Guest essay by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
The year 2013 has been a great year for global agriculture. Record world production of rice and healthy production of wheat and corn produced strong harvests across the world. These gains were achieved despite continuing predictions that world agricultural output is headed for a decline.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that world rice harvests for 2012/2013 were a record 469 million metric tons. Corn and wheat harvests were also strong, following record harvests for both grains during the 2011/2012 season. The USDA is now projecting world record harvests for corn, wheat, and rice for 2013/2014.
See this graph:
These numbers cap a 50-year trend of remarkable growth in world grain production. Since 1960, global wheat and rice production has tripled, and corn production is almost five times higher.
For decades, doomsayers predicted that food production would fail to keep up with the needs of humanity. In 1972, Donella Meadows and others of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published The Limits to Growth, which asked the question, “Do these rather dismal statistics mean that the limits of food production on the earth have already been reached?” Paul Ehrlich wrote in The End of Affluence in 1974, “Due to a combination of ignorance, greed and callousness, a situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.”
But Norman Borlaug’s development of disease-resistant, high-yield strains of wheat and rice had already revolutionized twentieth century agriculture. A few years before Meadows and Ehrlich warned about coming famines, Borlaug’s wheat and rice were introduced into Latin America and Asia with astounding results. Mexico’s wheat production soared six-fold by 1970 from levels in the 1940s. India’s wheat production jumped from a huge deficit in 1965 to a surplus only five years later.
Food production continues to grow faster than population. Data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations shows a 30 percent gain in the per capita agricultural production index from 1980 to 2010. World citizens have access to more grain, meat, dairy products, and fruits and vegetables. Even fish production is climbing with large gains in aquaculture fish farming.
The increased availability of food reduced the undernourished portion of the world’s population from 18.6 percent in 1990 to 12.5 percent in 2010, according to the FAO. A total of 868 million people are still classified as undernourished.
Today’s leading agriculture alarmists are proponents of the ideology of Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. Earlier this month, a leaked draft report from Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that man-made climate change would reduce global agricultural production yields by up to two percent per decade throughout the twenty-first century.
Lester Brown’s Earth Policy Institute has long been a predictor of agricultural collapse. His website states, “…climate change is heightening the likelihood of weather extremes, like heat waves, droughts, and flooding, that can so easily decimate harvests.” Even the USDA warns that man-made climate change threatens US agriculture.
Yet, one must wonder when the climate-damaging effects on agriculture will appear. The IPCC states that 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period in the Northern Hemisphere of the last 1,400 years. Certainly we should have seen some negative agricultural impact by now?
Maybe rising agricultural production is like rising polar bear populations―the decline begins tomorrow.
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
According to World Bank’s Annual Crop Yield report, US grain crop yields have increased 80% from 1980 to 2010….
Much of this is due to technological improvements in irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, hybrid/GMO seed development, better land management, improved crop rotation, etc., but a large portion of this can also be attributed to CO2 fertilization, which CAGW grant whores refuse to acknowledge.
I’ve read some estimates that C3 crop yields could increase by 40% just from CO2 fertilization alone when CO2 levels reach 560ppm… Oh, the humanity…. a 40% increase in crop yields…
How long can this stupid CAGW hoax last with such overwhelming empirical evidence disconfirming virtually ALL of IPCC’s outrageous Warmageddon claims?
I give this puppy 5 more years and then it won’t past the giggle test. Taxpayers will revolt against this CAGW scam and follow Australia’s lead in abandoning this absurd Gloooooobal Waaaaarming silliness.
It’s becoming insane….
“GeeJam says:
I do not believe for one minute that increased global agricultural yield has got anything to do with an incy wincy increase in CO2. ”
YES going from 314 to 400 ppm is a Big deal if you are a plant.
Plant Growth chart shows with the rise in C02 from 300 ppm to 400 ppm is about 50% higher growth rate and that would equal to about 25% higher yields. Yes better technology in farming has helped the rest of %
Take a look at the simple chart in the link below.
Older good info on C02 and Plant growth but I do not agree about the global warming BS in articl with C02.
http://www.hydrofarm.com/resources/articles/co2_enrichment.php
Happy Thanks Giving to All
“A total of 868 million people are still classified as undernourished.” Steve Goreham
The development of Golden Rice is a potential life-saving crop, especially for children because it provides the micronutrients that their developing bodies need. This is important because some people still live on a rice diet. Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace, talks about Golden Rice:
Norman Borlaug was intrigued by the potentials of these kinds of modification, and did not see it as much different from what people have been doing with grains for the last 10,000 years. He is someone we should listen to!
Quick reference C02 and plant growth chart.
More C02 the more the more food we will all have to eat. When you are eating thanksgiving Dinner remember everything you eat has been grown better because of more C02 in the atmosphere..
https://twitter.com/NJSnowFan/status/405606308650291200/photo/1
CO2 is good for plants and warmt is good for plants otherways why would there bee greenhouses? But something els now. The cahrt shows at te ent a down line ecept for rice. Is that good? It looks to mee the steep downline is bad. Or is this the new IPCC way of thinking?
…and here I was, convinced that Co2 was plant food …
and, darn it, nature goes and proves me right!
At Rothamstead Research Station, in the uk, they have a field (Broadbalk Field) that has grown wheat continuously for over 150 years. The ‘control’ plots have received no fertiliser of any sort during that period, and yield on average about 1.5 tonnes of wheat per hectare. The fertilised plots yield considerably more, as would be expected, yet when shown round the plots a couple of years ago the demonstrator said that the control plots gave the average world yield of wheat! No wonder there is plenty of scope for improvement in crop yields.
Africa: Continent of Plenty – IEEE Spectrum
spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/africa-continent-of-plenty
6 Jun 2013 – Africa: Continent of Plenty. Ten reasons why Africa can feed itself—and help feed the rest of the world too.
All this news about wheat production may be wonderful – but just gives the merchants an excuse to pay farmers below the cost of production.
@njsnowfan says:
November 26, 2013 at 11:54 pm
“GeeJam says:
I do not believe for one minute that increased global agricultural yield has got anything to do with an incy wincy increase in CO2. ”
YES going from 314 to 400 ppm is a Big deal if you are a plant.
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I read an article some time ago that in the early morning the CO2 concentration above a cornfield was between 500-700ppm. By lunchtime it is sucked below 200ppm. I would take those measurements from Mauna Lea with a grain of salt.
And still people starve to death on this planet. It is the worse tragedy. There is so much food, but we have organised ourselves in such a way that people still starve to death. What? We can move 100,000 troops into Iraq and feed them but we can’t move some Wheat and Corn to starving children? What the hell are we doing?
Adam says:
November 27, 2013 at 1:23 am
“We can move 100,000 troops into Iraq and feed them but we can’t move some Wheat and Corn to starving children? What the hell are we doing?”
And what about the adults who are starving?
The issue is not one of food production. As I understand it, we globally produce enough food to feed around 9 billion people, the issue is one of distribution!
Could somebody point me to where the 1960-2013 World Grain Production graph came from. I have looked through the links provided, and can`t find it.
Nick Stokes – you quote from the IPCC: ”With or without adaptation, [man-made] climate change will reduce median yields by 0 to 2% per decade for the rest of the century, as compared to a baseline without climate change.”.
Blind Freddie can see that this is absurd. The man-made climate change predicted by the IPCC includes increased temperatures and increased precipitation (not as much increase in precipitation as would theoretically occur, but an increase nonetheless). That would open up vast areas of Siberia and N Canada to agricultural production. The increased food production capacity would be enormous.
It is rather depressing that warmists seem to seek depressing angles on everything.
Adam says:
November 27, 2013 at 1:23 am
And still people starve to death on this planet. It is the worse tragedy. There is so much food, but we have organised ourselves in such a way that people still starve to death. What? We can move 100,000 troops into Iraq and feed them but we can’t move some Wheat and Corn to starving children? What the hell are we doing?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Your compassion does you great credit.
And it is sometimes necessary to move large amounts of food/supplies around in emergencies.
But the bigger question is, why haven’t we moved the knowledge and technology around to let people get out of the hand-to-mouth subsistence farming that keeps so many people on the knife edge of starvation?
We need to do better as a civilization . It isn’t a transfer of wealth that the third world needs, it is a transfer of knowledge ,knowledge that will let them build their own countries up,without tearing others down.
New report lays climate change blame with fossil fuels industry. Ninety companies, including BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil, have been blamed for causing the climate change crisis. But can we really blame climate change on fossil fuel providers alone – aren’t the public and government responsible too?
Lets look at a few present day Australian wheat prices compared to the Wheat prices of past eras.
The prices received by farmers generally reflect the availability of food grains around the world although this relation ship is breaking down as more and more commercial organisations force their way into the international and domestic grain trade and between grower and consumer. All of course intent on making a substantial profit and constantly demanding that the farmers, the food growers get more “efficient” and reduce prices, something those same organisations don’t seem to bother to do themselves.
They just push the lower cost demands ever downwards onto the actual producers of that food while they invent ever newer ways of processing and labelling food products to give the appearance of being essential part of the food chain from producers to consumers
All the following prices are Australian dollar denomination except for the period before the decimal dollar which was introduced on the 14th Feb 1966.
To set the scene, Australia’s current 2013 National Minimum Wage as set by the Fair Work Commission at $606 / week
The Australian full time adult average weekly ordinary time earnings in November 2012 was around $1,400 / week, say about $73,000 / year of which tax takes a very large lump out of.
In 1932 in the depths of Australia’s Great Depression, the minimum wage as set by the various then state wage setting commissions was about Three pounds a week although a large percentage of the those still working during the years of the Great Depression didn’t get this minimum wage.
In 1932 Wheat prices dropped to one shilling and sixpence a bushell, equivalent to Two pounds sixteen shillings a tonne [ 20 shillings to the Pound] or just a bit below the minimum wage.
So even under the extreme financial stress of those times wheat prices per tonne, still remained about the same as the weekly wage.
In 1948 following the devastation of WW2 there was some starvation in Europe as world food stocks were so depleted and the production of food in Europe was still to get underway so my father received an astonishing 25 pounds / tonne for his wheat and that was in his pocket after freight and all costs were deducted.
The minimum wage in 1948 was about seven pounds to seven pounds ten shillings a week.
Most workers took home probably nine pounds a week or more.
Therefore, one tonne of wheat in 1948 was worth over two week’s wages.
Those late 1940 ‘s and early 1950’s really were the glory days for agriculture in Australia and a period where Australian agriculture had the money and resources to go from a near peasant animal dependent [ horses ] farming system to a modern advanced machinery, herbicide and fertilizer based farming technology.
1968 was also the year when there was a huge apparent excess and build up of wheat stocks in the world so Wheat Delivery Quota’s were brought in by the Australian wheat Board, the monopoly wheat buying organisation which allowed a grain grower to only deliver a percentage of the average amount of his delivered wheat from a period of years past.
What we did with any other wheat that we had produced over our delivery quota was our problem and as there was only one legal delivery point the Australian Wheat Board, there were huge effects on farmers and the grain industry arising from this wheat quota delivery impost.
Quota wheat was paid for by the AWB at an end price of $62 /tonne.
Non quota wheat generally went for about $40 to $45 /tonne in the over border trade which was deemed legal by the High Court under the Constitution’s Freedom of Interstate Trade .
A tradesman’s wages in 1968 was about $55 / week.
So even during what was apparently a very bad period for wheat prices, quota wheat per tonne, in the late 1960’s was still selling for more than a tradesman’s weekly wage.
In October 1972, unbeknown to the rest of the world, the Russian Soviets after a series of very bad harvests which were carefully hidden from the rest of the world, had literally run out of grain so they embarked on a carefully planned buy up of some 6 million tonnes of still cheap wheat across the world, most buying of which was done over a period of about 5 days.
It is known as the Great Grain Robbery.
Wheat went from about $65 / tonne on the friday night of the GGR to about $150 / tonne in the following mid week and stayed there for the next couple of years. It was another period of great prosperity for the grains industry in Australia
Today wheat is priced both here in Australia and currently on the Chicago market at around the $280/ tonne at port so freight and handling and etc of some $50 plus / tonne have to be deducted from this to arrive at the price the farmer gets, a price of about $230 / tonne for his year’s work and risk and thats if the farmer is lucky.
So to ask a question often asked by farmers. If the price of wheat had kept up with Australia’s long term inflation figure what would the true price of wheat per tonne today?
Well the Reserve Bank of Australia has a very interesting calculator where you can work that out for yourself which can be found by googling for; “RBA Inflation Calculator”
So if I enter those very low prices of the Wheat Quota years of the late 1960’s at non quota wheat prices of say $45 / tonne in 1968 then the RBA inflation calculator gives a price for the same wheat today, after inflation is taken into account, of $496 / tonne.
Of course if we used the really good grain prices of 1973 of $150 / tonne then today that same wheat would be worth $1263 / tonne.
The farmers of the world are just too damn good at their job as those prices reflect that after some 80 years there is arguably a greater amount of food grains in the world for each of those 7.2 billion of earth’s inhabitants than there has ever been down through any time in mankind’s past history.
This fact is reinforced by the fact that there has been NO major famines due to actual global grain shortages since the great East Bengal famine of 1948.
All recent famines such as the one created by Mao’s Great Leap Forward where an estimated 40 to 50 million Chinese starved to death, have been what I classify as political famines, those created either inadvertently or deliberately by mankind himself.
As a 75 year old now retired Australian grain grower and farmer;
1 / If the world warms some more and CO2 continues to increase we can feed the 9 or 10 billions that will inhabit this earth by about 2050 after which the global population will most likely start to decline.
2 / If the world starts to cool but CO2 continues to rise then we can possibly feed those numbers, perhaps and maybe, just!
3 / If somehow the alarmist science find some way of reducing CO2 AND the world starts to cool then all bets are off as to if we can feed those predicted numbers of humans by 2050.
And THAT God forbid, implies the possibility of short periods of mass starvation somewhere on this planet by 2050.
Pray for a warming world and CO2 increasing to double it’s current levels and your children will always have enough to eat for far into the future
There is no way possible with 1 planet worth of resources to keep a population of billions at even the lowest level of western civilization. Being not hungry doesn’t mean you live a good life. There will be always more people having ,much less & less people having more. The only thing that can change is the distribution over the world,who will be the next top dog. Anything else is pure fantasy lalaland.
Borlaug offered his new wheat to Africa free of charge but this was refused by the UN Secretary General on grounds that wheat was not the correct food for Africa. As a result Africa continued to starve and still does in many places.
Mike Jonas says: November 27, 2013 at 2:03 am
” That would open up vast areas of Siberia and N Canada to agricultural production. The increased food production capacity would be enormous.
It is rather depressing that warmists seem to seek depressing angles on everything.”
Well, their preceding sentence said, in bold:
“Without adaptation, local temperature increases of 1°C or more above preindustrial levels are projected to negatively impact yields for the major crops (wheat, rice, and maize) in tropical and temperate regions, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence).”
I don’t myself have a firm view on how that would work out. But I think they should not be misquoted.
Petrossa says:
November 26, 2013 at 11:22 pm
“…by no stretch of the imagination is it ever possible to even-up their living standards to the lowest level of the western world now. Let alone if indeed the population mounts (sic) to 12 billion.”
Zeke reports:
November 26, 2013 at 11:49 pm
“According to McKinsey’s Global Population Report…We are talking here of lifting close to a quarter of the world’s population from the tyranny of poverty, through economic growth, in the short space of less than 20 years.
Richard says:
November 27, 2013 at 1:11 am
spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/africa-continent-of-plenty
6 Jun 2013 – Africa: Continent of Plenty. Ten reasons why Africa can feed itself—and help feed the rest of the world too.
Perhaps Petrossa needs to stretch that imagination a little further!
It’s kind of fun doing the impossible.
Just checked an inflation adjusted graph of corn prices. Prices have continuously moved lower until the ethanol rules of 2007. However, in the last year, prices have halfed, and are heading toward the all-time lows of the beginning of the millenium. Seems the markets, after some adjustments, are finding their equilibrium point.
Felflames says:
“We need to do better as a civilization . It isn’t a transfer of wealth that the third world needs, it is a transfer of knowledge ,knowledge that will let them build their own countries up,without tearing others down.”
The knowledge you are speaking of is not hidden from anyone. In fact, British, French and German colonialists demonstrated and taught it around the world even a hundred years ago. As we know, it didn’t catch on everywhere back then. Since these times, Europe went through two devastating wars, large parts of it were suppressed by Nazi and Commie regimes for considerable periods, and still, the agricultural techniques improved more than in countries that “suffered” nothing worse than being released into “freedom” from the colonial powers that were. Why is that so? The facts *look like* not all varieties of Homo sapiens are equally capable in terms of industriousness and intelligence, just as they *look like* that CO2 increase has little damaging effect on Earth’s wellbeing. Now who did come up with the idea that all races are equal? And who promotes that CO2 is evil? Dare I say “UNITED NATIONS” – likely the ugliest bunch of bastards to disgrace the planet, as eternal suppressors of the productive, healthy and industrious, by promoting and supporting everything weak, sick, and inferior… [Snip. Please don’t single out specific races. ~ mod.]
Petrossa says:
[quote]Whilst this maybe true, one shouldn’t forget that despite that 80% of the worlds population lives at a subsistence level.[end quote]
According to the media, there is so much suffering in the world, that I can not understand how Petrossa can get through the day without going crazy from worrying about the suffering people.
Do people really care about all that suffering going on in distant lands? Personally I worry, first and foremost, about my suffering and that of my family, and then about friends and neighbors, and about people of my own race and culture. After that, I am pretty much empathized-out.