Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently the models can tease out the difference between armed thugs looting and destroying farms, and the impact of a very small shift in global temperature.
Climate change is affecting crop yields and reducing global food supplies
July 9, 2019 9.22pm AEST
Deepak Ray Senior scientist, University of Minnesota...
To analyze these questions, a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment spent four years collecting information on crop productivity from around the world. We focused on the top 10 global crops that provide the bulk of consumable food calories: Maize (corn), rice, wheat, soybeans, oil palm, sugarcane, barley, rapeseed (canola), cassava and sorghum. Roughly 83 percent of consumable food calories come from just these 10 sources. Other than cassava and oil palm, all are important U.S. crops.
…Once we had constructed an empirical model connecting crop yield to weather variations at each location, we could use it to assess how much yields had changed from what we would have expected to see if average weather patterns had not changed. The difference between what we would have predicted, based on the counterfactual weather, and what actually occurred reflects the influence of climate change.
…
What’s more, we found that decreases in consumable food calories are already occurring in roughly half of the world’s food insecure countries, which have high rates of undernourishment, child stunting and wasting, and mortality among children under age 5 due to lack of sufficient food. For example, in India annual food calories have declined by 0.8% annually and in Nepal they have fallen by 2.2% annually.
Reductions are also occurring in southern African countries, including Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. We even found losses in some rich industrialized nations, such as Australia, France and Germany.
Rich countries can work their way out of food calorie shortages by importing food. But poorer countries may need help. Short-term strategies could include using our findings to breed or increase cultivation of crops that are resilient to or even benefit from climate change. Farming techniques and agriculture policies can also help small-scale farmers increase crop yields.…
Read more: http://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-affecting-crop-yields-and-reducing-global-food-supplies-118897
The abstract of the study;
Climate change has likely already affected global food production
Read more: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217148
Deepak K. Ray , Paul C. West, Michael Clark, James S. Gerber, Alexander V. Prishchepov, Snigdhansu Chatterjee
Crop yields are projected to decrease under future climate conditions, and recent research suggests that yields have already been impacted. However, current impacts on a diversity of crops subnationally and implications for food security remains unclear. Here, we constructed linear regression relationships using weather and reported crop data to assess the potential impact of observed climate change on the yields of the top ten global crops–barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat at ~20,000 political units. We find that the impact of global climate change on yields of different crops from climate trends ranged from -13.4% (oil palm) to 3.5% (soybean). Our results show that impacts are mostly negative in Europe, Southern Africa and Australia but generally positive in Latin America. Impacts in Asia and Northern and Central America are mixed. This has likely led to ~1% average reduction (-3.5 X 1013 kcal/year) in consumable food calories in these ten crops. In nearly half of food insecure countries, estimated caloric availability decreased. Our results suggest that climate change has already affected global food production.
Published: May 31, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217148
First, top marks for accessibility, for providing public access to the full study.
The claim about Zimbabwe intrigued me, because Zimbabwe has been suffering problems other than shifting weather patterns.
From the study;
…
Of the major sub-Saharan African crops, maize provides the largest percentage of food calories followed by sorghum, cassava and sugarcane. Maize and sugarcane yields decreased by 5.8% and 3.9%, respectively. In contrast, recent climate change caused yields to increase in the more heat- and drought-tolerant sorghum (0.7%) and cassava (1.7%). Maize yield losses are highest in South Africa (-22%), with the highest losses occurring in the provinces of The Free State and North West (Fig 1). Overall in Sub-Saharan Africa maize yields have decreased but cassava yields increased in response to climate changes, though not everywhere. For example cassava yields decreased in the central to southern parts of Madagascar but increased in northeastern Madagascar. Though Eastern Africa in general had reductions in cassava yields, in Tanzania this was true only in its eastern districts and in the western districts cassava yields benefitted from mean climate changes. This apparent heterogeneity in yield response is seen also in Western Africa. For example in the southern districts of Togo maize yields decreased but in the northern districts maize yields benefitted from mean climate change. Consumable food calorie production from these ten crops was reduced nearly 12% (or ~-8% across all food calories) in South Africa. Large decreases in consumable food calories across all ten crops also occurred in Ghana (~-8%) in western Africa, in Zimbabwe (~-10%) in southern Africa, but increased in Tanzania (~2%) in eastern Africa (S4 Table). In some cases, as in Ghana, gains in consumable calories in maize and rice due to climate change was wiped off from losses in cassava consumable calories leading to overall decreases in consumable food calories. Overall in entire sub-Saharan Africa ~1.4% reduction in food calories in these ten crops or ~0.8% reduction across all consumed food calories from these ten crops occurs on average annually due to climate change.
…
Read more: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217148
Not really much additional information.
I’m still not clear how the model accounted for political mismanagement of water resources, which has been rampant in South Africa, Zimbabwe and some green US states like California, soil erosion caused by mismanagement of land in some regions, and long term underinvestment in rural water infrastructure, which is a serious ongoing issue in Australia. Australian farmers are being starved of water resources, to ensure the growing population of city voters receive a steady supply, which could be exacerbating weather related losses.
Having said that I suggest the whole concept of constructing an imaginary “what if” scenario, a hypothetical yield without climate change, a bit suspect, because the conclusion yielded from this exercise is based on the circular assumption that climate change is actually having an impact on weather, that any weather changes are not simply random natural variations, or rainfall changes caused land use changes such as deforestation.
[UPDATE BY WILLIS]
My thanks to Eric for an interesting post. I trust he won’t mind if I offer a different explanation for decreasing food yields in Zimbabwe … socialism/communism as imposed by Robert Mugabe, and the subsequent expropriation and breakup of productive farms. Here are the changes in yield for a couple of important food crops …
Zimbabwe (1961 = 0)
Anyone who thinks that those changes are from variations in climate is … well, let me call them “woefully uninformed” and leave it at that.
w.
Has nothing to do with “climate change” and everything to do with Marxism.
As someone who lived in what was Rhodesia and then became Zimbabwe, I was involved to some degree with the farming community. Whilst Rhodesia/Zimbabwe always suffered from cyclical droughts, dams and boreholes ensured sufficient food supplies of both grains and meat protein. It was evident about a hundred years ago to the largely British settlers that only large scale commercial farming would provide the necessary buffer against the periods of drought. This strategy saw the country become a veritable breadbasket, exporting food to neighboring countries and some of the best beef in the world to Europe. Various strains of maize were developed that together with irrigation and timely planting linked to rainfall patterns proved hugely successful. There were many areas of the country that were not suitable for crops but were found able to sustain cattle, goats and sheep and in the south of the country one of the largest beef ranches in the world was developed by an international food producer called Liebigs.
In the 1960s, the British government without any knowledge of the agricultural infrastructure that had been carefully developed and nurtured, decided that the country should have a black government. This, despite the failure of this misguided, left wing policy across most of Africa. The horrors of the Mugabe government and the genocide of the Matabele is well documented as is the savage murder of white farmers and the break up of the vast majority of commercial farms. Fences were torn down for the wire, water pumps and their motors stolen and sold for scrap, as were farming implements and machinery. A friend who farmed several thousand acres with beef, dairy, maize and tobacco had a staff of over forty. They were well housed, there was a school and a clinic where a doctor was in attendance once a week and on call in case of emergency. The standard of living of the staff was a vast improvement of what their parents had known only thirty of forty years previously. Instead of brick houses, they had lived in mud huts and were partially nomadic to escape the raids from the Matabele. The vast central plains were avoided as they provided little security against attack. Drought and famine were rife and the indigenous population was less than one million. It was these vary areas that British settlers opened up for commercial farming. With the tribal wars ended by Rhodesian security forces and country in black hands the free for all land grabs began. With western medical care and the end of tribal wars the black population exploded – in 1990 the black population had grown to over five million – half of which were under seventeen years of age!! (The white population at its highest was only around 350 00.) Once highly productive farms were divided up into subsistence plots, most without irrigation, mechanised equipment or people with even a basic knowledge of agriculture. The best farms were grabbed as status symbols by Mugabe and his cronies with little concern for high crop yields or land conservation. The results were inevitable as even a mild drought decimated yields and starvation and famine in rural areas became common place. The agricultural infrastructure that had been put in place that would have severely limited the effects of so-called “climate change” were gone.
Tragically, the ANC government in South Africa seems hell bent on following the same path with farmers being murdered left right and centre.
For anyone with half a brain cell to lay the devastation of one of Africa’s most productive farming countries on climate change only demonstrates their ignorance and political agenda. The tragedy of Africa was brought about by left wing, socialist politicians, many of whom who had never set foot on the continent and by academics who laboured under the quaint belief that Africa before the whites arrived was rather like a peaceful English village, with pubs, postal services, schools, hospitals, roads and railways. Millions have died as a result of their stupidity.
Meanwhile, actual global crop yields have been increasing. Imagine a track star beating a world record, and you tell them “we modeled someone running even faster and, compared with them, you ran slower!”
I wonder if climate change also is the cause of declining oil production in Venezuela and mexico?
Major issues:
1) Conflates weather with climate.
2) Reduces all possible variables in farming to crop yield.
* i) Nothing to do with tilling, soil prep, planting, seed quality, weed control, insect control, animal damage, equipment failure, etc. etc. This is before bringing up politics.
Major issues, continued:
3) Conflates caloric yield with crop yields.
All it takes to increase caloric yields is to switch to the maximum caloric content crop; e.g. high fats, high starches, high sugars.
Forget growing greens, leafy and many other vegetables; these yahoos will blame the caloric yield drop on climate change.
Then there are the elephants.
As science, this alleged research is a total joke and takes confirmation bias and ignorance to new levels. Even if performed by freshmen high school students.
Once again, “Publish or Perish” and “peer Review” prove critically faulty.
Thankfully there is still some real research going on in the ecological community and someone has found that fences of bee colonies are very effective at keeping elephants out of the fields. This has been a win-win-win, prevent elephants from destroying crops, higher pollinization rates, and honey/wax production.
Are you a scientist or have done any sort of research till now?
Was there any such paper written till now at a global scale? WTF are you talking about mate? These people spent 4/5 years to study and you took only a minute to assassinate it? Well done on your antarctic size ego. There are issues in your intellect capability for sure!
Anyone who had any knowledge or experience of agriculture in Rhodesia in the 1970’s will recognise this flawed paper.
Hear no evil, see no evil
(except climate change)
I’ve added an update to the head post …
w.
Thanks Eric,
Do these so called researchers actually get paid to produce stupid studies like this.
The first problem that I see is that these dimwits are writing about reduced calories when most of the nutritional problems that they listed are caused by lack of protein .
I am not a scientist but all humans need protein and diet based mainly on grain and root crops is high in carbs and low in protein .
This is especially so for babies, growing children and people who use a lot of physical energy to work or play.
According to our health statistics in New Zealand we have an obesity epidemic because of high carb diets and lack of physical exertion .
Thousands of tonnes of food is wasted every year and is dumped to landfill .
Nothing has changed as when I was a child over 65 years ago our mother insisted that we eat all our food put before us as starving African children would be delighted to eat what we were reluctant to eat.
Nothing changes.
I and I have met and employed many immigrants from South Africa and Zimbabwe and they have told me how politics have wrecked Zimbabwe’s farming and economy.
Zimbabwe’s harvest is declining because they threatened and stole the land of all the knowledgeable farmers then kicked them out of the country.
The equipment is wearing out, the soil is wearing out and they’re using crop harvest as seeds.
It isn’t “climate” it’s “government of morons”.
I saw that movie…I believe it was called “Idiocracy”
So they had a bad weather growing season and the crops were not as productive. Yes, the climate changes from year to year, just as the weather varies from day to day.
I get confused when it pour rain during the day- should I water the lawn at night?
When it pours during the night, should I water during the day.
Vary confusing trying to keep up with the changing climate.
“Climate Change to blame” Since Climate Change is to blame for everything, tell us something we don’t know.
What actually happened was that the Marxist government confiscated white-owned farms and gave them to people who did not know how to farm. Guess what happened.
The South African government is in the process of doing the same thing. Food shortages will be blamed on “Climate Change”
The study is absolutely accurate. Mugabe was a human being, believe it or not, and he changed the economic and political climate of Zimbabwe. So: Antropogeniclimatedisaster
The UM researchers were stuck between a rock and a hard place. They had to produce a climate scare paper to get more funding and Zimbabwe is the only country they could find with declining agricultural production. What’s a poor climate fraudster to do?
“My thanks to Eric for an interesting post. I trust he won’t mind if I offer a different explanation for decreasing food yields in Zimbabwe … socialism/communism as imposed by Robert Mugabe, and the subsequent expropriation and breakup of productive farms. Here are the changes in yield for a couple of important food crops …”
You are absolutely correct Willis. My wife and family are from Zimbabwe and are all too familiar of what Mugabe did to the country.
Thanks, Patrick. The story of Zimbabwe is a tragedy of greed and stupidity. Glad you were able to get out of there.
w.
“a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment spent four years collecting information on crop productivity from around the world…”
Then along comes world renowned experts Eric and Willis and within a few minutes they’ve corrected all these silly researcher’s mistakes. Simply stupendous.
Deepak Ray
Ph.D., Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville, USA, 2005
M.S., Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville, USA, 2002
M.Sc., Environmental Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, 1999
B.Sc., Geology (distinction in Physics and Mathematics), Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India, 1997
Meh.
Loydo, you are more into credentials than the merits of the article he produced. It is still manifestly silly, regardless of how many degrees the author has.
Another like Griff who has no idea what they are talking about.
Loydo
A team of researchers with credentials the size of their egos spend 4 years researching and writing this paper which is so poorly written that even Willis and Eric can find obvious faults and errors. Either Willis and Eric need to be given more credence and respect on your part or the writers need far more skepticism on your part.
Loydo July 10, 2019 at 7:25 pm
Loydo, a couple of comments.
First, as Richard Feynman observed, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. You seem to think experts are always right. The rest of us are far too aware that they are far too often wrong.
Second, look at the graph I posted. Please point out to us the effect of climate on the yields.
Third, the history of the destruction of farms, farmers, and farming in Zimbabwe is quite clearly visible in the graph I posted. Yields were rising until Mugabe started confiscating farms, dividing them up into smallholdings, and distributing them among his supporters … many of whom knew nothing about farming. As one would expect, yields started dropping, and are now back near 1960 levels.
Are you truly trying to tell us that you believe that drop is from some climate change that just happened to occur when Mugabe became President?
Fourth, if you’ve been around climate science much, you would have realized that there are huge amounts of BS being passed off as valid studies. You might be interested in the lies, cheating, and shady dealing from some of the leading lights in the climate field as exposed in Climategate … how do I know that? Because I’m the guy who made the first Freedom of Information request to CRU, and I’m mentioned in the emails. Read my story linked just above.
Or you could take a look at the subversion of the IPCC procedures by Caspar Amman, as discussed by my friend Bishop Hill here … disgusting.
Your childlike trust in the climate “experts” is a tribute to your good heart … but not so much to your skeptical brain …
Finally, science is NOT about the personalities, the education, the personality, or the habits of the people doing the science. It is about the ideas. Please focus on those, as you are lost in erroneous adulation of credentials and expertise.
Best regards,
w.
Point taken Willis. You comment (about Zimbabwe) was perfectly resonable. I apologise for lumping you in.
Thanks, Loydo, apology gratefully accepted. You are a gentleman.
w.
Climate change is responsible for…climate change. The perversion of science for a political agenda is responsible a tremendous harm to the world wherein very much good could be done with the endless money and human efforts used in pursuit of power through the deception of climate change lies. And make no mistake they are lies not some benign thoughts.
Al Miller 100%
I loved the bit about predictions based on COUNTERFACTUAL weather. Just about sums it all up.
When Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, per the United Nations Food and Agriculture Year Book of 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia second in the world in terms of yields of maize (corn) wheat, soy,a beans and ground nuts, and third in cotton. In the combined ranking of all these crops, Rhodesia ranked first in the world.
“Rhodesia’s Virginia tobacco was rated the best in the world in yield and quality, while maize entries in world championships were consistently placed in the first 3 slots. The world’s second largest citrus producer was developed early in the country’s history.
“Rhodesia was the world’s second largest exporter of flue cured tobacco. This together with exports of maize, soya beans, cotton, sugar, coffee, tea, fruit, vegetables, flowers and beef made agriculture the major of foreign currency. Agriculture contributed more to the gross domestic product than any other industry. It was the largest employer of labour, providing employment for about a third of the labour force.
This has been destroyed by politics, not climate change!
Zimbabwe? yep the climate canary in the coal mine. I mean everything else is going so swimmingly and variance has to be climate right? sometimes the stupidity is just overwhelming
Hmm. I have some doubts about this. They show a decline in European cereal production due to climate change.
“Yields for all the dominant (non-tropical) crops in western and southern Europe decreased 6.3–21.2% because of climate change (Table 1, Fig 1). This may partially explain the stagnation of yields in Europe [22]. ”
If we look at, say, France there has indeed been a flatlining of cereal production:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG?locations=FR-RU
But the flatlining coincides with the point at which the EU decided not to link Agricultural subsidies to production levels in 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy#Decoupling_(2003)
It’s possible that hotter temperatures are leading to less production, but we’re also making technological progress, which explains why overall production is still rising.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG
There’s also claims about Ghanaian production that dont really seem to match the actual output numbers.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG?locations=GH
This is quite funny. Kind Lame and Sad also. And its from a University?? Really? Wow? So institutions like this exists to stupify and dumb down as opposed to doing the opposite?
Global Warming, much of what does or does not happen forty years from now rests on our actions or inaction taken between now and then.
There is a simple way to evaluate what is happening on a global level for food production. The market for major grains and oilseeds are very low right now, near breakeven. If global food production is being harmed by climate change, wouldn’t you expect the price of agricultural commodities to be rising. The market place is telling us that there doesn’t seem to be a problem with food production. You would think that the people at the University of Minnesota would know something as simple as this.