Enhancing Global Food Security: Opportunities for the American Meteorological Society

Abstract

Abstract Food security is a key pillar of environmental security yet remains one of the world’s greatest challenges. Its obverse, food insecurity, negatively impacts health and well-being, drives mass migration, and undermines both national security and global sustainable development. Ensuring food security is a delicate balance of myriad concerns within the atmospheric and earth sciences, agronomy and agriculture engineering, social sciences, economics, monitoring, and policymaking. A Food Security Presidential Session at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) 2022 Annual Meeting brought together experts across disciplines to tackle issues at the nexus of weather, climate, and food security. The starkest takeaway was the realization that, despite its importance and clear roles for the atmospheric and climate sciences, food security has not been a focus for the AMS community. The aim of this paper is to build on the perspectives shared by this expert panel and to identify overlapping issues and key points of intersection between food security and AMS communities. We examine (1) the interactions between weather, climate and the food system and how they influence food security; (2) the time and spatial scales of food security decision support that match weather and climate phenomena; (3) the role of both providers and users of information as well as decision makers in improving research to operations for food security; and (4) the opportunities for the AMS community to address food security. We conclude that, moving forward, the AMS community is well-positioned to scale up its engagement across the global food system to address existing scientific needs and technology gaps to improve global food security.