re talking about significant losses,” says Deutsch, who works at the University of Washington.
