That climate change is sneaky, it hides the ‘damage’ via ‘weather variations resulting from climate change’ in record high soybean yields, as seen in this graph I located from Kansas State University:
Color me unimpressed with this press release, which boils down to nothing more than a statement of “we could have had a better year if the weather was better”.
Climate change costing soybean farmers
MADISON – Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That’s because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years.
This massive loss has been hidden, in effect, by the impressive annual growth seen in soybean yields thanks to other factors. But that growth could have been 30 percent higher if weather variations resulting from climate change had not occurred, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists published last month in Nature Plants.
“We are still making yield gains because of breeding and other strategies, but those numbers aren’t as big as they could be,” says lead author Shawn Conley, a UW-Madison agronomy professor and UW-Extension soybean and wheat specialist.
Averaging the data across the United States, researchers found that soybean yields fell by around 2.4 percent for every one-degree rise in temperature. In Wisconsin and most other northern states, including South Dakota and Minnesota, the changes in climate factors actually led to higher soybean yields. Wisconsin, for instance, saw an increase of 17.5 kilograms per hectare per year over the 20 years studied. However, most soybean-growing states farther south, including Ohio, Arkansas and Kentucky, experienced decreases in yields.
These divergent responses have to do with historical norms. In colder northern states, soybeans seem to be enjoying the new warmer weather, while in states farther south – where conditions had previously been fairly ideal – the additional heat is causing stress.
Conley’s team isolated the impacts of changing temperature and precipitation on soybean yields in a much more precise way than previously done. While earlier approaches relied on estimates, UW-Madison researchers gathered their own data field trials, giving them access to more reliable and consistent information about the genetics of the soybeans being grown, the management practices being used and the weather the fields saw throughout the growing season. Spyridon Mourtzinis, a post-doctoral fellow in Conley’s lab, then removed the effects of the management strategies and genetic improvements so the team could focus their analysis on the impacts of weather variability.
Because the states with the biggest yield losses are also the nation’s biggest soybean producers, the national impact comes out to a 30 percent yield loss overall.
Conley says that the next step is to help growers minimize this loss by starting or expanding practices such as earlier planting, no-till practices and growing later maturing soybeans. Researchers can help by producing region-specific suggestions that account for weather patterns at different times of the growing season.
Only then, says Conley, can the full potential of soybean yields be realized.
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There are dozens, if not hundreds of influences on crop yields around the world.
I reside in the middle of corn/soybean country and about 160 km south of UW Madison.
Growing season temperatures in the mid-section are very well distributed while precipitation is not.
My local CDD records show that the following Summers were hotter(>16%) than average:
2012, 2005, 2002, 1995, 1988, 1983, 1978, 1970
And the following Summers were cooler(<16%) than average:
2014, 2009, 2008, 2004, 2000, 1997, 1996, 1992, 1986, 1974, 1967
One can see a mild temperature influence in these years but it bounces right back into the uptrend the next year. And we're not even talking about the other economic and political influences on crop yields. The KSU graph still kicks a big hole in the UWM warming meme.
To begin, their figure is deceptive. The red line trend would predict 45 while the bar is extended up to 47.5. If the bar was supposed to represent the potential 30% yield it would have been 58.5. So I cannot figure out what they have done. But plotting the red bar above the trend and then labeling everything red on the graph as “trend” is curious.
FWIW, December 1979, one of the last non digital dissertations at UW:
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005895593
Despite its PC-ness, it’s still a great place and I’m in 110% for Bucky to scratch the ‘Cats out of the NCAA on Saturday. Bo Ryan is one of the greatest coaches and finest people ever to take to the hardwood.
The same fuzzy math used in this hilarious paper is the same type of Progressive math used when discussing Federal Spending.
This stupid paper makes the absurd assumption that crop yields would have “increased” 130% compared to the actual 100% increase we’ve experienced in crop yields since 1973…
Progressives use the same logic when they say Federal spending has been “CUT 30%”, which actually means government hacks PLANNED to spend 30% more, compared to what was ACTUALLY spent, ignore the reality that Federal spending has actually increased 1,000%+ since 1973…
Total Federal Spending 1973= about $350 billion
Total Federal Speding 2014= $3.77 TRILLION… i.e. Government hacks wanted to spend $4.9 TRILLION but they “only” spent 3.77 Trillion (ergo, a 30% “cut” in spending…)
No wonder the world is so screwed up with all this Progressive math…
The message from the above figure is that soy production is a proxy for CO2 level and that rising CO2 is a good news story.
But the politically correct response to this is that a good news story minus the good news can be made into a much more politically useful and acceptable bad news story.
Much as I would like to post links to my ideas, I don’t think they’re a good idea. They stop people thinking. Someone posts a link, someone follows and reads it and thereafter labour under a delusion that they henceforth understand whatever it was.
Would I be alone in thinking there are too many links already, too many graphs, too much information?
My problem/question with this one is- how does anyone think modern agriculture affects ‘the weather’
Especially consider how modern farming revolves around growing annual crops against a more natural situation where perennial plants rule the roost. Everywhere. All the time.
Annuals are simply mother nature’s stop-gap to fill holes, they are emergency sticking plasters to cover the soil, protect the dirt after an injury – classically where a huge tree falls over in the forest.
So, consider wheat. Barley, corn, soya etc are similar. We totally depend on annuals and their inbuilt desperate urge to produce a huge crop of seeds in one season. They only get one chance and have to grab it. The perennials are much more laid back.
The precise figures here are not important so —
Wheat has a ‘growing season’ of maybe 25 weeks, usually taken as the time from planting to harvest.
The plants are only actively growing for maybe 12 to 14 weeks. They start as buried seeds and tiny seedlings that don’t take up much CO2 nor transpire much water for maybe 6 or 7 weeks.
Close to harvest, they are effectively dead for the last 4 or 5 weeks of their ‘lives’
Meanwhile, farmers have pumped up CO2 production from soil bacteria by force feeding them huge amounts of nitrogen. The bacteria work while the soil is warm enough for them.
Compare that to perennials, Mother Nature’s preferred plants that would be actively taking up CO2 and transpiring water, at full tilt for the whole 25 weeks , strictly and in actuality, while soil temps are 5 degC or above.
Think about it and maybe remember the words of native Hawaiians – ‘Plants bring rain’
Note the order of that – its not a typo yet the reverse pervades so much thinking especially of warmists as they hack down the trees of South Carolina to feed Drax Power station in the UK. Those clowns are creating a desert all the while thinking they are saving the world. mad mad mad
Normally in nature all grasses are growing from extensive ROOTS and they turn brown or burn off in lightning fires, etc. but instantly grow like maniacs when it rains/warms up.
If you PLOW THE LAND this is unnatural. So grasses that humans domesticated (even corn is a grass) have to grow from seeds and not roots and due to this, evolved to have more seeds than natural growing grasses.
The Midwest natural grasses had very, very deep root systems to cope with the regular droughts/too hot/too cold weather shifts and most of this natural prairie has been plowed under and long gone.
This is why farmers must worry about droughts, etc. They plant seeds which must have ideal conditions to establish roots.
Yes, you are from Cumbria so you know the Drax story very well.
I am in the USA and first read about this here and could not believe that Drax would convert from burning coal to burning wood pellets and obviously you don’t have enough trees there so you will import the pellets from the USA and Canada.
Supposedly this is your commitment to “renewable” and to prevent global warming or climate change.
I could not believe that such nonsense would be proposed and supported in the British Isles.
This was explained to me at a recent meeting here in the USA about being shale extraction, attended by representatives from 14 different countries. Some for it, some against it.
The British Isles representative, opposed to shale extraction, gave me the following explanation for changing from coal burning to wood pellets burning when I told him that I could not believe they would do this.
His explanation went this way:
When you burn coal you produce CO2 which is responsible for global warming and coal is not renewable. Two strikes on you.
When you burn wood pellets you produce CO2 but wood is renewable and the CO2 produced will be used by a tree. No strike on you.
Get it?
Just as good an explanation for why we must add ethanol in gasoline here in the USA, ethanol being produced from corn, obviously renewable!
Sorry if I digressed from farming but your comments on Drax caught me by surprise.
“Force feeding them huge amounts of nitrogen.” The technical name for this figure of speech is hyperbole.
Peta in Cumbria, I know you will never believe me, but farmers are not in it just for the love of the land. They are trying to make a profit. The key to profit in farming is to increase yields and reduce input costs. Fertilizer is one such input cost. The profitable farmers apply the minimum effective amount of nitrogen.
Annuals evolved to cope with a feature of climate called a “season.” Whether for lack of water, like in the Nile valley between floods, or extreme cold, like in a Cumbrian winter, many plants will die at certain times of the year. To ensure survival of the species, the plant creates something called a “seed” that will germinate when conditions for life are achieved again.
I’m alarmed at learning that additional nitrogen pumps up CO2 production. Is this the missing link in the climate models? Are you saying that global warming prevention efforts should be redirected to reducing the nitrogen abundance in the atmosphere?
So the wheat stalk is effectively dead for the last 4 or 5 weeks of its life. That makes me wonder why the farmers don’t harvest earlier, because obviously the plant has stopped growing and is just taking up time and money. This reminds me of my boyhood pals who said that the way to get your beard to grow faster (and look more masculine) was to shave more often. Yeah right. That’s why you see farmers mowing their crops every day, to make them grow faster.
And finally (at last, I hear you say) owners of forestry land don’t want to see their assets depreciate by turning into deserts, so as soon as a stand of timber has been felled they will re-plant.
Dressing up your comment with a whole lot of factoids about growing cycles and colorful analogies about sticking-plasters doesn’t make it any more logical.
These farmers must be using Professor Farnsworth’s “What-If” machine.
“the additional heat is causing stress”
If that’s the case we need additional CO2 as that reduces water consumption & stress in plants, 900 – 1,300 ppm is about correct.
I really don’t get the fuss. If we replaced the climate change words with “it’s been hotter in some states”, this paper would remain true – basically hot = bad for yields. So when states get hotter, yields are below where they might have been. If hottest places stop growing soy or cooler places that have reached optimal soy growing temperature grew it, there would be more soy, or states changed their farming practices, this would be better. It contains a genuflection to climate change, but in reality it’s a fairly obvious paper saying when the temperature changes, yields of some crops fall and production is not optimal. As has no doubt been true for the whole of human history. (Showing yields have risen doesnt really prove much btw)
Well suppose all those extra soybeans had been grown? What would have happened to them? Wouldn’t the price have dropped, causing farmers to cut production anyway? It seems to be a big assumption among climate modelers that farmers do not change behavior as market conditions change. I guess it simplifies the math for them, same as so many other untenable assumptions they make do.
But even that is not true. Warm weather favors soybeans, cold weather doesnt.
It’s Bush’s fault.
[Reply: You really need to pick one user name and stick with it. ~mod.]
So we are talking about soybeans “saved or created”?
But wouldn’t 30 percent higher yields run counter to the environmentalist dogma that overpopulation is the real problem? Higher crop yields would only serve to encourage unbridled lust and fecundity, so their solution to climate change is self defeating.
David A.’s information was on Kentucky was compelling. It appears soybean yield reductions in the south (although most of my friends in Ohio don’t think of themselves as south) are the result of the TOBS adustment. It’s thus clearly NCDC’s fault we have yield declines in the south. So if NCDC stops ‘adjusting’ the raw data, we get improving soybean yields and we destroy the CAWG myth with the dual benefit of more food and cheaper energy.