Climate change affecting wheat and corn yields

Global warming has lowered the global yield of crops with up to 5% since 1980; not for soybeans, or tomatoes, or etc, but for wheat and corn – which are probably the most important crops.

A global problem

The study, which was published in the journal Science, states that the corn production has gone up since 1980, but it would have gone up even more, with 3.8%, if it hadn’t been for global warming, while wheat suffered a 5.5% decline.

Climate changes are already exerting a considerable drag on yield growth,” the paper says.

The situation, of course, differs from place to place. In France, for example, the crop yield has not risen since 1990, and global warming is the main reason why this is happening, the study concluded. Wheat crops were hit dramatically in Russia, where they dropped with a shocking 15%, as well as in Mexico and Turkey. China isn’t doing much better either, reporting a drop in corn yields.

For soybeans and rice, the situation hasn’t changed almost at all, because warming some areas produced less crops, while warming other areas produced more crops, thus balancing it all out.

Fields and global warming

Researchers developed two separate models, one that simulated the situation as it happened until today, and one in which temperatures were the same, ignoring the effects of global warming. Another extremely interesting fact was that America was the least affected by these changes.

“Pretty much the rest of the world in terms of major agriculture producers have seen remarkable warming,” David Lobell, of Stanford University’s Dept. of Environmental Earth System Science and one of the paper’s authors, said in a Science podcast. “It looks like the United States, Canada and northern Mexico are outliers in terms of unusually stable weather over the last 30 years temperature-wise compared to the rest of the world.”

Even though this is yet another display of global warming negatively affecting our society, it shouldn’t be said that it is the biggest reason why the agricultural situation isn’t so good, especially in some places. Climate isn’t the predominant driver of change over time, in terms concerning crop production. In the 20th century, temperatures have risen on a global scale, with 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, the growth rate is anticipated to increase in the next 20 to 30 years.

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  • mememine

    No longer believing in climate change doesn’t make me a bad person and I still concern myself with pollution but I can no longer condemn billions of children to death just to get them to turn the lights out more often. Here is my reasoning as to why continued support of the CO2 mistake is now irresponsible and dividing the true efforts of environmentalism, energy, waste and stewardship of the planet:-The thousands of consensus scientists were silent when Obama never even mentioned the climate crisis in his Feb./2011 State of the Union Speech.-The thousands of consensus scientists were silent when American IPCC funding was pulled.-If the crisis were real, the thousands of scientists would have been marching in the streets after their warnings of crisis were ignored.-How is it that there were always countless thousands of consensus scientists out numbering protestors?-Thousands of consensus scientists also produced cruise missiles, cancer causing chemical cocktails, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, cluster bombs, strip mining technology, Y2K, Y2Kyoto, deep sea drilling technology and now climate control. -It was the thousands of consensus scientists themselves that originally polluted the planet with their pesticides and cancer causing chemicals they created, thus making environmentalism necessary in the first place. -The effects were predicted by the thousands of consensus scientists to be “negligible to unstoppable warming”. So what’s not to agree with.-Former Climate Change believers are now the voting majority so CO2 mitigations of sacrifice and taxes will never happen.-A wave of other former climate change believers are now demanding that politicians and law makers have the leading scientists and especially the unconscionable leading news editors, subjected to criminal charges for knowingly sustaining the criminal exaggerations of the CO2 mistake.-REAL planet lovers are happy about avoiding a crisis.-REAL civilized people don’t threaten their kids with DEATH BY CO2, just to get them to turn the lights out more often.-How did melting ice on top of tropical fossils prove what caused it this time after eons of the powers of the cosmos doing it?-If after 25 years of the CO2 mistake, you still believe in this coming h e l l, at least act like it and get yourself a sign that says THE END IS NEAR and start marching.-Believers are the new deniers and history is watching this madness.-Climate Change belief was selfish, thoughtless and verging on psychotic and will be viewed as modern day witch burning another Iraq-like false war against a false enemy based on climate weapons of mass destruction.-25 years of this needless panic made Bush look like an angel.

  • igrowcorn

    It’s simple as hell. Food plants have a narrow temperature band they can produce within. At the high side of the band the bushel per acre falls, that’s it. The climate in the grain growing regions of the world has risen enough to pull down production. Millions of acres of farms cannot be relocated, top soil depth/type, duration of sunlight and growing season and rain patterns were matched to the plant thousands of years ago, we are stuck with this, either fix it or eat less.

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