From the UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, where I’m not sure they have seen this graph:
Now, if only Africa could solve its political problems, get reliable energy, and reliable roads for transport…and they’d have the kind of success we enjoy in the United States.
UPDATE: Fred Berple notes in comments:
Maize production:
Malawi – 1961
815000 tons
Malawi – 2011
3699150 tons
so after 50 years of global warming, Malawi is producing more than 4 times as much maize.
http://www.foodsecurityportal.org/api/countries/fao-production-maize?order=__num_2011&sort=asc
Press release:
Crop breeding is not keeping pace with climate change
UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Crop yields will fall within the next decade due to climate change unless immediate action is taken to speed up the introduction of new and improved varieties, experts have warned.
The research, led by the University of Leeds and published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, focusses on maize in Africa but the underlying processes affect crops across the tropics.
Study lead author Professor Andy Challinor, from the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, said: “In Africa, gradually rising temperatures and more droughts and heatwaves caused by climate change will have an impact on maize.
“We looked in particular at the effect of temperature on crop durations, which is the length of time between planting and harvesting. Higher temperatures mean shorter durations and hence less time to accumulate biomass and yield.”
It takes anywhere between 10 and 30 years to breed a new crop variety and have it adopted by farmers. The rate at which temperatures are increasing across the tropics means that by the time the crop is in the field it is being grown in warmer temperatures that it was developed in.
By looking at a range of data on farming, regulatory policy, markets and technologies, the researchers developed average, best and worst case scenarios for current crop breeding systems.
The researchers found that crop duration will become significantly shorter by as early as 2018 in some locations and by 2031 in the majority of maize-growing regions in Africa. Only the most optimistic assessment – in which farming, policy, markets and technology all combine to make new varieties in 10 years – showed crops staying matched to temperatures between now and 2050.
The research team, comprising experts in agriculture, climate and social science, looked at the options for ensuring that crops can be developed and delivered to the field more quickly. These range from improved biochemical screening techniques to more socially-centred measures, such as improving government policies on breeding trials and farmers’ access to markets.
Dr Andy Jarvis, from CIAT (International Centre for Tropical Agriculture), said: “Investment in agricultural research to develop and disseminate new seed technologies is one of the best investments we can make for climate adaptation. Climate funds could be used to help the world’s farmers stay several steps ahead of climate change, with major benefits for global food security.”
The researchers have also proposed an alternative plan: use global climate models to determine future temperatures, then heat greenhouses to those temperatures and develop new crop varieties there.
Professor Challinor said: “The challenge here is in knowing what future emissions will be and ensuring that climate models can produce accurate enough information on future temperatures based on those emissions.
“At the Priestley Centre, researchers are working on these challenges by improving climate models and targeting their use directly at solving such problems.”
###
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It’s too bad no one has ever studied what crop varieties are suited to different climate zones …
Yes, it’s too bad, because that’s all my father did for 55 years … although he may have been under-qualified since he only had two master’s degrees, and a PhD, but he never drank the Kool-Aid.
Ed Bo — Agriculture is weather and soil driven. Over the centuries of experiences, our forefathers evolved farming system technology that can adapted to soil & climate and climate change — climate change involves all parameters of climate, more particularly precipitation as this will modify other climate parameters in both space and time. This was a stable agriculture system. After 60s new technology, a mono crop-high yielding seed – chemical fertilizer- irrigation system changed the traditional system and increased the weather risk. Figure 1 presents impact of this system on yields, more particularly on maize and paddy. This was achieved under the high government subsidies in terms inputs and irrigation. Thus, around 30 to 50% of the production is going as waste and natural resources used to produce that much extra-production. We are simply looking at increasing the production but least bothered on the quality of food. This lead innumerable new diseases and drug manufacturing companies and hospitals and high level of pollution [air, water, soil, food]. Now GMO seed entered but this works under the same new technology only. This will benefit seed companies only with zero yield advantage and with highly unstable seed that needs modefication — Bt-cotton was modified three times in 13 years with poison potency level rising — Bt1 to Bt2 to Bt3. Here I want ask those who are in support of Golden Rice, to eat that rice and show the world and then ask others to eat the same. In India and China, under the traditional system the varieties developed are out yielding the Golden Rice.
The two important periodic elements that affect development are temperature and photoperiod. In addition to these two, relative humidity, soil moisture, soil temperature, soil type, soil fertility, plant population, agronomic aspects are reported to affect the crop development and thereby crop growth.
In African there are certain crops used as stapple food. For example Tef in Ethiopia and Cassava in Mozambique grown in a specified zones in the respective countries. In these zones weather and soil risks are very high.
All these issues are discussed in myfollowing two books:
1. Agroclimatic/Agrometeorological Techniques: As applcable to dry-land agriculture in developing countries, 1993, http://WWW.SCRIBD.COM/GOOGLE BOOKS, Book review appeared in Agric. For. Meteorol., 67:325-327 [1994]
2. “Green” Green Revolution: Agriculture in the perspective of Climate Change, 2011, http://www.scribd.com/Google Books [under printing in a book form]
Well, aren’t you seeing a dark lining behind every silver cloud, even one that isn’t there.
Seriously. I eat every genetically modified food I can count on, avoid “organic” like the plague (as any serious view sees that it has higher environmental impact, higher cost, and no benefit). The only reason I don’t routinely eat golden rice is that it’s not available at the supermarket. The claim that “traditional methods” work better is belied by the fact that modern methods produce better yields and make more money more consistently.
And as for “traditional” farming being somehow weather proof, you are quite simply wrong. There are regular records back to Roman and Egyptian times all the way through the American West of routine crop failures and famines due to droughts or floods. Heck, read Laura Ingalls Wilder for a first hand account of drought on a frontier family, or the rise of Shaka Zulu for the account of how failures cause the rise of an empire. Then, you have the fact that deaths due to famine have dropped over 90% in the 20th century. Not death-rates but actual deaths. I just have no words to say.
You are simply contrafactual on your base claims and willfully ignorant on your history
Golden rice was the solution to a yield problem, it was to address vitamin A deficiency to prevent blindness in children.
Good job Ben OF H. Most farmers and/or investors in crops buy crop insurance to mitigate changing weather. I grow my own crops and found the best yields come from 3 month old grass and leaves compost with just nitrogen. When stink and red suicide bugs attack, for water in the vegetable’s, I spray liquid seven to deter them for a few days. If you look at the conditions to be called organic, You will be surprised with what the can use. A high price for no improvement in flavor. Try indian purple tomatoes for a surprising taste.
Since You are such an expert on rice varieties you undoubtedly realize that golden rice can hardly be expected to compete with standard rice yields since it must also devote energy to beta-caroten production. It was meant to produce nutritionally superior rice, not more rice.
By the way – do stay away from carrots they are chock-full of beta-caroten.
Some expressed with little knowledge on the subject — Vitamin A is present in some traditional cereals naturally. In Pearl Millet Vitamin A was developed using such crops without GM. British Medical Researchers presented a report saying Golden Rice Vitamin A content is a health hazard.
When we make statements on production, we rarely take in to account the government contribution to development of infrastructure like irrigation projects or heavy subsidies on inputs. Also we rarely account their impact on environment, more particularly pollution and thus the investment to overcome this hazard. In USA Missipi River pollution from agriculture runoff created dead Gulf of Mexico.
GMO work under this scenario only. While the natural food production system we get more quality food by including animal husbandry as part of agriculture syste. This provides the necessary inputs to agriculture also.
Dr. Jeevananda Reddy
This article is complaining about not ENOUGH crop breeding? Have they never heard of Monsanto, Round-Up resistant varieties (to save energy the farmers don’t have), and the NO-MORE-GMO movement? Geeeze!
Well we can’t have any more GMOs can we. Those starving people around the world, will just have to wait till nature’s trial and error process eventually comes up with some food for them. Or learn to do without.
g
GM seed manufacturers trumpet: “We have a billion hectares now under GM cultivation!” Which is roughly 3.86 million square miles Or 2.47 million acres. Or 10 percent of the world’s arable farmland. There’s a reason other nations keep a stiff-arm in these demons’ faces. But not the United States. Where gratuities for elected seals climb quickly toward six figures when critical votes for things like, say, food safety for humanity come up. These one-eyed jacks have deliberately tried to force-feed this poison to America and the world for the past two decades, and worked and met and schemed and refined the technology to do it several decades before that.
They keep trying to shove this crap down humanity’s throats with propaganda and praises from their paid propaganda puppets.
Africa, Europe, Canada, Russia, Latin America, US. . . no one wants this spit. The sterilizing and sickening toxins they’ve spliced into humanity’s food are no accident. It’s a deliberate act to rid the planet of “useless eaters”; deemed so by a handful of self-anointed devils wadded in wealth who’re in the process of purchasing the world and its resources for themselves; “culling” humanity in the process. They’re evil to the bone. When the truth about this aberrant “food” is written, here’s how those wonderful folks feeding it to you keep dragging their intent behind the curtain to keep you from reading about it. Genetic Fallacy:
How Monsanto Silences Scientific Dissent
http://youtu.be/ShJTcIlTna0
And here’s their end game: Planned Sterilization
http://www.globalresearch.ca/genetically-modified-organisms-gmos-planned-sterilization-of-humanity/5511206
You eat this spit, Smitty?
Wrusssr June 21, 2016 at 1:37 am
Take a deep breath,,,,,
michael
Interesting that I recognize one set of people on this debate, but not the other. Are we being targeted by an organized group, or did this just get linked to by anti-GMO site?
Wrusser, I have a question for you. Are you insane?
Wrusser:
This is the plot of Dan Brown’s (Da Vinci Code) Novel “Inferno”.
An OK read.
“Vector Virus” causes random sterility across all mankind.
This novel is a work of FICTION.
It’s a conspiracy to contaminate our precious bodily fluids! First came the flouride. Now the GMO’s. It’s the lizard people, I tell you, the LIZARD PEOPLE!
george e.smith — W are producing more than what we needed. FAO reported that around 30% of it is going as waste. Reasons are money that vary with country to country. The figure is 40-50% for India. In developing countries, the main problem is poor transport facilities make them to transport excess production zones to deficit production zones; there are no sufficient storage facilities to store what hey produce. These are practical problems. These will be possible with good governance. We rarely find such governments.
Some countries dump excess production in to sea to balance the price market.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Haven’t you heard? The way the eco-hippies talk, Monsanto has a whole factory whose only job is to daily punch puppies and kick kittens.
And the eco-hippies also convniently ignore the fact that all our food crops, plant and animal, are the result of breeding, the old-fashioned name for genetic modification.
In the old days, they would expose seeds to known mutagens, then examine the resultant crops to see if any of the resulting mutations were usable.
Well I used to work for Monsanto, in their Central Research Laboratories, near St Louis MO. Actually near Lambert Field where McDonald Aircraft used to be, making F-4 Phantoms.
No I didn’t work on anything chemical, just electronics (for process control).
Monsanto in those days was one of the most ethical companies one could ever wish for.
Their first chemical product, made right there in St Louis (maybe East St Louis) was Sacharin; the pink plastic sugar substitute, with the funny aftertaste. After 100 years or so, it is still the only plastic sugar that has never been linked to any form of sickness or medical problem, other than it tastes funny.
They also make Aspirin; in those days they made 85% of the world’s Aspirin. Yes it’s exactly the same stuff as the expensive Bayer Aspirin, but made by a better cheaper process. I used to have an aspirin tablet about 4 inches in diameter, that I could whittle a small chip off if I wanted to. They sold aspirin by the rail car load.
They also make Nylon, which is a Dupont invention. Once again, Monsanto makes a better nylon by a cheaper process, starting with different feedstocks from the patented Dupont process. Well I imagine those patents are all long gone.
Monsanto makes Skydrol; you all know what that is. It is the non flammable hydraulic fluid, that in those days was used in about 100% of all commercial airliners. Don’t know if any of these things are current situations.
Their patented GMO seeds, are protected for a purpose. They are sterile, to prevent them from getting loose in the environment and altering other things not intended. That’s why farmers have to buy new seed every year.
I currently have no connection with Monsanto whatsoever, unless my investment guy has a fund that owns Monsanto Stock. Their central engineering Research Building in St Louis County (maybe Creve Couer) looks like a big gold brick. The glass wndows are gold plated to keep heat in or out of the building. You can’t see in those windows, it just looks like a solid lump of gold. Inside, you aren’t even aware of any color to the windows; well hardly any.
As for Roundup I use it where I need to use it, and have never poisoned anything good with it yet.
I’m about to use it to get rid of all the broad leaf weeds that my next door neighbor has deliberately cultivated and spread them to the whole block of houses.
I know it is fashionable to bash Monsanto. Well ignorant people go off at anything that they know nothing at all about.
G
I should add, that the next lab along the hall from our electronics lab was a “cooking lab”. The chemists in there kept on preparing batches of cookies, which they then brought over to our lab for taste testing. They were trying to make tasty edibles that had absolutely no food nutritional value whatsoever, but tasted good like a cookie should.
Well they were developing products for all of those fat Americans, who can’t stop eating. Some of the cookies tasted great.
No idea what marketable products they ended up with.
G
Taste tests are not what I need to see before I can feel justified in speaking to the safety of specific GMOs, george. Just sayin’, ya know?
Patently untrue 😉
Biosecurity Tasmania report volunteer GMO canola plants are still turning up 15 years after the trial.
http://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/biosecurity/product-integrity/gene-technology/former-gm-canola-trial-sites-audit-reports
Earlier this year, an Oregon farmer discovered wheat growing in his field that had been genetically engineered to be resistant to the weed-killer glyphosate. Months later, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is still trying figure out how the wheat got into the field, Nature reported.
Genetic tests by the USDA determined that the wheat matches MON71800, also called Roundup Ready wheat, a glyphosate-resistant wheat developed by biotech company Monsanto. No genetically engineered wheat has been approved for growth in the U.S., although Monsanto did field trials of its Roundup Ready wheat in 16 states including Oregon between 1997 and 2005.
Upon hearing of the contaminated wheat field, South Korea and Japan initially halted imports of US wheat, but South Korea has now resumed them. Tests indicate that the US wheat supply is generally free of genetically modified plants.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36582/title/Escaped-GM-Wheat/
Myth: Monsanto Sells Terminator Seeds
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/terminator-seeds.aspx
Taste tests are not what I need to see before I can feel justified in speaking to the safety of specific GMOs, george. Just sayin’, ya know?
But it is putting your money where your mouth is.
They are sterile, to prevent them from getting loose in the environment
==============
that cannot be true, because Monsanto has been suing farmers in Canada for using seeds that have been cross pollinated from other famers that are using “round-up ready” rapeseed.
This is truly a miscarriage of justice. In effect a bull has wandered into your field and impregnated all your cows. Monsanto then claims ownership of all the calves because of their patents on the bull.
This overturns centuries of common law, where the owner of the cow owned the calves, and it has ruined more than a few farmers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser
Not knowing all the details of the suits Monsanto has brought, It’s certainly conceivable to have some unethical farmers “accidentally” plant some GMO seeds next to another field not seeded with purchased Monsanto seeds and, well, “Gosh, I just don’t know how those traits cross pollinated into my field that I don’t have to pay royalties on…”
ferdberple: Percy Schmeiser was a friend of mine when he was the Mayor of Bruno, Saskatchewan and my firm was doing water and wastewater treatment facilities for the Village. A very nice man caught up in a complex messy lawsuit.
I only worked for Monsanto from June 1964 to about July 1967.
I have no knowledge of what policies they adopted in 1999.
G
“Higher temperatures give shorter durations ” BS. Reality check . Try frost, you nitwit.
It does seem odd that they talk about Maize and ‘days’ without mentioning degree-days. The lifeblood of maize growing is the number of degree-days it takes to create a ripe crop.
Is everyone reading aware that if the temperature is higher, generally speaking, the degree-day target is met sooner? That is why it grows so well in Illinois above 100 f.
AND the increased CO2 makes this more of a sure thing. Fancy that, CO2 making things better!
Why would we need new breeds?
If the climate warmed to that of the Medieval Warm Period, we could just use the original seed stocks.
Breeds that are not currently in commercial use as the weather is too cold to get best yield.
There was no maize growing in Africa during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ so which seeds would those be?
Oh, bullshit. Even some ardent climate changers have noticed the CO2 enhanced greening of Earth with faster plant growth. And NASA satellites have mapped it. Plant scientists are skilled at breeding new food crop varieties both the old fashioned way and through GMO techniques, and existing varieties for different climate zones are known.
The problem (generalized): “climate change will have an impact on maize” (There’s a surprise because climate never changed before.)
The solution:”crops [that] can be developed and delivered to the field more quickly … improved biochemical screening techniques [and] improving … breeding trials and farmers’ access to markets…”
The Priestley Centre heroically confronts the problem by: “improving climate models.”
Who’d ever think to make up this stuff?
Desperate mother: my children are starving because there’s no food!
Priestley Centre functionary: We can help by modeling traffic!
A farmer in Malawi checks her maize crop that is struggling as a result of the worst drought in three decades
=============================
so 30 years ago they had a worse drought. that was when temperatures were lower than now.
so droughts are not as bad as they were before global warming..
Those are big plants. There must have been plenty of soil moisture to get them that far.
Here’s a drought
Ther is always a drought in Southern Africa during an El Niño. The “thirty-years-ago” drought they are talking about is the one connected with the big 1982-83 Niño.
Since temperatures cannot significantly increase in the tropics (and the IPCC agrees)…this really can’t be a significant issue.
>>>Dr Andy Jarvis, from CIAT (International Centre for Tropical Agriculture), said: “Investment in agricultural research to develop and disseminate new seed technologies is one of the best investments we can make for climate adaptation. <<< must in the pay of big seed!
..Why bother actually growing corn ?? We can just make “models” of growing corn….and then make “models” of us eating the “models” of the grown corn !! D’oh !!
According to Elon Musk the odds we’re in base reality and not living in a computer simulation is only “one in billions.” So, if you believe the snake-oil salesman, it’s all computer models anyway.
I think you mean “computer models all the way down anyway”
….You were programmed to say that !! ;o)
So how come the climate models don’t work in the matrix model?
Evan,
The computer is too dusty and the fan isn’t cooling adequately; the computer generated heat is mussing up the programs’ sensor input. The warming that we are feeling is from exterior reality crossing over into our program, but the program assumes that the sensors are accurate … and they aren’t. The program can’t figure out why and it is continuously to trying to re-calibrate itself, leading to more and more anomalies.
Pretty the maintenance guys will clean out the dust and the cooling system regain its original efficiency, Let’s hope that the computer program doesn’t keep adjusting the data the wrong way, creating an even bigger lag cycle, after the dust clears.
Pretty soon the maintenance guys …
Maize production:
Malawi – 1961
815000 tons
Malawi – 2011
3699150 tons
so after 50 years of global warming, Malawi is producing more than 4 times as much maize.
http://www.foodsecurityportal.org/api/countries/fao-production-maize?order=__num_2011&sort=asc
From the UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
========================
I read that as UNIVERSITY OF LIES
They are just Leeding the witness.
experts in agriculture, climate and social science
Pffffft! What, exactly, would be the contribution from social scientists?
as early as 2018 in some locations
Well now… a testable hypothesis in only two years! Did the specify exactly what “some locations” refers to?
Some locations will be those locations that show what the authors predicted.
Locations that do not show what the authors predicted, will not be the “some locations” you are looking for.
“as early as 2018 in some locations
Well now… a testable hypothesis in only two years!
That’s what I was thinking, too.
I guess the author didn’t get the memo about extending one’s CAGW predictions out as far as possible into the future to avoid embarassment.
Fred?
Double check that 😉
Shouldn’t it be Ferd Berfel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_%26_Martin%27s_Laugh-In#Recurring_sketches_and_characters
good catch! getting so old can’t remember my own name.
Ferd Berfel is my twin brother by a different mother.
Complete garbage. Maize is one of the few C4 crops. See Dr. Michael Moore’s previous guest post. And Cimytt (Borlaug’s Institute) has been working for decades on drought resistant Africa variants, since the MAM monsoon rain is 1-2 months shorter than the Maize ideal. See ebook Gaia’s Limits for many details and references.
Dr Michael Moore ???? lol !
Was that intentional, or is your slip showing.
Gaia’s Limits
Must be a very short book . . .
There was an article by a Dr. Michael Moore a few weeks ago.
It wasn’t that Michael Moore.
The growing zones are moving north. With new strains of corn and slightly longer growing season, farmers are now growing corn in North Dakota, which was pretty rare 40 years ago.
That is due to hybrids, not climate change.
And government programs???
katphiche: My uncle used to breed plants for Agriculture Canada. He spent the summers in Indian Head, Saskatchewan and the winters south of the Salton Sea in southern California. They grew two seed crops in each zone, breeding for specific characteristics. So they grew things in radically different areas thousands of kilometres apart. All this talk of plants marching north with the “climate” just makes me laugh. Maybe there is an effect but lots of plants can do just fine in radically different “Climate Zones”.
Interesting. A distant cousin’s father bred spuds at UofSask. The Patterson potato is still popular.
Key phrase: “Climate funds could be used to help the world’s farmers stay several steps ahead of climate change, with major benefits for global food security.”
This press release is about money, not facts, not reason.
AW, your graph of US production is quite revealing, especially when extended to FAO world yields per unit area crop land. Wheat plateaued globally, not just US, as Norman Borlaug’s green revolution spread. Maize (corn) increases with US GMO, but not in Europe or China where GMO is generally prohibited. Rice has plateaued in best practices US, Japan, and China, but can continue to expand yields in less than best practices rest of SE Asia. The big issues are not plant breeding keeping up with climate change. They are the root/shoot limits of plant breeding diminishing returns yields given arable land limits and the global spread of best ag practices. EBook Gaia’s Limits delves into the complicated fact details.
The US chart post 2000 foreshadows much. None good, and completely different than CAGW.
Some of the yield plateau is due to practice, with low-till and no-till and less intensive use of fuel. It’s hard to push yields when diesel is at $4.00 a gallon. We operate 7 sections in central Michigan and could easily push our yields by 15% with available methods, including additional side-dressing of nitrogen. But 5 years ago that would have cut into the bottom line in a huge way due to fuel and N costs. Right now we don’t do it because we’re operating with different equipment, and the life-cycle of the hardware is too long to make an adjustment. Don’t blame agricultural technology, blame the bozos in Washington for the 70 year failure to have a coherent energy policy.
Mark – exactly right – around where I live, everyone has cut back on fertilizer. When I stopped farming my few acres quite some time ago, I had cut my fertilizer application in half as I got the same bottom line after accounting for lost yield and fertilizer costs. It came down to a cost versus yield calculation.
Does anyone have access to satellite temperature data for that particular region?
I suspect it would show a general rise from 1970-1990, then a sharp dip in 1991, climbing to around 1998 then levelling off.
This makes me think of the PFRA. It was a response to the Dirty Thirties on the Canadian Prairies. It has been said that the PFRA prevented the Canadian prairies from becoming a desert. The US had a similar response starting even sooner than in Canada.
An environmental disaster can be dealt with. The alarmists never admit that.
This is straight out of the ex-Soviet Union propaganda handbook, only the Soviet propagandists inflated crop numbers, while US climate propagandists make them worse than they really are…. Go figure…
The World Bank’s (hardly a bastion of Capitalism) data on crop-yields/country shows an astronomical rapid increase of crop yields since 1981:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG
If you click on ANY country on the list, it’s obvious there has been a phenomenal increase of crop yields all around the globe over the past 35 years…
The irony is that the CO2 fertilization effect has also contributed substantially to the growth of crop yields.
What’s next? Do government propagandists start “adjusting” past crop yield data to match CAGW’s doom and gloom predictions? They’ve “adjusted” global raw temperature data, what’s to prevent them from “adjusting” other datasets to achieve their agendas?
In the immortal words of Alex Epstein, “F*CK OFF, Fascist.”
No problem. Expect legislation to limit crop production to conform with model output.
If countries routinely exaggerate disasters to increase the amount of aid they will receive, I doubt they will have any compunction about fiddling with crop yield data. Potential climate change payments are a big incentive to lie about anything and everything.
I once spoke with a zookeeper who went to Kenya for several weeks to volunteer with a wildlife NGO (one of a very few that is reputable and somewhat effective). She was from Iowa, so she knew corn. She said that the government provides or subsidizes certain varieties, but those varieties do not grow well in much (if not most) of the country. She had some pictures of subsistence farms that grew these varieties, and they were about half the height that corn should reach at maturity. I suspect that most problems with crop yields are due to a mismatch of varieties or crop types and the local environment.
Spellcheck, Mister Anthony… “Fred Berple” should read “Ferd Berple”! Gotta get the peops names right you know (don’t want to rain on ferd’s 15 minutes of fame)…
Zambia have done extremely well, record crops everywhere. Achieved by importing white Zimbabwean farmers! http://zimbabwe-today.com/2016/05/business/mugabes-white-farmers-reap-3-3-million-tonnes-maize-zambia-zimbabwe-starves/
Check the yields from Zim farmers translocated to Mozambique. It is a similar story. Best farmers in the world (sorry USA).
According to IPCC and everything else I’ve read, global warming has/is/will affect polar regions the most and tropical regions the least. This in fact seems to have been the case in the late 20th-century warming where we saw a conspicuous reduction in the number of -40° days in northern Canada. They had started to reappear in larger numbers until the last El Niño and I look forward to some nice chilly mornings again soon (especially when viewed through my kitchen window)
So what does Africa have to worry about? Other than bad governments, inter-tribal warfare, overpopulation and islamic terrorism of course. Oh yes, they are going to experience droughts and famines and Climate Change will be the culprit. We all know that there were never droughts and famines in Africa before the demon CO2 destroyed the Arcadian paradise, don’t we?
I don’t know where the idea that Africa is overpopulated comes from but the African continent is bigger than the USA, China, India and a large chunk of Europe combined. Its population is about 8% of the world total – overpopulated, No!
Not sure where BEST gets their data from. NOAA shows about a 1.5C rise for the contiguous US since 1960, not the 4C or 5C shown in the plot above. NOAA also shows essentially no change since the mid 80’s. Who to believe? See http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=3mo&begyear=1960&endyear=2016&month=5
DHR— it’s REAL easy to get the required results when NOAA manipulates the raw temperature data…
Here is a graph from NOAA’s own website showing how much they have manipulated the US raw temperature data to get the results they need to keep this CAGW hype going:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
Congress has issued a FOIA request to NOAA for all internal correspondence regarding NOAA’s questionable raw temperature adjustments (in particular the recent KARL2015 adjustments)…
NOAA has refused to comply with this Congressional FOIA request, so they are technically in Contempt of Congress.
There is PM-AM TOBS bias to contend with. That would be a warming adjustment.
As to whether the — amount — is a correct result is another question, entirely.
“not the 4C or 5C shown in the plot above” ?????
Which plot is that?
The yellow line up the top shows about a 1 degree difference between 1960 and 2000
And I do wish people would label things properly.
The graph is not showing the “temperature”, its showing the “temperature anomaly” against some period, which is undefined on the chart.
Actually, it’s not an anomaly. It is adjusted data minus raw. That would give the exact same answer in either absolute or anomalous terms. (Just algebra, as Mosh says.)