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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A NASA climate research scientist who has spent much of her career explaining how global food production must adapt to a changing climate was awarded the World Food Prize on Thursday.

Cynthia Rosenzweig, an agronomist and climatologist, was awarded $250,000 for her innovative modeling of the impact of climate change on food production. He is a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an assistant senior research scientist at the Columbia School of Climate at Columbia University, both in New York City.

Rosenzweig, whose winner was announced at a ceremony at the State Department in Washington, said he hoped it would draw attention to the need to improve food and agriculture systems to mitigate the effects of climate change.

During an interview with the Associated Press, he told the Associated Press: “We cannot solve climate change unless we address greenhouse gas emissions from the food system and we cannot ensure food security for everyone unless we work really hard to develop resilient systems.” your ceremony.

Jose Fernandez, Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, said that more than 160 million people worldwide experienced food insecurity last year, a 19% increase from the previous year, and one of the main reasons for this was the decline in food production. due to global warming.

“Climate change has already had a significant and negative impact on global agricultural production, and its impact will only get worse. We see rice fields drowning in floods. We’re seeing other crops wilt in drought. In more acidic oceans, we see shellfish die and crop diseases spread to new regions. This year’s World Food Award winner Dr. “Without the work of Cynthia Rosenzweig, we probably wouldn’t have understood all these issues as well as we understand them today.”

The Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation award recognized Rosenzweig as the founder of the Agricultural Model Comparison and Development Project. The organization attracts scientists from around the world and from many disciplines to develop methods to improve predictions of the future performance of agricultural and food systems as the global climate changes.

The Foundation credits its work in directly assisting decision-makers in more than 90 countries in creating plans to prepare for climate change.

In his study, Rosenzweig looked at how farmers can cope with climate change and how agriculture is making the problem worse. For example, he contributed to a research paper published last month that says global agri-food systems account for about a third of the total global greenhouse gases emitted by human activities.

Rosenzweig said the world needs to reduce such emissions and adapt to the changing climate. He noted that greenhouse gases come from many parts of food production, including the release of carbon and carbon dioxide through clearing forests for farmland and the oxidation of carbon through plowing fields. Manure use also releases atmospheric nitrous oxide, farm equipment emits fossil fuels, and cattle release methane.

Rosenzweig, who describes himself as a climate impact scientist, grew up in Scarsdale, New York, and grew up in a suburban area, which led him to seek life in the country. In his 20s, he moved to Tuscany, Italy, with his wife-to-be and developed a passion for agriculture. After returning to the United States, he focused his education on agronomy.

He worked as a graduate student at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the early 1980s, when global climate models began to show the effects of man-made carbon dioxide on the global climate. As the only team member studying agronomy, she researched its impact on food production and said she has since worked to answer these questions.

Rosenzweig’s work led to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1988 assessment of the potential impacts of climate change in the US, leading to the first projections of the impact of climate change on the country’s agricultural regions. He was the first to draw attention to climate change. He is from the American Agricultural Science Association and held the first sessions on the subject in the 1980s.

He completed his first projections of how climate change will affect food production in North America and globally in 1985, and was one of the first scientists to document that climate change is already affecting food production and cultivation.

The research organization he founded, AgMIP, is developing adaptation packages that may include the use of more drought-resistant seeds and improved water management practices. In Bangladesh, the group is working with rice farmers to develop new practices for the management of rice fields to reduce the significant release of methane produced by the current process.

He said even the largest agricultural companies are willing to listen. He said some models developed by his colleagues show how businesses can be affected by climate change and how they play a role in reversing the impact on the climate.

“Coming together to rein in climate change and protect food security for the planet is truly a global partnership of the entire global food system,” he said.

Announcing the winner, Barbara Stinson, President of the World Food Prize Foundation, thanked Rosenzweig for innovations that help countries respond to climate change.