Because of dramatic climate changes, crop yields are expected to fall within the next decade. This is bound to happen unless immediate action takes place that is able to speed up the introduction of new and improved varieties. Experts continue to send out warnings and unfortunately, nothing has been changing in recent years. Many researchers have looked into the problem but guessing what the climate will be like years from now is difficult, and this is something that has continually held developments back from the drawing board. Research led by the University of Leeds was published in Nature Climate Change journal that focused on maize in Africa and the underlying processes that affect crops all across the tropics. The lead author of the study, Professor Andy Challinor from the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds says that Africa has gradually rising temperatures and is experiencing more droughts and heat waves that are directly caused by climate change. There is no doubt about it: these changes are going to have an impact on maize and these impacts will increase year after year. http://sciencenewsjournal.com/climate-change-requires-far-crop-breeding-can-offer/
Most of these are foreign crops - imported because they matched the local climate and soil. Maize is not an African plant. Jared Diamond posited, plausibly, that the difficulty of making latitude changes in agriculture and technology was the main barrier that slowed the development of modern civilization in the Americas and Africa, in the first place. So if climate change imitates to a degree a latitude change, the difficulty of adaptation is well established.
