Guest essay by David Archibald
A correspondent in Oslo writes:
“The official view in Norway is in contrast to what the people experience because of cooling weather: Late spring gives flooding and avalanches when late snow-melting in the mountains. Water pipes freeze because of early and deep frost in the winter. Insect populations down 40% in 5 years because of cool and wet summers. This of cause is bad for pollination of fruit and berries. The grain harvest in Norway this summer is down 18% from average the last 5 years, despite increase in area and better seeds. But officially it is getting warmer.”
Some of those observations are anecdotal but some facts can be checked – Norwegian wheat production for example. The following figure shows Norwegian wheat production from 1960. Wheat production is off 48% from its peak:
Figure 1: Norwegian Wheat Production 1960 – 2013
The problem is sprouting of grain on the stalk prior to harvest due to excessive humidity. That in turn means that Norwegian wheat is no longer good enough to make Norwegian bread as shown by Figure 2:
Figure 2: Percentage of domestic wheat in Norwegian wheat flour (Statistics Norway 2011)
Just a few years ago, Norwegian wheat comprised up to about 75% of Norwegian bread, seemingly hitting a blend wall. Now it is down to 10% due to climate change.
The Norwegian Government used to have a policy of storing two years’ worth of grain consumption. This was a lesson from WW2. It took two generations to forget that lesson and the policy was abandoned in the 1990s. Like a number of other countries, Norway will have to pay for higher food imports while its main source of revenue is falling rapidly. Norwegian oil production peaked in 2001 at 3.4 million barrels per day is now under half that number:
Figure 3: Norwegian Oil Production 1965 – 2013
Norwegian oil production has produced a classic Hubbert-style peak. Norway will cease to be an oil exporter by 2030. The country had attempted to placate the gods of climate with an expensive carbon capture project at the Mongstad refinery on the west coast. That foolish and self-indulgent project was abandoned on 20th September, 2013. With the funds that have been saved by that abandonment perhaps the Norwegian Government should go back to storing two years’s worth of grain.
Related articles
- Norway ditches ‘moon landing’ carbon capture project (businessgreen.com)
- ‘One of the ugliest political crash landings’ – Norway abandons carbon capture project (mining.com)
charles the moderator says:
October 5, 2013 at 12:13 pm
………..So who knows what is happening and why? I sure don’t.
Hi
It is very simple, oil and gas prices have been rising in the last 10 or so years, Norway exports giga giga-buckets of both and getting very very rich. It is far cheaper to import US or Canadian, Ukrainian or ‘wheatever’ than bother with growing its own.
@ur momisugly charles the moderator: Thanks for injecting some coherence into this thread.
Looks like Norwegian wheat flour production is an excellent proxy for “climate change”. Who needs tree rings!
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Not identical but a strong similarity.
Keith, not that much different, approx 54 down to 30 Iif you add in 2012/3. That’s a 44% drop in yield/hectare. Murray
We must act now to tackle climate change. Now, where are those early springs I keep hearing about? It went absent in the UK too this year.
[my bold]
From charles’ link, since last year.. wheat down 50, barley up 50.
sorry, that’s from 2011 to 2012.
Increased imports of cheaper EU subsidized wheat, anyone? Norway is not a EU member but preferred trading partner and may profit from importing cheaper wheat from the south which in turn would reduce incentive to grow it domestically. It would also be interesting to see if there is a shift in what farmers put on their fields over the years. Maybe they are now preferring a cash crop?
The world record for wheat yield per hectare is held, not by European countries or by North America, but in the southern part of the South Island of New Zealand. And yet NZ, by world standards, grows very little wheat. Despite the yield, the most productive farm land use is usually something else such as dairying and it is cheaper to import wheat from much lower yielding countries such as Australia.
Same for Norway. Grow what suits it best. I can’t imagine that that is wheat.
Bad growing season for centre and eastern Norway this year, late spring and Cold/damp summer months,
Norway is in reality to far North/to Cold for wheat, traditionally we grow barley and some Oats, wheat only on the plots with long seasons. Some special incentives and warm, good summers made more and more farmers take the risk on wheat as you can see from Davids graph. 2007 was a very good year with bumper crops and high quality, later years with less favourable conditions have started a downward spiral with less yelds, less profit and reduced wheat area. Especially autumn wheat is reduced since the harvesting in bad years can be to late for sowing.
Norwegian wheat was never really good for flour anyway, baking was so much easier with Canadian or Australian wheat.
You shoud not read much into these statistics, it is weather not climate. 🙂
But building up a few years supply of grains (we still have the silos) as David suggest may happen, it is picking up political momentum now.
Luckily we have made a lot of large oil field discoveries lately and the export will pick up over the next 5 years, Also the graph is misleading, we export a lot more gas then oil now and at very good prices compared to the US.
The CCS at the Mongstad gas power facility was a sad event in Norwegian politics. Against all technical and commercial advice the project was started for purely political reasons (The green party demanded it as a concession to join the centre-left coalition that ruled Norway for the last 8 years) and it just could’t be shut down as evidence of the financial impossibility of the Project became evident years ago.
Sigmundb says:
October 5, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Norway is in reality to far North/to Cold for wheat
===
no kidding….almost all of the production is above 60 N lat
Other than the obvious….that would be Alaska
Yes, global warming is responsible for the cold in Norway and the humongous snowstorm hitting the Great Plains, earliest on record, here in the US. It’s also responsible for the government shutdown and the IRS coimuing after Dr. Ben Carson. The former is sarc, the latter probably not.
Kaboom says:
October 5, 2013 at 1:51 pm
“Increased imports of cheaper EU subsidized wheat, anyone?…Maybe they are now preferring a cash crop?”
___________________
Panama Red, Acapulco Gold- Oslo Orange, Bergen Blue?
Keith DeHavelle says: “As UnfrozenCavemanMD suggests, The area should be emphatic
Once area yield is addressed, The graph comes out much less dramatic:”
http://www.factfish.com/statistic-country/norway/wheat,%20yield
That’s a heck of a chart. Run your mouse along the data line. Nice.
You have to hand it to the Norwegians (I salute you, Sigmund), once they see something is worth a try, they give it 100%. When they see it isn’t working (after getting herring heads like the “Greens” out of the way), they STOP. NOW.
How strong is the Norwegian influence? I’m only 1/16th Norwegian and I am proud of that, lol. Yes, yes, I know, pride is just about the only manifestation of those genes in me #(:))
Mankind can indeed change a climate, land use.
Was there any deforestation involved with that expanded wheat farm area?. Any new dams in the area? Do they burn wood pellets? Do they make wood pellet?. Any Bio-diesel production?
Just wondering.
UnfrozenCavemanMD says:
> If interested in the effect of climate on wheat production, total production is meaningless without an area under cultivation as the denominator. Isn’t this the better graph?
Both metrics are interesting. A fall in production as steep as this clearly indicates the diminution of suitable land, even though the productivity in remaining areas may still be good. As an extreme example, we know from archaeology that wheat and barley were grown in the north of Scotland, at the elevations around 200 metres and higher, only about a millennium ago. Now there are only ferns and mosses there. It’s not that the present climate is too bad for wheat; it is way too good for the mosses.
On a related note, I had been following the wheat-growing effort in Iceland (just by flying over it) until last year, when I knew it was snowed in in the first days of September. I wonder if the effort is still ongoing.
Norway is small player in the global cereals production market and despite bad crop years in various places overall global production will be up 8% this year. Wheat production and stocks will be lower.
Keith W
See the http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/
“The outlook for global cereal supply in the 2013/14 marketing season remains generally favourable despite downward adjustments to forecasts for world cereal production and closing stocks.*
At 2 489 million tonnes, FAO’s current forecast for world cereal production in 2013 is marginally lower (3 million tonnes) than reported in September, mainly reflecting poorer prospects for the South America wheat crop, following adverse weather. Despite the adjustment, world cereal production would still surpass the 2012 level by nearly 8 percent. This significant growth is mainly the result of an 11 percent anticipated expansion in coarse grains output to about 1 288 million tonnes. The United States, the world’s largest maize producer, would account for the bulk of the increase, as it is expected to harvest a record maize crop of 348 million tonnes, 27 percent higher than the previous year’s drought-reduced level.
World cereal utilization in 2013/14 is now anticipated at 2 415.5 million tonnes, up 3.3 percent from the 2012/13 estimated level. This forecast has been raised slightly since September, due to upward revisions to wheat and coarse grains, which more than offset a downward revision to rice. Total use of cereals for direct human consumption is expected to reach 1 094 million tonnes in 2013/14, up 1.3 percent from 2012/13. Wheat (479 million tonnes) and rice (409 million tonnes) account for the bulk of the human consumption of cereals. World feed use is expected to absorb 850 million tonnes of cereals, 5.3 percent more than in 2012/13.”
I use the ripe tomato index here in Tacoma Washington. It has been 4 years since I was able to ripen any of the larger tomato varieties. My friend In England has also given up on large tomatoes as well.
Walter J Horsting says:
“Wait until sun cycle 25 kicks in!”
Ian W says:
“It would appear that “shuffles” may be a better description than “kicks””
Anyone for Limbo ??
Well, this post did inspire me to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito where I had:
Fersk roget laks med flodesuvet spinat at The Lighthouse, my favorite (Norwegian) diner.
Dear Charles (the Mo-d-er-ator),
I hope it was all you happily anticipated as you zoomed up the highway. Good? (btw — what in the world did you eat? My guess is salmon and spinach soufflé).
Thanks for mo-der-ating!
Janice
Reply: I don’t really moderate these days. I just still have the screen name and the admin rights ~ctm
Reply 2: Oh yeah, the dish was gravlax and creamed spinach ~ctm
Charles, no lutefisk? (Or is that really just a joke they play on tourists?)
Well, at least the Norwegians were smart enough to invest their oil money wisely, instead of squandering it.