Originally published on September 2, 2013
Scientists said crop pests have been creeping poleward each year for the last 50 years at a rate of 3 km on average, helped by global warming and human transport. A study shows that the move is posing a potential threat to global food security.
According to Reuters, "The spread of beetles, moths, bacteria, worms, funghi and other pests in a warming world may be quicker than for many types of wild animals and plants, perhaps because people are accidentally moving them with harvests, it said.
"Scientists based in Britain studied more than 600 types of pests around the world and found that their ranges shifted on average towards the poles by 26.6 kms per decade since the 1960s, occupying vast new areas.
""We believe the spread is driven to a large degree by global warming," lead author Daniel Bebber of Exeter University told Reuters of the findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. They wrote it was the first study to estimate how pests are moving because of a changing climate.
"The spread of pests is "a growing threat to global food security", the study said. Between 10 and 16 percent of crop production is lost to pests, with similar losses after harvest, they wrote.
"The rate of spread, away from the equator and towards the north and south poles, is slightly faster than 17.6 kms found in a study in 2011 for wild animals and plants that was in turn quicker than 6.1 kms for wildlife estimated in a 2003 study.
"The rate, however, is virtually identical to a theoretical prediction in 2011 that rising temperatures would allow a poleward shift of wildlife of 27.3 kms a decade, the experts wrote. Many crops are growing nearer the poles due to warming."
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