From Kansas State University, where they apparently don’t look at crop reports like this one:
MANHATTAN, Kansas — A recent study involving Kansas State University researchers finds that in the coming decades at least one-quarter of the world’s wheat production will be lost to extreme weather from climate change if no adaptive measures are taken.
Vara Prasad, professor of crop ecophysiology and director of the USAID Feed the Future Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab at Kansas State University, is part of a collaborative team that found wheat yields are projected to decrease by 6 percent for each degree Celsius the temperature rises if no measures to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations are taken. Based on the 2012-2013 wheat harvest of 701 million tons worldwide, the resulting temperature increase would result in 42 million tons less produced wheat — or a loss of nearly one-quarter of the current wheat production.
“It’s pretty severe,” Prasad said. “The projected effect of climate change on wheat is more than what has been forecast. That’s challenging because the world will have to at least double our food supply in the next 30 years if we’re going to feed 9.6 billion people.”
Prasad and colleagues published their study, “Rising temperatures reduce global wheat production,” in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. The study was supported through the Kansas Wheat Commission and the Kansas Wheat Alliance, two organizations seeking ways to increase wheat yield.
For the study, researchers systematically tested 30 wheat crop models against field experiments from around the world that were conducted in areas where the average temperature of the growing season ranged from 15 to 32 degrees Celsius. The models accounted for planting dates, planting rates, temperatures and other crop management factors.
With the models, researchers were able to look at the effects of temperature stresses on wheat and predict future changes based on temperature changes.
Researchers found that the effects from climate change and its increasing temperatures on wheat will be more severe than once projected and are happening sooner than expected. While Prasad said increases in the average temperature are problematic, a bigger challenge is the extreme temperatures that are resulting from climate change.
“Extreme temperature doesn’t only mean heat; it also means cold,” Prasad said. “Simply looking at the average temperature doesn’t really show us anything because it’s the extremities that are more detrimental to crops. Plants can handle gradual changes because they have time to adapt, but an extreme heat wave or cold snap can kill a plant because that adjustment period is often nonexistent.”
Researchers also found that increasing temperatures are shortening the time frame that wheat plants have to mature and produce full heads for harvest, resulting in less grain produced from each plant.
“It’s like having one minute to fill a tall glass with water. Under optimal conditions, we can fill that glass pretty well,” Prasad said. “But now we’re factoring in extreme temperatures that are affecting the growing window and the grain size. So it becomes like trying to fill that same glass, but now we only have 40 seconds to do it and the faucet is running slower.”
Currently, Prasad and colleagues at Kansas State University, in collaboration with the university’s Wheat Genetics Resource Center, are using growth chambers and heats tents to quantify the effects of temperature. The data will help in refining the crop models so that they can be more accurate in predicting wheat responses.
Their work will help scientists develop more robust models that can help farmers globally select more weather-tolerant and resilient wheat varieties based on their location. Additionally, farmers can determine the optimal planting date to avoid stress and minimize possible exposure to extreme weather events, such as heat and cold snaps, during the growing season.
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Kansas is the No. 1 wheat-producing state in the U.S., growing 9.4 million acres of wheat in 2014.
Will have to start eating rice
I think that the obsession with fantasy climate change scenarios is an unnecessary tax burden to produce silly studies.
But IF temeratures increase, does this not mean that the northern limit of wheat production moves north; and the further north you go the longer is the growing day.
Seems to me that total production might well go up, not down.
It would if global warming caused only warmer weather. But the hiatus is consistent with the models. Cold weather is also consistent with the models. Therefore some combination of warm/cold/the same weather, along with more/less/ the same rainfall will produce lower yields, because the computer models say so. Sure, wheat yields are increasing, but that is only because wheat doesn’t understand climate science.
“but that is only because wheat doesn’t understand climate science”
Then it needs cutting down to size !!
Bezotch
Thanks.
QUOTE
But the hiatus is consistent with the models.
END QUOTE
Apologies – I missed those.
Please give links to where these supernal models, possibly unfamiliar to many who visit here, may be found.
And are they ex post facto accommodating reality?
Auto
I have heard many warmists make that claim.
Google it!
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=hiatus+consistent+with+climate+models&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=GG3mVJr4I4q_ggSrj4CwBA&ved=0CBoQgQMwAA
21,400 results (boy, they have been busy)
And since there were 0 predictions of the hiatus based on the models and 21,400 explanations of how it is still consistent with the models, I’d say, yes, they are ex post facto accommodating reality
oh just lovely…..CO2 changes the weather without changing the temperature again
These people can’t be this stupid……it’s obvious they are lying
“These people can’t be this stupid……”
Oh yes they can, when you’re stuck in a belief system facts don’t mean a thing, look at most religions; fantasy beats fact every time.
I thought extreme weather was already here. They told me it was true. Maybe extreme weather / climate added with toxic co2 caused last year’s record global cereal output.
Based on observations I think this modeled study is cat’s sh!t. It is the hottest evaaaa after all, isn’t it?
Of course they can, we are nowhere near “peak stupid”. (based on Einstein’s quote)
@ur momisugly latitude:
They are not stupid at all.
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”
From “War Propaganda”, volume 1, chapter 6 of Mein Kampf (1925), by Adolf Hitler
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
This statement is generally attributed to Joseph Goebbels , Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda.
This is the outcome when results of an already failing model are fed as input into a second unproven model and ongoing. What can possibly go wrong, as they have vast computing power for unmatched precision?
First it is increasing temperature that will decimate wheat production, then it’s “average temperature doesn’t really show us anything.” This is university research? GMAB!
Sadly, I must confess that this is from the university from which I earned my Computer Science degree.
With upcoming new “little Ice Age” wheat production in the Northern states and Canada will probably go down. But since we cannot control the climate, we’ll just have to adapt.
Well, they are right…. IF the models are truen then the wheta will suffer.
All I read is models, models, models, if, if, if, blah, blah, blah.
The study lacks the meat to bite into it… sorry, the wheat to make dough
I wonder if their “growth chambers” increased the CO2 to match future atmosphere – that would make a big difference in future production as it has for the past 30 years.
I, too, was wondering about atmosphere in “growth chambers”. They didn’t say, but I suspect they could produce almost whatever outcome they wanted by controlling the environment. Ah, environmental control!
I’d be interested in what CO2 level they chose.
Danny … they may be a step ahead of us and are factoring a drop in CO2 … nah, just kidding!
Isn’t it fortunate that there is a robust & rigorous peer-review system in place that stops this kind of nonsense getting published.
Oh. Wait………
Love the math: 100% increase in production required to feed the 31% increase in population.
Did they include all the people who went gluten free in the models?
Bill, they are not the only ones. 2009 FAO study How to Feed the World in 2050 said 70% (calories, not wheat) for a population increase of 34%, then concluded it would NOT be possible on the yield, arable land, and irrigation trajectories of the past 5 decades! The buried disportportionality assumptions were elimination of malnutrition, increase in total calories per capita, and increase in meat protein ( which is calory inefficient). Unfortunately, other than a recommendation to fling massive ag R&D dollars at developing countries with high population growth (of course administered by the FAO), FAO did not say what might feed the world in 2050. See the food chapter in Gaia’s Limits. It is doable on present trajectories for a 2050 population of about 9.2 billion in some diet scenarios, not others. World is something like 7.2-7.3 billion today. More food is not in the cards without a second green revolution. Unfortunately, past large dwarfing, pest resistance, and best practices gains are not repeatable except where not yet deployed; even if they are everywhere by 2050, this soft carrying capacity is reached. And the greens adamantly reject GMO, which offers some additional yeild opportunity for some important crops but not others. Just a methodical data slog through a big pile of agricultural facts and past innovations to figurate a soft limit. Many here might disagree with any limit, on principle. Read the book, develop an informed opinion.
As I said elsewhere, the answer is treecrops. We can replace some human foods, and basically all of our animals feeds with things far more stable and productive per acre. Siberian peashrubs for instance, yields dwarf soy or corn, and it is comparable to soy in nutritional content. Inputs are not mandatory and it thrives in places considered non arable now. There are many others. I also know groups across africa with alternative models with overall yields far surpassing industrial ag crops. Im not exactly sure how all this is still ignored by so many but it is real, and it more then answers our current issues if embraced. I might also point out with proper funding and the most intelligent involved as well we could do much better and faster then the field is progressing atm, so far its mostly back yarders such as myself driving this work.
Lots of other promising stuff as well. buffalo gourds for instance grow in many “non arable” places, non irrigated. They also have a quality veggie oil, and can be bred with edible gourds as well, so useful for more then just oils. Some student in a texas university showed all this a few years back, then graduated and no one seems to have run with the idea.
The numbers are still out, but clear enough to see we could dwarf yields per area for several of our needs with treecrops, (and a few other ignored things) and open up or vastly improve many marginal or non arable places. My own methods work across massive areas, nearly useless for food production atm.
As you likely know several major growing areas rely on irrigation that it is unlikely can be sustained at current levels. Again treecrops answer this well. If we fail to adapt, it will be from ignorance, no because we didnt have a path laid out in front of us to travel down.
I meant to say buffalo gourds can be bred with edible squash, not gourds. A tricky project, but it can be done. GM methods could do it fast.
Must be Common Core math, which is known to produce uncommon results.
Bill:
That’s because the other 69% of the increase goes into US school lunches meeting Mrs. Obama’s criteria, which the students then throw away.
Bill Illis,
Yeah, he flubbed that one didn’t he. I looked into this one a while back. IIRC, it’s market-driven demand for food which is expected to double in the next 50 years even though population is only expected to grow on the order 30%. Reason cited: increased affluence in developing economies extrapolated from current trends. So the better argument to make is that food production needs to double over the next 50 years to keep pace with the expected demand, else economic growth will be stunted. Which is bad for everyone in a globalized economy.
The perennial question is how much will the mitigation run us.
That is a foolish analysis, assuming demand will double irrespective of supply. Any fool with a smidgeon of economics education will then conclude “food costs will increase”. How did these people earn PhDs while being ignorant of courses routinely taught in high school?
Um … it’s the increased demand not keeping pace with supply which allows market players to set a higher clearing price. The macro perspective here is that the inflationary pressure from rising food costs would tend to stunt real GDP growth.
Which is exactly the same argument against taxing emissions.
Based on the 2012-2013 wheat harvest of 701 million tons worldwide, the resulting temperature increase would result in 42 million tons less produced wheat — or a loss of nearly one-quarter of the current wheat production.
42 million is one-quarter of 701 million? What am I missing?
A government grant.
About 100 million tons. Could it be 142? – anyway, typical scare with little grounding to reality.
Ugh, 42/701 is about 1:16 or 1:17, so instead of a quarter it is less than a quarter of a quarter. Facked app.
Its the new Math…
Perhaps there was more to this than shown in the extracts, otherwise I have real worries about their mental abilities.
Take this for example “Based on the 2012-2013 wheat harvest of 701 million tons worldwide, the resulting temperature increase would result in 42 million tons less produced wheat — or a loss of nearly one-quarter of the current wheat production.”
a quarter of 701 MT is 175million Tons not 42 MT.
And then there is this. ” the world will have to at least double our food supply in the next 30 years if we’re going to feed 9.6 billion people.””
so we are feeding 7 Billion people with 701 BT so that 100 Tons per person so 9.6 Billion people will need 9.6 BT to remain the same.
701BT less 42 BT = 659 BT means we need an increase of 32% not double.
To think that they went to Universtity to come up with that, I bet the average UK Secondary School kid could come up with better answers than that.
How does 701MT become 701BT? 701MT divided by 7 billion is 100Kg per person of wheat only rather than 100T. Makes a difference. fortunately the majority lives off rice.
Yes you are correct I misread it, but the equation stays the same so it makes absolutley no difference, if 100Kg can feed a person now it will be able to do so in 50 years time.
Well there’s your problem…
yeah and I wonder what GMO crew theyre getting funds from?
But there will be more growing degree days per year, and much land to the north that is currently not producing wheat will be able to. Farmable Canada will go from being 50 miles wide to 75.
In truth, they have no idea of the size of any change or of the sign of any changes that might be attributable to an increase in average world temperature.
As both a Canadian and a farmer I’d like to correct a misconception you seem to be under, Farmable Canada is a lot more than 50 miles wide (we also do not live in igloos and play ice hockey on frozen ponds 11 months of the year). Our farm is about 200 miles north of the border and the farm belt extends several hundred miles further north, past the arctic circle. In the far northern areas of Alberta, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories they do grow shorter season crops. The reason why a vast area of Canada has no agriculture is geological, not climactic. It is precambrian shield and it has virtually no topsoil. An increase in temperatures would only cause a minimal expansion in the size of the Canadian farming belt. That being said, an increase in temperatures would cause an increase in production as farmers would be able to grow higher yielding, longer season crops.
Regardless, ignore this and all other Malthusian studies. The issues are ones of economics, not agronomics. The reason why there are hungry people in the world is not because there isn’t enough food, it is because they don’t have any money to buy food. Our farm has more than doubled our per acre production in the last 30 years through increased inputs and improved technologies. We could theoretically double production again through a large increase in inputs and intensive farming techniques, but we don’t, because that would cost far more than the grain is worth (i.e. what we would get paid for the grain). If the world is willing (and able) to pay more for food, more food will be produced. The key is to ensure that people have enough money to buy food, prosperous nations do not have famines. Sound economic policy will do more to eliminate world hunger than redistributionist policies ever could. The surest way to increase world hunger is to impoverish the world with harebrained economic schemes.
Looks like all the wheat growing models are flawed.
…however, based on the results of this and other studies, Dr. Prasad’s grant funding is expected to increase at an unprecedented pace…
The reality is it will be getting colder and more extremes within the cold trend will become evident as we advance into this decade which may indeed impact wheat production and other crops for that matter.
So they maybe have it correct but for all the WRONG reasons.
Do they never look out of the window?
“With the MODELS, researchers were able to look at the effects of temperature stresses on wheat and predict future changes based on temperature changes.”
Models. I have an Uncle who worked for Ag Canada breeding and growing wheat varieties, half the year in Canada and half the year south of the Salton sea. This would put him on the floor howling with laughter.
As a Saskatchewan wheat farmer I am constantly amused by the number of people who have told me over the last 25 years that within 10 or 20 years global warming would cause crop failures in Saskatchewan. Somehow, a crop that has been cultivated for 6000 years in Egypt, would not be able to withstand Saskatchewan’s “warm” climate.
I would think they have all the data they need. About 200 km south they will have wheat production that will occur in Kansas if things warm up. About 200 km north they will have wheat production that will occur if things cool down. The wheat belt stretches from Texas to northern Canada, which I believe is north-south, or cold to hot. The custom combiners start harvest early in the south and move north as crops mature (I think they are a dying breed). How many varieties of wheat are there? Looking to predict extreme cold spells or hot spells within a highly seasonal climate is a fool’s mission.
To complete the study they should have tested for lower temperature also.
Just to be sure if present climate really is better or worse than a colder one.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker/Ul58jYd7QEKScamqMRVy_nutty_professor.jpg
It is irrelevant that the last 50 years of global warming has resulted in an increase in the production of wheat, since the models say there is a decrease. The amazingly expensive and complex multi-dimensional, synchronous wallapalooza processing models are much more reliable than simple observation.
These “researchers” must be eating rabbit droppings and thinking they are smart pills. It’s like going to the movies and believing the CGI characters and sets are real, and the live actors and locations fake.
Anecdotally I can agree that extreme temps aren’t good in my garden – frost in July and we’re covering plants but,
(my bold)
makes me curious as to exactly how long an “adjustment period” does a wheat plant physiologically require?
I’ll take my answer to the nearest nano-second, so no big deal.
Not even going to ask what “gradual” means – centuries?
“Extreme temperature doesn’t only mean heat; it also means cold,”
Hmmm… Trying to cover all the bases… What a bunch of bovine feces.