Diligent Californian climate researchers have pieced together the solution to the mystery of why corn yields are rising, in defiance of climate model predictions of falling corn yields.
But we shouldn’t get too excited about this discovery – researchers are concerned that corn is the exception, that the newly discovered process of “adaption” which has been so successfully used by farmers to improve corn yields may not be applicable to other types of farm produce.
How US Corn Farmers Adapted to Climate Change
Changing weather and planting practices in recent decades have led to increased corn yields, but whether the findings will apply to other crops and regions remains unknown.
Friday, December 14, 2018 – 10:00
Gabriel Popkin, Contributor(Inside Science) — Few of climate change’s varied dangers are more dire than its potential to make the world’s farms produce less food. While we live in boom times of agricultural abundance, marked by record crop yields and cheap food, climate change threatens to slash yields and cause worldwide food busts. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment, droughts, temperature extremes and plagues of insect pests will increasingly harm farming worldwide.
But some experts hope humanity will be able to weather the wiles of climate change through adaptation — that farmers will be able to overcome climate-related threats by adjusting how they grow crops.
A new study analyzing U.S. corn yields over the last few decades seems to support that notion. It looked at temperature trends in the Midwest, examined how farmers adjusted their planting practices to take advantage of them, and showed that U.S. farmers were able to grow more corn, not less.
“It gives me some hope that when we see climate trends that are not quite so benevolent, farmers will have some tools at their disposal,” said Nathan Mueller, an Earth scientist at the University of California, Irvine and co-author of the study.
Not everyone is as sanguine, however. Some experts point to the fact that among all crops, corn may be the exception, not the rule, that demonstrates how adaptation can work.
“The risk is that if people overstate the benefits of adaptation, it’s sort of like, OK, the environment can change and we can figure out how to deal with it,” said David Lobell, an environmental scientist at Stanford University. “I’ve seen that happen so many times, I’m cautious when I talk to reporters about overemphasizing the ingenuity of what people can do.”
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Read more: https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-us-corn-farmers-adapted-climate-change
The abstract of the study;
Peculiarly pleasant weather for US maize
Ethan E. Butler, Nathaniel D. Mueller, and Peter Huybers
PNAS November 20, 2018 115 (47) 11935-11940; published ahead of print November 5, 2018Continuation of historical trends in crop yield are critical to meeting the demands of a growing and more affluent world population. Climate change may compromise our ability to meet these demands, but estimates vary widely, highlighting the importance of understanding historical interactions between yield and climate trends. The relationship between temperature and yield is nuanced, involving differential yield outcomes to warm (9−29°C) and hot (>29° C) temperatures and differing sensitivity across growth phases. Here, we use a crop model that resolves temperature responses according to magnitude and growth phase to show that US maize has benefited from weather shifts since 1981. Improvements are related to lengthening of the growing season and cooling of the hottest temperatures. Furthermore, current farmer cropping schedules are more beneficial in the climate of the last decade than they would have been in earlier decades, indicating statistically significant adaptation to a changing climate of 13 kg·ha−1· decade−1. All together, the better weather experienced by US maize accounts for 28% of the yield trends since 1981. Sustaining positive trends in yield depends on whether improvements in agricultural climate continue and the degree to which farmers adapt to future climates.
Read more: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/47/11935
I hope you folk are as encouraged by this ray of hope as I am. If the principles of “adaption” which have so far saved corn yields can be applied to crops other than corn, just maybe we may avoid some of the disastrous future declines in crop yields, and future hardships predicted by climate models.
O.P. cites “… cooling of the hottest temperatures …” & “… better weather…” as responsible for 28% yield boost. Which indicates that in this context the “climate change” is auspicious.
One can “adapt”. And species and individual adapt to changing ecosystems using non-genetic behavior changes and genetic and epigenetic evolution mechanisms.
Or one can undergo adaptation.
Nowhere in the references do I see the misspelled word “adaption.”
And yes, adaptation to climate change is stringently ignored by the Alarmists. In their mind, they live in an unchanging Garden of Eden where unicorns and fairies have always lived. To be precise, the Climate Change Alarmists believe in verifiable fantasy.
Somebody forgot the sarc tag.
That’s a joke. The farmer would get twenty times that much better yield simply by buying a fresh combine harvester every 5 years instead of every 10.
Considering that he’ll have been throwing stonkingly large amounts of fertiliser and pest protection product at the crop, on top of the advances made by plant breeders**, that actually, in my book, equates to a decline in yield
** The only significant advances made by plant breeders are “Deeper Rooting Plants”
What’s *that* all about then?
Next, have they been planting corn in places where it historically has not been grown.
Welcome to Crop Rotation. Even The Roans would give fine speeches extolling its virtues yet strangely, still managed to trash all the fields, forests and farm all around The Med and THEN, run out of food.
If only Magical Thought Bubbles contained anything ‘good to eat’
Not in the very least, is it impossible that the growing of maize has actually caused the observed Climate Change?
Take a long hard look at a typical maize plant.
Huge flappy leaves designed to capture as much (photosynthetic) energy as it can but also capturing vast amounts of solar thermal energy which it doesn’t need.
(Its that tired old Quality versus Quantity thing yet again)
But those big flappy leaves will be very efficient at losing that heat into the air around the plants.
The effective heat absorbing surface area of a maize field will be *much* larger than the field’s area as viewed in plane projection on a map and it will always have ‘absorbing are’ perpendicular to the sun for every moment that the sun is above the horizon.
Hence a field of maize will be warmer (at exactly the height thermometers are usually placed) than a field growing a much flatter crop such as (dwarf wheat) or, ideally and as it was until they were all needlessly slaughtered, grassland that fed and maintained the buffalo.
Their big trampling feet and epic ‘cow pies’ returned the favour and looked after the dirt beneath the grass.
Don’t mess with the cows. OK?
Then, we have the most appalling assumption ever made (thank you Ancell)..
namely that maize is an actual viable foodstuff for human critters.
It Is Not.
There *is* a reason why it is enclosed in an indigestible (for us) husk AND why it is utterly tasteless mush.
A very good reason which we ignore at our diabetic and demented peril.
1st the Newarkians came for our rice & I said nothing. Now the Newarkians come for our corn & I say nothing. What more sacrifice must be made next to appease the Newarkians?
Roans
😀
I love it – just invented a new civilisation
I bet they their own Warm Period then went extinct because of ‘Climate Change’
Poor bastids, I’ll bet they were really nice folks too.
Ho hum. Nothing new eh……
I asked someone in the know about Ontario yields. The following was the reply:
There has been favourable weather for maize in the US midwest (at least since the 1988 drought) mainly due to no serious drought events. This was predicted by Landscheidt. In Ontario, the length of the useful growing season is monitored in corn heat units. In all zones in ontario, the heat unit maps have been increased due to warming climate. This year the farmers have had a cool cloudy fall and the corn is full of vomotoxins and much is left unharvested. So it was a big crop that is toxic and of low value.
So corn yields have been trending up about 1%/year and yes I will buy that 28% of that is due to the warming cycle we have been in. I don’t expect it to last as the sun is going to bottom in about 2020 for solar activity. I just do not understand how it got so very hot this summer given the sun was mostly inactive. It was so surprising. The cool cloudy fall weather is much more than I would expect. Cosmic rays are heading to 55 year highs in the next 12-24 months. They last peaked in 2009-10 so figure a 2020-21 peak (see the 3rd chart). https://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/
Are they suggesting that farming behaviour is learned rather than instinctive? What a revelation!
It’s the extra CO2 dummies.
Hi C.H., – Elevated CO2 (eCO2) is good for the C4 plant corn (maize) when it can “… ameliorate effects of water stress.” Otherwise to get about a 14% yield increase from eCO2
requires ramping up the fertilization with nitrogen application by twice that required under ambient CO2. In other words, given decent soil moisture, eCO2 “…increase(s) the amount of nitrogen fertilization required to achieve maximum yield…” of corn.
At eCO2 pkant leaf stomata are more restrictive (closed/less) & leaf “… tissue temperatures are higher …as a result of lower transpiration .” Corn yield,in terms of it’s more desirable grain, is “… caused by high temperature stress during flowering and ear development….”
( This is why O.P. states 28% bump up in yield was due to high temperature amelioration.)
Quotes are my synoptic for ease of reader comprehension about this general concept of eCO2 & corn (I detest long rambling cut & paste quotes, or seeing bare links when someone states something without orientating their point). For source of quotes see the free full text available on-line of (2014?) ” Corn growth response to elevated CO2 varies with the amount of niteogen applied.”
edit: 2nd paragraph , 2nd sentence after 2nd word add the word “reduction” right before the comma.
If only these climate alarmist “scientists” would change their focus. Stop trying to pretend we can control the climate if only we went back to pre-industrial modes of existence and develop adaptation solutions. Humans for thousands of years have survived because of adaptation and invention. We stopped having to hunt for food by creating farms. We reduced the impact of floods by building dams. We reduced deaths due to cold by designing efficient heaters. We reduced deaths due to heat by inventing refrigeration. We went from voodoo medicine to medical science. When will alarmist “scientists” stop preaching voodoo?
Great progress has been made in the sense that they admitted the weather is BETTER !!
Yet the first people on the genocide bandwagon in Germany were the “scholars.”
No. We’re still doomed.
Changing weather and planting practices in recent decades have led to increased corn yields, but whether the findings will apply to other crops and regions remains unknown.
Friday, December 14, 2018 – 10:00
Gabriel Popkin, Contributor
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment, droughts, temperature extremes and plagues of insect pests will increasingly harm farming worldwide.
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She won’t get nowadays farmers do what in old testamentary already had to cope with.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=H04jXJbkFebRrgTil6_gBg&q=the+pharaoh%27s+dream+7+fat+cows+7+plagues&oq=the+Pharoah+dream+7+fat+cows+7+plagues&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.