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What is the State of Resilience of Today’s Global Food System? Looking back to 1816

Author

Listed:
  • Boysen, Ole
  • Boysen-Urban, Kirsten
  • Marohn, Carsten

Abstract

The eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, in conjunction with other circumstances, caused a severe and global climate anomaly. The year following turned out to be extremely cold and brought heavy rain to some and draught to other parts of the world. “The year without summer”, as it was nicknamed in Europe and North America, saw very poor plant growth and poor harvests which, in combination with other factors, led to hardship, extreme food crisis and starvation in various regions of the world, including China, Germany, India and the US. Undoubtedly, advances in research and development in agriculture, transportation and other fields as well as globalization have changed the global food system tremendously since then. Nevertheless, regional specialisation and reliance on global availability of food supply and trade put into question whether today’s global food system would also be resilient against such climate shocks which are of global nature: How resilient is today’s global food system with respect to such extreme climate events? To what extent would it be capable of compensating the widespread harvest failures? How fragile is national food security with respect to protectionist trade policy reactions? To shed light on these questions, we combine global crop yield and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models for simulating the impact of a climate anomaly comparable to 1816.

Suggested Citation

  • Boysen, Ole & Boysen-Urban, Kirsten & Marohn, Carsten, 2019. "What is the State of Resilience of Today’s Global Food System? Looking back to 1816," Conference papers 333104, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:pugtwp:333104
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