Background

Food production must be increased in order to meet the needs of a growing population, projected to increase to over 9 billion by the year 2050. During this same time, climate is changing creating higher temperatures over most of the globe and likely increasing heat waves and drought in some areas and excess rainfall and flooding in others. Changes in climate and extreme events could have significant effects on agricultural pest and disease distribution and magnitudes and on the distribution of host species.

These changes could thus have major impacts on food security, yet none of the major assessments of climate change on food security have directly included pest and disease effects. Models are used for such impact assessments, but it is difficult to accurately model the effects of climate change on insects and pathogens and the associated crop productivity losses. These difficulties are compounded due to the large range of temporal and spatial scales at which plant-damaging insects and pathogens operate, ranging from hourly changes on individual plant parts to daily changes in plant populations and longer-term dynamics in plant communities.

To intercompare and improve crop and economic models and understand their capabilities to assess climate change impacts and adaptation, modeling teams have been formed through the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Program (AgMIP). However, currently few crop models incorporate damage by insect pests and pathogens. None of the models used in the AgMIP model comparisons and assessments have yet considered the effects of pests and diseases on the productivity and economics of crop production under various climatological conditions (www.agmip.org).

A global effort is needed to remedy this situation by intercomparing and improving pest and disease models and the methods used in incorporating damage from pests and diseases in crop and economic models. The 5th Annual AgMIP Global Workshop will immediately follow this workshop from February 25-28, 2015 also at the University of Florida to further advance scientific capabilities to meet this need. More information and registration at http://www.agmip.org/5th-agmip-global-workshop/