How much does the expensive beer have to do with the weather?

Recently, researchers from Peking University, China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tsinghua University, University of East Anglia, University of California and other domestic and foreign research institutions indicated that with the increasing frequency of severe drought and extreme high temperature caused by climate change, it is expected that barley production will drop sharply, and beer with barley as the main raw material will become scarce and expensive. Related papers were published in Nature-Plant.

Free from hunger, but the quality of life will definitely decline. Professor Guan, from the School of International Development of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, said that traditional people study the impact of climate change on food security, mainly referring to the quantity of food, without paying much attention to the quality of food.

China, the United States and Germany are the three countries with the largest beer consumption in the world, and climate change bears the brunt of their beer market. "In view of the significant climate change in 2050 or 2 100 when the dietary structure of human beings is further changed, we choose the most popular alcoholic beverage beer in the world as an example to evaluate the impact of climate change on the global barley production and beer market." Xie Wei said.

Under the profound background of future dietary structure and food function, whether to allocate more food to staple food or feed or raw materials to produce high value-added agricultural products is a problem that needs to be reconsidered when formulating policies to adapt to climate change. Xie Wei told reporters that agricultural researchers will devote themselves to developing drought-resistant and high-temperature resistant varieties and increasing the substitutes for brewing beer.

He also said that due to the quality problems of barley, more than 70% of the barley used for brewing beer in China is imported from Australia, and the import concentration is very high. In the future, it may be necessary to reduce risks by dispersing pollution sources.