Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Australian CSIRO, “The lines will cross” in 20 years, heralding the end of biotechnology’s ability to improve wheat yields.
Climate change to blame for flatlining wheat yield gains: CSIRO
By Anna Vidot
Updated Thu at 11:59am
Australia’s wheat productivity has flatlined as a direct result of climate change, according to CSIRO research.
While 2016 set a new national wheat harvest record, the national science organisation’s findings indicate that result masks a more troubling long-term trend.
While Australian wheat yields tripled between 1900 and 1990, growth stagnated over the following 25 years.
…
Zvi Hochman, a senior research scientist with CSIRO Agriculture and Food said the team considered whether other factors could have shared the blame, such as investment in research and development (R&D), changing patterns of land use, and soil fertility.
But those could all be ruled out: investment in grains R&D was stable, changing land-use patterns should have favoured wheat production, and soil management improved as farmers adopted new techniques such as zero-till.
“Climate variability can make it look as if there is no trend, just one year’s good and one year’s bad, but we’ve statistically analysed the trend that we observed,” Dr Hochman said.
“The chance of that just being variable climate without the underlying factor [of climate change] is less than one in 100 billion.”
…
“If we assume the same trend continues, then there’s a point at which the two lines cross each other – in about 20 years’ time – and by then we will start to see declining yields.
…
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-09/csiro-climate-change-warning-for-wheat/8337110
The biggest problem with the climate argument is Australia is not currently taking best advantage of available technology. While much of the rest of the world has embraced genetic modification to improve yields and resistance to pests, and reduce pesticide use, scare campaigns have kept Australia largely GM free, with the exception of small scale GM cotton and canola crops.
Investment in crop technology might be holding steady, but rejecting GM as an option effectively sabotages much of the value of that investment.
Consider the following study in PLOS One, about the benefits of GM;
…
Results
On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries.
…
Read more: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629
It is conceivable that Australia might maintain its politically motivated opposition to modern biotech for the next 20 years, in which yield gains might stagnate. But blaming any stagnation on climate is ridiculous. Embracing GM would provide an immediate realisable yield improvement of up to 22%, followed by whatever gains the next 20 years of GM research delivers.
oh nooooo….it’s peak wheat
There is currently a scheme to bring in 20,000 GL (40 Sydney Harbours) per year of irrigation water from New Guinea. Government help, (that’s what western government should do but does not), zero. Australia has vast areas of suitable land but no water. It could easily feed another 1 Billion people.
Meanwhile government has spent US$50 Billion on desalination, green dongles, water saving schemes etc. All have produced nothing other than enriching spivs and allowed liberal thinking market distortions that now even threaten the eastern seaboard’s electrical grid.
Meanwhile idiots think batteries may save South Australia from stupidity. The driest state in the driest continent blew up a coal fired power station and now finds itself short of power. This has attracted rent seekers.
As CO2 levels increase the food supply will also increase. Thankfully this is not controlled by the government. Their attempts at regulating CO2 production have failed. Government should just get back to what they are good at, staring at their navels, stealing by force, destroying wealth and creating wars.
Geoff,
It’s way too late to save South Australia from stupidity. They are well past the “tipping point” on stupidity.
Instead of Tesla batteries, they could opt for batteries from Aquion.
The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.
We cab dn that in Australia with a river in WA I think it is…build a pipe where water is and transport it to where people live and where stuff is grown (It is exactly what China is doing tho I cannot find a reference). Or move everything where there is more water. In Australia? Too funny! Our pollies still bleat on about high speed rail, seriously? In Aus, given the geography, we have the best solution already in place, high speed airplanes. It may take more time than a theoretical fast train, but the infrastructure required is vastly reduced with aircraft. AND, it is already in place!
Australia has a series of large northern rivers. One river, the Ord, is partially developed. It could double food production with a bit of investment. All need big dams. Australia has the ability to dramatically increase food production by building dams and irrigating in the north.
However, there is no support. I doubt the CSIRO even know about it.
Limits to food production, like power supply, are political.
Geoff its called lake argyle, the Rudd government commissioned a report into turning the top end into a food basket the reports finding was they should kick all the cows off the land and get big fat and rich on selling carbon credits.
The plan flopped due to green mutters just like our power network will come march 31
Why don’t they just bring that 20,000GL from the Clarence. Rather nearer than New Guinea.
Ooops I forgot.
Those local vested interests wouldn’t allow it now …..would they.
Plenty of other sources around.
The problem is not lack of water in the eastern side of Australia. It’s how it’s managed and the political and Green grandstanding.
Dick Smith and others have the right idea. How about covering all those open irrigation ditches. How many GL’s would that save for relatively small money compared to fairy projects bringing water from overseas countries.
“Peter March 11, 2017 at 11:33 pm
Australia has a series of large northern rivers. One river, the Ord…”
Yes, thank you Peter, the river Ord. That’s the one that can irrigate, even power, Australia!
Nuclear power, the most promising being LFTR, liquid fluoride thorium reactor, would power the desalinization, provide cheap power for all, and irrigation can expand apace. Importing water just seems a waste when you are surrounded by (salt) water and piles of thorium just waiting to be burned.
Wait a second…how is this water from New Guinea to be transported?
Will it be by ship?
Or a pipeline under the sea?
In the case of shipping in water for agricultural usage, I would really and truly like to see the numbers on that.
It sounds ludicrous.
And if by pipeline, it is an interesting idea, but what about tectonic movements and earthquakes and such?
I think this may be the first I have heard of a serious proposal to bring water across a sea since one of the Middle East oil countries was going to drag icebergs by ship from Antarctica to their country for water.
Then I think someone must have ran the numbers on rate of melt and energy cost and such…and that was the last we heard of that.
As for long distance high speed rail in a sparsely inhabited place…i think someone calculated that for what California has already spent on their rail system, the government could have bought a plane ticket for anyone who wanted to traverse this route for the next hundred years or something like that…first class!
There are parts of Australia that get an awful lot of rain every year:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/climatology/rainfall/hires_rn/aus/rnozan.png
On March 8, 2017, Aquion filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Having a good product does not make a success. The issue is the price. Unless you can sell to an end user a 10 KWhr battery for US$2-3,000 its cheaper to be on the grid. This means new technology is required using carbon/graphene based batteries/supercaps. The price and availability of graphene oxide is the key to success. It will be inexpensive but is not yet. Ultimately this will allow the invention of 10 GWhr scale units for power stations and supercaps that replace transformers.
Just because Aquion has filed for bankruptcy protection, it need not mean the end of its real life.
A new owner may aquire the assets and technology, albeit at a bargain price, (which will not help the taxpayer of course), and be able to produce a marketable product without the burden of debt which has forced Aquion into its current state.
This is how business works.
An example may be a large high rise building which cannot lease its rooms/apartments or floors at a price that will enable the owner to make a return on his investment. Possibly through bankruptcy processes or by a voluntary liquidation by the owner, the building would basically be sold to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder will also try to gain income from his new asset by renting the facilities, if this fails the process above may be repeated until finally the cost to the new owner is low enough for the new owner to actually make a return on his investment and at last the building becomes a real asset.
But of course you know all this.
Cheers
Roger
The main issue for anything renewable on a 5MW and up scale is the load. You cannot run anything big that spins without a load. Such loads are now supplied by capacitors, resistors that heat something and diesel gennys with no fuel etc. A supercap/battery will not need an expensive load. This will be very useful for hydro based generators and wind turbines that are always difficult to synch to the grid. When you know your battery can take a 500 degree hit and not be damaged safety is ok.
How do you limit the in-rush of current when charging the caps from near empty?
Is there a switching network that only charges a few of the caps at a time?
Aquion will rise again. The new owner may be able to get the price down as they may not be burdened by the startup capex. This assumes they know how to run a business and can negotiate with the lenders and shareholders.
Of course if the South Australian premier had any neurons SA would just buy the company. Alas politicians are nearly always out of batteries ie brain dead.
Can’t wait for peak scare mongering.
For various practical reasons, there has been very little genetic engineering of wheat (or other similar grasses like barley) anywhere, not just Australia.
Whether you decide to accept playing the sorcerers apprentice and irrevocably polluting the natural environment with genetically manipulated varieties or decide not to take that risk, either way it will be a “politically motivated” decision: it is a political choice.
The comment about “polluting the environment” with GMO’s is tendentious. Labeling anything “pollution” is often pure value judgement, and not a real argument. Perhaps the anti-GMO’s could use a term like “ritually unclean”?
Greg,
Tom,
If humans have played any part in breeding a variety of plant [or animal], regardless of whether that is sometimes used for food [for humans, or our food animals, or as manure . . . . ], could that organism be considered genetically modified?
My take [no, I am not a geneticist, I’m a seaman] is that, “Yes” – it should, if it differs in anyway outside the ‘natural’ variation we can find in the ‘wild’.
I guess the wild in many habitats has been modified by humans over the last plenty thousands of years, too.
My take.
You are welcome to disagree – but please say why you disagree.
Which is not to say GMOs must be allowed to run riot.
Trials are needed – but there needs, I think, to be a presumption of acceptance, unless the trials show potentially serious side-effects.
We have about 7,500,000,000 people to feed.
See – http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#top20
Thanks.
Auto
Y’all know that “we” innoculate seeds/roots of plants to encourage mutations and then do “selection” and grow new varieties. It isn’t direct gene modification but we have been “selecting” for characteristics for thousands of years. Where did all the different breeds of dogs come from? Should all these genetically modified beasts be culled?
So naturally occurring mutations are also pollution?
Only man is capable of polluting. If it’s natural, then by definition it’s harmless [/sarc]
Yes, practically greenpeace opposes it so the CSIRO backed off.
Greenpeace are anti scientific, actually destroying properly conducted field trials to improve glycaemic index and potentially protein yields of Aussi wheat varieties.
Various Ag departments in the Uni’s and the CSIRO have produced rust resistant and shatter proof wheat as well as improving the protein yield.
As a result our wheat is saleable to third world countries with major protein deficient diets.
The health benefits to women of child bearing age and their children are a credit to our nation.
Much of the research being carried out in Australia now is done by private companies. Kalyx has a number of scientists and technicians based in most states that do very well in plant breeding, especially in wheat breeding. So successful, it’s founder was able to retire and move on, to start other businesses in rural research in finding improvements in irrigated pastures. This research used to be CSIRO’s business, until they found the global warming gravy train.
Nothing stays the same. https://www.kalyx.com.au/
Thanks Tom.
One of the arguments against GM wheat is the fact that the seed wheat would have to be purchased annually from the supplier, which holds the patent.
Were the CSIRO to gene splice and trial wheat varieties for Australian conditions and farmers,It could provide them with wheat seed free of patent restrictions.
The Federal Government spent a year talking about an Innovative Australia.
The CSIRO would do well to be tasked with this mission, especially if their scientists think that climate change will destroy our cropping rates.
“shatter proof wheat”
I would appreciate hearing more on that.
Mark W
Its not enough to have wheat fields with ripe wheat waving in the wind, one has to harvest the wheat.
If the head of wheat is blown by wind or just touched, the grains can break off and fall to the ground, thus they are lost to reaping.
Once they are hit by the blade of a combine harvester the shattering effect will be worse.
So the aim is to make the wheat not shatter so it may be harvested.
This is a genetic characteristic and was discovered early in the history of cultivation.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zMxmDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT123&lpg=PT123&dq=shatter+proof+wheat&source=bl&ots=5nJTG-fWJN&sig=rtipMBQH5mofXrWCHmE_LBT7BKw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiu_ffOsN_SAhUDOJQKHfFfAfsQ6AEIPjAH#v=onepage&q=shatter%20proof%20wheat&f=false
Tom,
It is a pity so few people understand that the genome of wheat is vastly more complicated that that of corn so thank you for pointing that out.
The idea that GM and its ally Glyophosate are harmless has been amply disproven.
“The GM maize rats”
http://www.gmoseralini.org/the-gm-maize-rats/
BTW, in the USA farmers put Glyophosate on wheat just before harvesting – nothing to do with killing weeds – as it is a desiccant.
“The Real Reason Wheat is Toxic (it’s not the gluten)”
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/
You seem to have misunderstood me. Maize in the US is mostly hybrid, because corn has separate male and female “flowers”, and wheat does not, and is more difficult mechanically to hybridize. As hybrid corn outperforms open bred, the growers already routinely buy seed, therefore GMO seed is a relatively easy commercial proposition.
The benefits, or drawbacks, of GMO breeding is often conflated with organic farming and anti-corporate politics. As a casual observer, no -till seems to be a beneficial practice, and it is only practical with weedkiller tolerant crops, BT is used in “organic farming”, and there are other possible benefits not yet on the market.
The pity is that so few people understand that toxicity and carcinogenicity are related to dosage, route of exposure, etc.
The second link is a joke, right? Almost no data or science to it at all. Just Sarah with some quotes off the internet and her own anecdotal reasoning. It completely ignores the fact that people with celiac disease don’t suffer when they avoid gluten.
Just about every government agency round the globe says glyophosate is not harmful, including the EU’s.
Even the WHO had to issue a statement about its own agency’s misleading statement about the stuff.
I highly doubt this contention. Why add an expensive drying agent to get a few more kernels when the Sun does it for free? This practice may work in marginal wheat growing zones but trust me, the cost of a chemical drying agent, regardless of how it works, would have to be carefully considered on a year by year basis, given that profit margins for growing any commercial food product is paper thin for farmers. This part of the US I grew up in has some of the world’s finest winter red anywhere. The Sun does the job very well. My hunch is that Sarah doesn’t know sh** from Sherlock and has never walked through fields of Spring or Winter wheat to test for moisture and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between these two major wheat groups if she did.
Alfred, I know of no one around me in central IL who wastes Glyphosate pushing a wheat harvest. I can’t speak for the area where the bulk of the crop is grown as it may be response to weed pressure and timing the next planting. I think you might edify your “view from afar” by reading the following: http://thefarmerslife.com/long-term-glyphosate-use-effect-on-wheat/
I promise not to make blanket assumptions about Oz farming practices from what the MSM tells me.
I’m from wheat country in the US and I’ve never seen glyphosate used as a desiccant. In fact I’ve never seen it used on wheat. Soybeans and corn, yes.
I am looking for a weather station in your area with rainfall data going back to 1927. Any help will be appreciated
thank you;-)
and the GM wheat in usa was halted
the crop was supposed to be destroyed
however its shown up in shipments to EU and elsewhere and caused huge loss of trust.
this yr aus had good wheat crops though a lot switched to lentils for higher prices
now?
the grain handlers are looking to huge profits while they pay the growers a lot less”due to a glut”
same old story..never the producer getting the hard earnt profit.
and the canola grown in aus earns up to 50$ a tonne less and has caused a huge cost to the NON gmo growers in extra handling n testing fees imposed BY the OS silo interests that moved in real fast and are owned by conglomerate canadian /usa gmo seed companies
btw
clearfield is not sold as gmo but is, just done differently than splicing.
And do we really need more wheat, or are corn or soybeans better crops in today’s world?
Not every plant grows in all places. Most wheat is grown in landscapes where corn and soybeans cannot usually be grown. Thus the machinery in a region is mostly of a type not used on some other crop. Therefore, Sunflowers and Grain Sorghum (Milo) seem better alternatives in the Wheat regions.
“Today’s world needs certain forms of government to be replaced with others — that can and will allow their people to eat properly. Growing food is not the problem.
Remember the story about “Golden Rice”. It was supposed to be a savior for poor countries and would have helped millions if not hundreds of millions of people. The outcry from the “Greens” was astounding but also the present producers of rice fought against it. The story has disappeared.
I wonder where the push back is in Oz? The benefits from GMO are fabulous and will eventually come if farmers want to stay in business. And if I am correct nature has been genetically modifying our foods forever.
“While much of the rest of the world has embraced genetic modification to improve yields and resistance to pests, and reduce pesticide use, scare campaigns have kept Australia largely GM free”
This is rubbish. On a number of levels. Most of the World has not embraced GM – most have not. GM (as it stands) does not reduce pesticde use – it increases it. Most people object to GM due to the patenting issues and the persecution of small scale farmers that grow their own seeds. Just because you’ve been right about climate change does not mean you are right about every other ‘green’ issue. GM has been all about centralising power in a few very large corporations – people are right to reject it as it stands. The technology itself is not wrong – just the way it is currently being used, presented and exploited to transfer ownership of common property to a few exploitative companies. There is a shameful lack of government regulation on behalf of the people that they are supposed to represent, and people are therefore right to be very wary of safety and health regulations around GM – you only have to look at the ‘Bad Science’ around big pharma, and other food, drug and drink regulation to understand the very bad consequences of regulatory capture by large organisations.
Sorry, but there’s nothing but innuendo and conspiracy thought in that comment.
You seem to be contradicted on several points. And small scale farmers are not the producers of grain to any extent. And it is the job of a patent holding company to exploit their invention. If there are problems with patents (and there are, especailly in medicine) then argue against them rather than concoct some silly “greedy corporation” villain. Get real.
Jay is very real.and very correct.
small holders in aus growing organic have already copped loss of organic status due to gmo canola ingress onto their land.
the huge increases in glyphosate and other chem to farm the notill pushed BY the warmists and gmo corps is obscene.
it might be ok to patent a hybrid though as it wont breed true thats rather timewasting anyway, youre forced to buy new seed every year.
but to have chem tainted by design crops crosspollinating and then being charged with fees and legal threats when your crop and land get contaminated BY their products?
thats NOT on!
whats worse is the immediate jump to use CRISPR tech to multiple insert/delete genes
and no they NEVER HAVE done human feeding trials
oh except the ones anyone uninformed does to themselves by not ensuring gmo free status for foods.
rising IBS and other issues last 20 yrs?? hmm?
and thats WHY they dont want labelling
they do NOT want people to be able to CHOOSE freely and be informed.
All utter propaganda. GMs are designed to reduce pesticide use, hence their reduced usage. There is n transfer of common ownership, unless somehow you think a company spending billions on designing and producing something new makes that thing owned by the commons. There is no exploitation since nobody has to use the GM seeds.
And where was all this fuss when agri companies simply bombarded plants with massive doses of radiation to produce random mutations?
Tim Hammond March 12, 2017 at 6:57 am
All utter propaganda. GMs are designed to reduce pesticide use, hence their reduced usage.
Not true, crops are developed with glyophosate resistance so that it can be used on them. This has resulted in a huge growth in the use of glyophosate on crops.
Can you list who exactly is persecuting small farmers who grow their own seeds?
Do you mean that the big processors prefer to buy cheaper crops rather than more expensive stuff from the small farmers? If so, you have a weird definition of “persecution”?
“The chance of that just being variable climate without the underlying factor [of climate change] is less than one in 100 billion.”
Pretty good odds. I’ll bet a penny.
Me too mike. Those are pretty small odds. I wonder how 1 chance in in 100,000,000,000 relates to anything realistic. I wonder is CSIRO scientists ever heard of Type I and Type II errors?
Finally, it would be great to see their data and calculations resulting in this astounding claim.
Australia’s CSIRO used to be a fine research institution.
The Green influence has killed that off.
whenever I hear a claim like that, I know I’m being bullshitted.
Exactly.
Ludicrous.
Ooh, Ooh, Ooh, I Know, I Know!
I’ll bet they found a Wee p value!
Wee p values are always at the bottom of 1:100 Billion claims.
If you assume that its caused by invisible alien and that whatever is happening can only be caused by invisible aliens, then the chance that it’s not invisible aliens is also one in 100 billion.
The Big IF.
Their assumption, that a stagnation is due to climate change (higher temps?), is just that. It is an assumption without any questioning, with no mechanistic link other than, “we say it is so.”
But as CO2 continues to climb, the fertilization effect will help yields. And if it warms, then growing seasons lengthen. The hydrologic cycle acceleration may bring increased rainfalls.
Historical evidence points to The Roman Warm Period and the Medeval Warm Period that allowed civilizations around the world to expand due to improved crop productivity.
Just alarmist bull crap.
The UK government gave the go ahead for trials of GM wheat to begin in 2017 just a few weeks ago. Supposedly, the GM version has 40% improvement in yield (under glass) and even the Biased Broadcasting Corporation carried the story….with the usual spin from their environmental desk. So, the technology is there…..and I guess the same can be done for barley. GM rice (e.g. Golden Rice with extra Vitamin A) has already been around for a while and other modifications are now being planted commercially – we just need people to stop ranting on about “Frankenfoods” and to realise that more efficient photosynthesis is a good thing, as is reduced amounts of pesticides, fertilizer, etc. In the case of Golden Rice, the extra Vitamin A was intended to address a problem that kills ~ 500,000 children a year but its introduction was fought vociferously by environmental groups. So much for helping people in the developing world – rather reminiscent of Rachel Carson’s endeavours, I’d say!
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38814837
Doesn’t wheat have 6 copies of 7 chromosomes? It is a dicotyledon so it bulks up pretty easily on genetic material. I’d say the evolution of wheat has only just begun. How that happens is up for discussion – genetic modification by ‘conventional’ techniques is still genetic modification.
Just because some companies are miserable doesn’t have any long term effects on civilisation. In 200 years the economy will have completely transformed and who knows, there may not even be patents anymore. The stupidity of opposing golden rice is an example of how lost ‘protest groups’ are.
Monocotyledon
“Wheat genetics is more complicated than that of most other domesticated species. Some wheat species are diploid, with two sets of chromosomes, but many are stable polyploids, with four sets of chromosomes (tetraploid) or six (hexaploid).[24]
Einkorn wheat (T. monococcum) is diploid (AA, two complements of seven chromosomes, 2n=14).[1]
Most tetraploid wheats (e.g. emmer and durum wheat) are derived from wild emmer, T. dicoccoides. Wild emmer is itself the result of a hybridization between two diploid wild grasses, T. urartu and a wild goatgrass such as Aegilops searsii or Ae. speltoides. The unknown grass has never been identified among now surviving wild grasses, but the closest living relative is Aegilops speltoides.[citation needed] The hybridization that formed wild emmer (AABB) occurred in the wild, long before domestication,[24] and was driven by natural selection.
Hexaploid wheats evolved in farmers’ fields. Either domesticated emmer or durum wheat hybridized with yet another wild diploid grass (Aegilops tauschii) to make the hexaploid wheats, spelt wheat and bread wheat.[24] These have three sets of paired chromosomes, three times as many as in diploid wheat”
And yes…monocot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat
the supposed 500mil deaths is like the flu deaths
a claimed but NOT actually supported by facts figure
sounds impressive though.
So the difference in malaria deaths before and after the DDT ban is not proven?
Ozspeaksup:
You think that vitamin A deficiency is some sort of unsubstantiated myth?
Why do you hate children and poor people so badly you would rather see them blind or dead than allow a perfectly suitable solution to be implemented?
You should be ashamed of yourself for spreading such cold hearted lies and misinformation.
Absolute bullsh*t yet again from CSIRO. Reducing rates of increased crop yields will be down to the law of diminishing returns. In other words at some point agricultural science will’ve squeezed out as much grain as is humanly possibly to extract from an acre of land. After that it’ll be marginal fluctuations dependent upon a range of factors, weather being only one of many. However what modern agriculture is most unlikely to do is change to a trend of diminishing yields.
It really does stick in the craw when ‘scientists’ (whose ‘predictive’ models have repeatedly failed, remember) mislead to such an egregious extent in order to push their failing ‘climate change’ agenda.
That is correct. The big gains in wheat were made by Norman Borlaug. First, dwarfing. Second, rust resistance. After that, cultivar adaptation to local conditions. For example, Afganistan now has about 10 distinct ‘Borlaug’ cultivars. The more recent yield increases are owed to spread of best practices like adequate fertilizer. Same with rice. In best practices Japan and China, no yield increases at present. Elsewhere in Asia, up to a doubling of yields is still possible just by adoption of best practices. Analyzed this for all of the worlds major food crops in ebook Gaia’s Limits.
Some interesting historical photos of harvest time in Eastern Washington State:
vintage photographs
And with more text:
http://www.farmcollector.com/farm-life/Whitman-county-wheat-harvest
And:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wnLkptmly54/Vks5u5kCTMI/AAAAAAAApD8/yLP8yS-QEqU/s1600/Wheat%2Bharvest%2Bhillside%2Bscene.JPG
I’ll bet Anna Vidot (author of the article) cannot explain what is happening (and a lot is) on this hillside.
I would, but my pizza is ready. You are on your own!
The Walla Walla Yacht Club (WWYC) is next to the grain elevator at Port Kelly thanks to the lake created by McNary Dam. The dry land fields hosts several thousand MWe of wind farms. https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
There is also a coal plant and nuke plant.
There is also a oil seed crop that can be rotated with winter wheat.
We also harvest ‘road kill’ Walla Walla onions that fall off the trucks. This also wine country.
What the ‘never green’ part of the Evergreen State does not produce a lot of is big goverment.
Green Newspeak rears it’s ugly head. Just exactly how is “variable climate” different from “climate change”?? As I understand it, no one has shown any credible evidence that temperatures or the rate that temperatures are varying/changing is outside the bounds of of the natural variations seen since the glaciers last receded.
This is the graph of Australian wheat production since 1960:
I don’t see a downward trend anywhere. Stating that production tripled between 1900 and 1990 but has “stagnated” since then is misleading claptrap. The technology changes in that 90 years dwarf anything in the past 26; it’s like comparing baseball statistics from the 1890s to today’s.
What I do see in this graph is much lower variability over the past 8 or 9 years, which has to be a good thing vs the wide swings. If you average the yields over that period vs the previous similar duration period, there appears to be a step function in productivity. As usual, for the greens, the glass is half empty.
Great comment.
I have been discounting everything published by the lamestream media for a couple of decades now, once I caught on to the various memes and methods they use to propagate the propaganda. Economists and Professor Thomas DiLorenzo has a great Chapter in his book “Lincoln Unmasked”, a follow up to his best seller “The Real Lincoln” that goes into the debate between historians on Lincoln. He calls those protecting Lincoln’s quite “high” level of persona and legacy, “gatekeepers”. What’s the old saying ” history is written by the winners. We now know, that they often mislead us to conceal the various improprieties that occurred. That chapter to me was one of the most interesting and surely helps one look at the real Lincoln for what he was and not just what we were taught to believe. A must read. Being an economists DiLorenzo focuses a lot on laws and economics that affected that period and occurrences so it very interesting.
Same old rum and slave party line. It was never enough for the south to assassinate Lincoln. They still like to come out and burn his effigy. Watch for the Rum and Slave party’s modern incarnation — the Drugs and Human Trafficking Party. Same people.
HSkipRob says, “Economists and Professor Thomas DiLorenzo has a great Chapter in his book “Lincoln Unmasked”, a follow up to his best seller “The Real Lincoln” that goes into the debate between historians on Lincoln. He calls those protecting Lincoln’s quite “high” level of persona and legacy, “gatekeepers”. ”
As for the economic argument that slavery in the south was just about to vanish because of the industrial advances, this is complete hogwash. After the Civil War, the former slaves were still being arrested and fined (which obviously they could not pay) with the purpose of placing them in debt servitude, under a system of peonage. (There was also peonage resulting from forced borrowing from “the company store.”) This resulted the passage of the following legislation:
The Peonage Abolition Act of 1867 was an Act passed by Congress on March 2, 1867, that abolished peonage in the New Mexico Territory and elsewhere in the United States. Designed to help enforce the Thirteenth Amendment, the act declares that holding any person to service or labor under the peonage system is unlawful and forever prohibited. It defines peonage as the “voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons . . . in liquidation of any debt or obligation.” Violations were punishable by fines and imprisonment.
Thanks to the generation that stood up against and righted the wrongs, at profound cost to themselves.
If “history is written by the winners,” read the Thirteenth Amendment and the Peonage Abolition Act. Because that is what the winners wrote. Is there a problem with that?
The British Empire abolished slavery 60 years prior without firing a shot. Lincoln’s clumsy and stupid mishandling of it cost over 650,000 American lives, more than that lost by any other US President. And you call him a hero? I have never understood that.
The south did not assassinate Lincoln. One man, acting on his own did.
Recent years have only ‘stagnated’ in the sense that year-to-year volatility of production has reduced.
Grain growers won’t plant a crop unless they can be reasonably sure they can make a return on their investment , if they know wheat prices will be down they will look at other crops , some will gamble on wheat and some only know how to do wheat .
They study their weather records BOM predictions and other more reliable long term forecasters .
The CSIRO and other alarmist organisations have been spouting for years that food crops are down by record margins , now they’re just moving the goal posts to a safe distance that no one will remember.
Never seen or heard of or put super phosphate on any crop before harvest .
The whole thing is a shambles.
1. The flat trend was stated in a paper for the period 1990 to 2006, (a low point-see above, before yields picked up again). This was seen as evidence of climate change, just like the reason Australian desalination plants were built, as at the time droughts in the early 2000’s were thought to be the ‘new norm’, before they weren’t.
2. They claimed a downward trend, not on a downward trend, but on a modelled ‘potential yield’ downward trend, which should have meant production went upwards, instead of flat. In other words, the trend should have been up due to climate change, but was flat, so this is seen as a downward trend, or a decline in ‘potential yield’. They call this decline in modeled upward potential yield, in spite of a being a flat, a decline.
3. Soon after 2006, production went up again (see above graph, as it does). But by the time scientists get around to publish the idea that flat means a downward modelled decline fiasco, the trend has changed again (as it does). Like saying sell at $2 2 years ago because things will decline when the price is already $4 now.
4. The modelled decline in potential yield, is further stated that:
“The chance of that just being variable climate without the underlying factor [of climate change] is less than one in 100 billion.”
In other words, the model is based on climate change producing a declining potential yield, and the chances are 1 in 100 billion that this modeled trend is not due to climate change, because that is what I just modelled it as, (in other words, if you model something based on climate change, then there is a 1 in 100 billion chance the model is not based on climate change). Trouble is, the return to a rise in production after 2006 strongly suggests it IS just random variation. So much for the 1 in 100 billion. (Ridiculous statistical probabilities are always a red flag).
Note that both production and annual growth in Australian wheat production show a continuing upward trend (see links below), so the whole reason for the paper in the first place, based on a misinterpreted stall in production during droughts in the early 2000s, is now shown to be false. (But never let a 1 in 100 billion chance go away).
http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=au&commodity=wheat&graph=production-growth-rate
http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=au&commodity=wheat&graph=production
The Iraqi information minister would be very proud of the paper.
@ur momisugly James S
The graph you show is of total annual production, not productivity (i.e., yield per acre). I suspect that difference is the source of the disagreement. In the USA we have only achieved a factor of 3 improvement in wheat yields per acre since 1940, from 15 to 45 bushel/acre. http://i63.tinypic.com/35jvu3c.jpg In that same interval we have improved average corn yields by a factor of 6 from 30 to 180 bu/ac. My guess is that wheat can be pushed to that same gain, but it is slower because of the more complex genetics and less vigorous subsidy regime.
Read the Book ZeKe. Extremely well referenced with the laws and historical evidence. Slavery was around for millenniums. Of course it took many years to eliminate and it’s still not totally eliminated. Some suggest economic slavery is still quite rampant as well. We do have about 100,000,000 million people living at or near the poverty line in the U.S. You can try to argue, what the ex-wigs and Republicans did to our country, but it is quite obvious to anyone with intellectual integrity.
HSkipRob March 13, 2017 at 3:48 am
“You can try to argue, what the ex-wigs and Republicans did to our country, but it is quite obvious to anyone with intellectual integrity.”
If you want to be the beacon of intellectual integrity and talk about what is plain and obvious, then answer the question I already raised: is there a problem with the Thirteenth Amendment and the Peonage Aboliition Act?
XII Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The meaning of these are clear and quite obvious to any one with any intellectual integrity. If you want to repeal them, then come out and say it. See who will join your new Repeal the Thirteenth and Peonage Act Party. That is all this is about, and it is all it was about for the Americans who voted for Lincoln, and for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who volunteered.
HSkipRob March 13, 2017 at 3:48 am
“Slavery was around for millenniums. Of course it took many years to eliminate and it’s still not totally eliminated. Some suggest economic slavery is still quite rampant as well.”
That is the whole point HSkipRob. This country is not a caste system. We have equality before the law here. If that is what you want, then have some intellectual integrity and say you want a caste system, with separate laws for separate castes.
And we know that Human Trafficking is a real epidemic right now. It comes with certain other illegal activity, and it also comes with mass migration. Human Trafficking must be found out and prosecuted.
you are OT
How in the word did you come up with that conclusion from what I wrote. Not even close to what I meant. Also, much of human trafficking is people wanting to migrate but must do it illegally due to the plethora of statist regulations and high costs, but let’s not talk about that.
Scientists are just like any other group, in that you have to pump out some news to make it look like you’re actually doing something useful and productive. One of the greatest stories of this, was when the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s. We found out that much of the intelligence that had been coming from our CIA and others opts was erroneous. Our agents had literally been making stuff up to maintain legitimacy and the cold war scam. We can only assume that they never thought they could ever get caught, since unless there had been the collapse, there would never have been a means of verification. So sometimes when the lamesteam media is being given information, it may be untrue, making it even more difficult to discern the truth as a reader. Beware off all press releases. Lol
HSkipRob: especially if such press releases are from governments predicting the end of the world/wheat production/ etc etc.
Boulder, Colorado recently continued their ban on GMO crops even after it was proven to them by their own researchers that the number of tractor hours and water use per acre could be dramaticly cut by GMO techniques.
Never let reality stand in the way of a new ban for the “good of the people”.
id rather do 2 more passes with a disk than pay more than 2x the diesel cost in chemicals thanks
If that is true, then nobody in their right mind would use the stuff and a ban isn’t necessary.
Bans are only necessary to prevent people from doing what they want to do.
No one has been able to unequivocally show that AGW is actually happening. There is a lot of handwaving and the what-else-could-“it”-be logical fallacy, but the ‘science’ keeps failing against observations and the ‘scientists’ keep altering the observations to deal with troubling stagnancy in temperature response to rising CO2. There is a limit to how much you can continue revising earlier temperatures downwards to keep a rising slope going but the hope must be that soon warming will resume and they can relax.
The anatomy of Climateering is interesting as we go forward. We no longer hear much from the A-list gentlemen of record benders. First, because of the frightful Pause, they marshaled the political science, psychology and social science (the corrupted and broken sciences) minions and apparently the aggies. Now, until recently almost all a man’s dominion, the job has been handed to a growing demographic of new young women graduate students. I’m not sure what to make of this handing over of the torch. Is it also happening with physics, chemistry and math?
Dennis Avery pointed out years ago that if the same techniques of increasing yields used to expand corn yields in the US were applied to wheat, yields would increase dramatically.
There is another issue that I am unable to confirm without looking at the original research, but are eerily similar. Back in the early 1980s, similar concerns were expressed about wheat yields in North America. Despite increasing fertilizer use and improved crop varieties from plant breeding, wheat yields that climbed significantly in the 1960s and 1970s began to level off in the early 1980s. I learned about this first hand because I spoke to many of the “Maximum Yield” clubs that formed as world demand from the Soviet Union and China among others expanded significantly. Researchers at that time also blamed climate change, although it was because of the cooling trend from 1940 through to 1980.
It turned out that they neglected to monitor what are collectively called trace elements in the soil, such as copper, manganese, and zinc. They considered them insignicant in the plant growth. Then, someone discovered that without some of these minerals, as I recall in the case of wheat it was primarily zinc, the plant could not could not take up the other significant fertilizers like nitrates and phosphates. Once the zinc was exhausted, the plant yield increase slowed, stopped and the decreased.
The researchers in Australia did consider “soil fertility” but that is a very vague term. What I need to know is precisely how they defined this and all the other variables and what assumptions they made in their research before I can accept their findings.
I have written about this problem of cause and effect in climate impact research before. Usually, it is not possible to include all variables in modelling as some are not known to be significant or are shown to be insignificant under the current conditions. Reduction in the number of variables may simplify the model and reduce calculations, but it reduces credibility of your results. This means that if you are going to attribute cause of decreasing yields or any other change, you have to go back and reconsider all the primary assumptions made in the first place. There is also the problem that a variable shown to be insignificant under one set of conditions may become very important under another set of conditions.
I am afraid that these days there is too much of a predilection, often subconscious, or because of funding or who you work for, such as in this case CSIRO, for a particular cause to inlfuence a study. Here it appears that the bias is to blame global warming.
Wheat is particularly zinc sensitive. The North Dakota recommendation is 10 pounds per acre in the form of zinc sulphate solution.
“Liebig’s Law or the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor).” [Source: Wikipedia]
Exactly John H., the law of the least limiting factor should not be news to anyone serious about what they are doing.
It applies widely, not just in agriculture.
See how many cars you can build if you have everything but the nuts that hold the wheel on, or piston rings, etc?
How many houses you can build if you have boatloads of every part but no nails?
How productive an oceanic ecosystem will be if there is everything needed for planktonic growth but no iron?
Seriously…it applies to nearly everything.
Albrecht and charles Walters covered soil minerals n needs for all soil types waaay back in the 40s onwards
pity more people dont know or read their excellent work!
It seems a little difficult to believe that anyone involved in agriculture could be completely ignorant of the effect of a micronutrient deficiency.
For an entire agricultural community to be so ignorant is astounding.
I have to wonder if this is actually true.
main issue is the relationship between rainfall and crops and I have not even seen one study here that makes sense to me……
you have to look at it in lots of 2 successive Schwabe solar cycles each
e.g. here is my result for SA
I have similar results for Wellington in NZ, except that the relationship is opposite [a parabola, rather than a hyperbole] but similar correlation coefficient
hence,
see my earlier comment on this.
more rain is on its way to NZ and southern AU
HOWEVER less rain will go to the USA in the next decade….
In Baldwin County Alabama we have been able to increase soybean crop yield double ( normal 40 bu/a) used 1/3 less fertilizer and herbicides. Bean count from 2800/lb to 3200/lb with no faults. Adding Biocarbon, Fulvic acid made from fresh biomas and Microbes. It can be done and now even with out GMO
less than 20 bu/ to 43.8 bu/a
http://www.humicgrowth.com/ Humic and Fulvic acid info.
As I found:
but then, the great Wizards of OZ know all, see all, bloviate all!
…and they don’t need no stinkin “asymptote” to confuse them!
Haaaa Haaaa, Haaa.
Wheat has a very low breeding investment as farmers save seed from year to year and thus companies have little incentive to invest in wheat breeding. They make more in corn and soy. The next step in wheat is hybrid wheat, which is likely around the corner, and then breeding investment and yield will increase
Pioneer is working on hybrid wheat. But the heterosis yield boost is only a maximum of 15-20 percent, unlike maise. And hybridization is more difficult and expensive than maise. So the farm economics may not work out having to buy expensive new seed each year.
Biggest wheat threat was emergence of UG97 rust that evolved to overcome Borlaugs rust resistance. Took CIMMYT over a decade to breed a new rust resistant strain. Problem is the locally adapted cultivars still need to be developed.
Climate change may be a disaster for a number of crops, but not in the way these folks think. The cooling period of the early 1300s was marked by massive crop failures in Europe resulting in a large number of famines. These continued through most of the 1300s. In North America, the northernmost planting line for corn was pushed south. The Mayan civilization collapsed at around this point in time too. If you think warm is bad for crops, cold is a lot, lot worse.
Cold is worse than warm but hot is worse than cool.
I think you’re saying ‘stable’ would be your preference. Stable as in close to the average of the last 10,000 years. Neither excessive heat nor cold will probably do modern complex society much good.
Not that you could make that sentence any more incomprehensible
Could you use any more weasel words?
• “excessive”?
• • is your heat only excessive or does excessive apply to cold too? Not that excessive applies well to either generic term.
• “probably” – oh yeah, almost useful word.
• “modern complex society”? – Are there “modern simple societies”? Aren’t societies complex by definition?
• “much”?
• “good”? Let alone “much good”
Let’s backtrack to your, almost equally nebulous:
First response to that little wispy bit of nonsense, is no!
Apparently you’ve never visited or stood in a cornfield or wheat field during late July in America’s heartland.
Until plants reach cooking temperatures, hot weather by itself, is not a big deal. They grow lushly, have sweeter fruit.
Try visiting any of the southern states during late summer to view their harvests.
“Cool”? What is cool? Is cool any temperature that is not hot?
Cool weather in Maine or Canada would be considered definitely frosty weather in California or Texas.
While cool weather south of the Mason-Dixon line are any temperatures lower than 80°F.
Cold, i.e. temperatures near freezing, damages crops in a multitude of ways. Significant periods of low temperatures, i.e. day time high temperatures less than 80°F (26.7°C), slow plant growth and impair crop yields.
Extended periods with below 70°F (21.1°C) stunt many plants. Coupled with late or early frosts and freezes, can eliminate plants reaching fruiting maturity, known as crop failure.
Climate change, i.e. a series of years with crop failures caused by cold temperatures as history has recorded numerous times are disastrous periods for humanity.
Climate change, i.e. a series of years with significantly warmer temperatures, are recorded by history as beneficial to mankind. These periods are properly described as Optimums.
Alarmist attempts to portray higher temperatures as catastrophic are entirely based on biased fantasies.
Whatever your vague use of the words hot or heat mean to you; they do not mean disaster of any kind to mankind.
“ATheoK March 11, 2017 at 9:51 pm”
If you want to find congnitively challenged people you will find many in Tony’s home state in Australia, Queensland. After all, it was the state, along with the CSIR, the forerunner to he CSIRO, and sugar companies, that introduced the cane toad.
Most every plant grows faster and better when the temp increases, assuming sufficient moisture.
When the weather gets above a certain temp, planting times need to be adjusted, but growing seasons increase in length.
If it gets how enough…you get two growing seasons a year…like in Florida.
Here we plant in February and August.
Since we are well below the average of the last 10K years, we can do with 3 or 4 more degrees of warm.
BTW, complex societies handle changes a lot better than non-complex societies do.
The variations in weather that caused famines a few hundred years ago are not even noticed today. Both because farmers, with access to better data and techniques can adjust, and because we can ship in food from elsewhere.
“Climate change may be a disaster for a number of crops”
Climate change will have absolutely no effect on crops….
2 degree increase is an average.
summer average temperatures change more than that now…and always have
Not to mention that most of any recent changes have been to make it less cool at night, less cold in Winter, and less cold in the polar regions…all a net benefit to plants.
If anything an increase in CO2 will lead to higher yields per acre and to more drought tolerance if research for other crop species is anything to go by. Of course if you plant more acres you will usually get more total weight harvested as is happening in Australia. Yield per acre and it’s growth is not the same as a bumper crop due to increased acres planted.
That yield growth is leveling off in % terms is no surprise and for CSIRO to claim as per above seems to defy this logic.
The claim that GM crops have increased yield by 22% needs to be compared to the yield gains of non GM crops over the same time and one will find that the numbers are nothing like it. Highly controlled tests are not real life on the farm. One can also find tests that show that GM yield growth is less then non GM. Quite possibly a matter of who conducts the test. Monsanto or Greenpiece (no spelling mistake).
If the price of rapeseed goes through the roof next year expect to see a decline in total wheat production which does not mean that yield per acre is dropping.
At the moment the world has got more grain by weight in storage then it has ever had. Perhaps all due to an increase in CO2, there is certainly a correlation here.
otb…nailed it
…one thing to add to a series of good posts. The additional CO2 yield comes with zero increase in land or water, and increased mineral efficiency.
One could argue that CO2 means water use is more efficient.
How does CO2 increase mineral efficiency?
If one looks at various measures of yield, whether it be yield per acre, acres planted, or yield per person in terms of total calories of food…all are increasing worldwide, overall and generally.
Individual years and crops have significant variation due to a number of factors.
When was the last time a huge famine, due to crop failure, occurred in the Sahel, or anywhere else anyone can think of?
These events have, in our lifetime, gone from very common to very rare, and are increasingly so in more recent years.
…oh, yes we must add to CO2 benefits increased heat wave and drought tolerance.
Banning a progress in agriculture will stop any yield gains, whether the climate keeps changing or gets somehow fossilized.
Yes. In Gaia’s Limits I plotted the long term yield gains for maise in the US where GMO is > 90% of the crop, and Europe where it is irrationally prohibited. US continues a fairly linear yield increase trend to 2011 (the book published in early 2012) starting about 1920 with widespread early hybrids. Europe increase stopped dead about 2000; no yield increase since. There are essentially two big maise GMO advantages. 1. Roundup Ready (glyphosate herbicide immune). This enhances yield through better general weed control. Lack of weed control can cut yields 50%. Also enables no till planting, as plowing to control early weed growth is not necessary, which comserved soil organic matter. 2. Bt, which is a natural insecticide protection against things like corn rootworm (the larvae of a small beetle). Corn rootworm can cut yields 25%, and insecticide control is expensive and not fully effective since the problem is down in the soil. Put differently, GMO Bt maise in Mexico (where poor farmers cannot afford insecticides) increases yields almost 30%. So even they can afford the US produced GMO seed.
no trash burns and plough in, leaves rusts fungus and weed seeds to go nuts.
sells a shitload of chem
helps make banks rich
helps make farmers go broke too.
Let me see if I got this straight. In your world, farmers are stupid and will voluntarily do things that cost them money.
Only right thinking people like yourself know what is really in the farmer’s best interests.
“but we’ve statistically analysed the trend that we observed” That makes is science and it must be right?
Is there a theoretical limit to how much wheat I can grow per acre in North Dakota? The limiting conditions would be growing season, sunlight, temperature, etc. I can irrigate and fertilize but not for free. As well as a theoretical limit there may be a lower practical, economic limit. What is the limit? I have no clue.
Wheat is a C3 crop, so it benefits dramatically from additional CO2 under nearly all conditions. (C4 crops like corn and sorghum benefit little from extra CO2 unless grown where there’s a drought risk — which, of course, means almost everywhere.)
The indispensable CO2Science plant growth database indexes more than a hundred studies of the effects of additional CO2 on wheat. Here’s the list of studies:
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/t/ref/triticuma_ref.php
Here’s a table summarizing the results:
http://co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/t/triticuma.php
http://sealevel.info/co2science_wheat_instructions.png
As you can see, supplementation with an additional 300 ppmv CO2 is dramatically beneficial for wheat, and another 300 ppmv beyond that (+600 ppmv total) is also slightly beneficial.
Unfortunately, outdoor CO2 levels will never get that high. The atmosphere might get to the outdoor equivalent of +300 ppmv, in a century or two, If economic growth continues, and if fusion & thorium power fizzle. But I doubt it, and it will certainly never get to +600 ppmv. So, for practical purposes, the higher the CO2 levels, the more wheat will benefit.
Here in America, crop yields continue to climb:
http://brownfieldagnews.com/news/2016-u-s-corn-soybean-crops-biggest-ever/
This report concludes that there is an underlying reduction in recent yields per hectare not attributable to the drought possibly due to farming practices:
http://www.regional.org.au/au/asa/2012/agriculture/8163_lakea-2.gif
http://www.regional.org.au/au/asa/2012/agriculture/8163_lakea.htm
The longest rainfall records available show an overall increase in rainfall, those areas with less are generally higher rainfall areas except south-west WA.
http://www.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2014-05/192388_5_.png
In any case given the overall climate and soil conditions in Australia there would be no reason to assume crop yields and income would continue to increase indefinitely.
how about if you compared rainfall with crop yields?
[by my results rainfall has gone down over the past 25 years in NZ, probably also in AU
….
That’s right hernyp. You don’t just get more plant food, other stuff happens too.
It exactly follows the Hale solar cycle
From 2014 rainfall should be increasing again, for the next 24 yrs in NZ and southern AU
Sorry McClown, Glo.Bull Warming should increase rain, not lessen it…
How could “Bull” do anything?
Sorry bitch, that’s a logical question.
One could just as easily conclude that the primary reason for increased wheat production through the 20th century was warming. This is how weak the logic is in the argument.