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.
December 12, 2012
Science Daily
Climate modelers predict warmer, wetter Northeast U.S. winters by 2070
February 20, 2015
BBC
“Record-breaking cold descends on eastern US”
CNN
“Bitter, deadly cold grips eastern United States”
What does the phrase “climate change” actually mean? Is someone implying there was a time when climate was steady state and did not change?
A different group of modellers disagree…
http://www.regional.org.au/au/asa/2012/climate-change/8151_zullaf.htm
When a report is issued by an organization with the name “USAID Feed the Future Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab” I don’t think anything more needs to be said.
The agenda is there for all to see.
Meanwhile in the real world unencumbered by dogma Kansas farmers are growing bumper crops. Alternate uses for the moribund campus at Kansas State seem to be a matter requiring urgent research, a new feed lot perhaps.
According to the lead author of this study, “average” temperatures do not matter; but, the “extreme” temperatures do. I will grant him that outliers (that is, individual weather events and not statistical constructs used by Climatologists) can be devastating. But, he offers up a logical fallacy. Or better put, a strawman. For Climate Models do not forecast individual weather events (i.e. a late spring freeze or a massive hail storm). Ergo, there is no way his “models” can predict “extreme weather” either in the short or the long term. In other words, the man is fibbing – big time.
“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 right assumptions, you can get your models to show anything.
I’ve been predicting and following global crop yields based on the effects of weather and other elements for 23 years. In the real world, the last 3 decades have featured the best weather and climate for most crops and life on this planet since the Medieval Warm period.
Any slight warming and beneficial atmospheric fertilization from increasing CO2 has me increasing my yield expectations………..but I will wait and see, taking it one growing season at a time.
This particular study, if used in the real world for commercial buying/selling or hedging or even speculative interests positioning longer term for wheat production and resulting prices………….would cause the user to go broke.
That goes for any farmers/producers that are regulars here, who often get overly bullish on prices and often have a cognitive bias from the business they are in(like all of us) that results in believing news that suggests higher prices and discarding information that suggests otherwise.
Increasing CO2 is entirely bearish longer term for crop prices as it increasing production.
However, there are far more important short term factors that matter more than the slow, positive annual contribution that CO2 makes.
Dr. Prasad’s focus on temperature or “climate extremes” is probably another case of misdirection.
The problems in Kansas, and in his (apparently) native India, are related to water. Temperature changes will likely mean little to productivity in the northern hemisphere (even in India) provided there are sufficient supplies of water. The real problem is the draw-down in the aquifer which is crucial for the irrigation of much of the farmland in eight states. Manhattan sits outside the high plains aquifer, but the western half of Kansas derives much of it’s crop irrigation directly from the Ogallala.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#mediaviewer/File:Ogallala_changes_1980-1995.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer#mediaviewer/File:Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg
As always, when CAGW is invoked, the claim of damage, injury or deaths may have substance. At the present recharge rates of the aquifer, which are much slower than the usage rates, there may be problems with this type of irrigation, and this could spell trouble for a lot of farms in western Kansas. But the problem has more to do with usage than with climate.
The graphs above seem to show a direct co-relation between temperature and grain production.
Satellites – Warming pause continues & 2014 not the hottest : http://bit.ly/1zDDWt1
Makes no difference to me. I’ve stopped eating wheat, and lost 44 lbs in 5 months and have never felt better. According to Drs. Davis and Perlmutter modern grain is poison and causes diabetes, obesity and dementia. Feed grass to cows and eat the cows
One of prasad’s conclusions should have been to eliminate grains for ethanol production. That mandate has taken more food off the table than any climate change effect ever would. It would also reduce the cost of fuel due to the RIN tax refiners have to pay to operate.