A Google News search for the term “climate change” today turned up a story published on HortiDaily which claims climate change is causing huge losses for Spain’s agriculture industry. It’s likely most of Spain’s farmers would be surprised by this claim since data indicates it is false. Although farm production and yields vary from year to year; rising and falling along with the weather, pest outbreaks, and crop prices, among other factors, since 1990 data show crop production and yields in Spain have grown substantially.
The author of the HortiDaily article, titled “Climate change is already taking its toll on Spanish agriculture,” writes, “[t]he agrifood sector is one of the driving forces of the Spanish economy …. But the sector depends on agricultural production that is threatened by climate change, and rising temperatures could trigger a series of effects with major consequences for the agricultural environment and the economy as a whole.”
Citing a study by the Spanish farmers’ organization COAG, Hortidaily claims climate change is negatively impacting the olive groves, vineyards, and cereals, in particular. Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) refutes this claim. FAO data show, between 1990 and 2020 (see the figure below):
- Olive production increased by almost 142 percent and yields grew by slightly more than 90 percent.
- Grape production rose by 5 percent, even as the acreage devoted to grape production declined, due to the fact that yields expanded by almost 59 percent.
- Cereals grain production grew by nearly 46 percent on yields that improved by about 81 percent.
The evidence proves rather than climate change threatening the viability or profitability of Spain’s agriculture industry, modest warming has improved the prospects for both.
Of course, as explored in Climate Realism here, here, and here, for example, what’s true of crops in Spain is true for most countries and regions around the world.
Longer growing seasons, fewer late season frosts, and improved carbon dioxide fertilization have contributed to global crop production regularly setting records, resulting in the largest decline in hunger and malnutrition in human history. If it wants to serve its readers well, this is the good news HortiDaily should be reporting, instead of trying to stoke fears of climate change.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.
Assuming that the opposite of a a scary climate story is true is a safe assumption.
Almeria (southern Spain) has the highest concentration of (polyethylene) greenhouses in the world:
“The transparent plastic intensifies the heat and maintains the humidity. This allows harvests to be harvested one month earlier than in the open field and more ahead than in other regions, starting harvesting in December and allowing the plant growth of the autumn-winter plantings until March, doubling and sometimes tripling the number of harvests” (Wiki).
Question??????
There is a specialty publication aimed at a target audience. This publication starts publishing stories which make assertions which are demonstrably false. Worse, the audience is skilled and knowledgeable in the field. To them, these articles are nonsense, bordering on gibberish.
What happens to the publication when it is no longer seen as publishing factual, accurate and actionable information on the agricultural sector they purport to represent?
This is a crap publication the articles are mostly spin and advertisements
Well, that answers that. That’s what happens, all right.
Nobody reads it, nobody sees the advertisements. The advertisers seem to be throwing good money after bad.
Actually they are just doing it for the tax write-off.
Properly paid, the printer churns it out.
Wonderful system.
The crap publication will be purchased by a left wing woke millionaire and targeted at the non-agricultural audience. Namely townies who have forgotten what even gardening requires. And government parasites.
“The Great Greening” and burgeoning harvests are largely due to a 50% increase of atmospheric CO2 assisted by about 1°C avg increase in temperature over 170yrs coming out of the terrible Little Ice Age.
Despite the most bountiful conditions of the entire Holocene for plenty and human prosperity, Western governments are wilfully squandering trillions on replacing fossil fuels and nuclear with costly, unreliable, renewables to solve a Global Warming Crisis that is not happening! It is a front for a dash to a Eurocentric Global Governance of elites. They have been working to lay waste to the world economy and the cheap reliable energy systems that made prosperity possible.
Moreover, ill-conceived policies by the most untalented Western leaders the world has known, has proved to have horrible unintended consequences. The deliberate harm inflicted on the o&g industry while the renewable changeover was only at the 10% level (and was proving to be a big mistake) has resulted in skyrocketing energy prices and a desperate shortage of nitrogen fertilizers which require natural gas for their production (and certainly not at 10× last years prices. Russia actually offered UK and EU gas at under $2/MMBtu, which they turned down as having bad CGW optics (how ’bout those optics now!!)
Leaders are realizing they screwed up and they are dishonestly blaming Russias invasion of Ukraine when the die was already cast long before that. Europes’ own farmers were warning a year ago that grocery shelves would become empty and food prices would increase mercilessly. Manufacturers warned that material and shipping costs would shutter them and unemployment would rise.
African and Asian countries are going for fossil fuels as the tried and true avenue to prosperity for their people. The collapse of this madness in the West is certain. Realization by the 100s of millions of citizens duped and impoverished by their governments, institutions, K-PhD education and the ‘science’ troughers won’t be happy times.
You and your facts and logic. Greta says ‘how dare you!’.
Exactly, Gary. The “greening” is the reason the grape production, per hectare planted, is up 56%, so we all can have the Spanish specialty wine “Sangre De Toro”. No bull, either.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/08/the-coldest-april-in-the-satellite-record-over-the-pacific-northwest/#comment-3513433
I nailed the current weather across the Great Plains – a late spring, cold and wet. My predictions are the same – from mid-March 2022, or 2019, or 2013, or 2002. All of them are correct, and I’d rather be wrong.
More CO2 is better. Warmer is better. End of story. This will end badly.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/04/samantha-power-and-the-green-new-famine/#comment-3510941
FOOD SUPPLY CONCERNS FROM MID-MARCH 2022
20 years ago we predicted food shortages to start ~now.
Regards, Allan
https://energy-experts-international.com
ANALYST WARNS WORLD HAS JUST ‘TEN WEEKS’ OF WHEAT SUPPLIES LEFT IN STORAGE
By Jack Phillips May 22, 2022
https://www.theepochtimes.com/analyst-warns-world-has-just-10-weeks-of-wheat-supplies-left-in-storage_4482789.html
______________________________________________
This article arrived today. It seems that the food shortages are upon us. We had a major crop failure across the Great Plains of North America in 2019 but there was adequate grain in storage – see the paper below. The problem across the Great Plains in 2019 and 2022 is not drought, it is cold and wet – as expected
It is long past time to stop talking woke nonsense – Global Warming, Green Energy, new gender-specific pronouns, “safe spaces”, forgiving student debt, cancel culture, etc. – essentially “economic sabotage”. We have urgent real problems to deal with.
I published the following recently:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/04/my-testimony-on-new-yorks-scoping-plan-to-achieve-net-zero-carbon-emissions/#comment-3510998
POLICIES THAT TURNED AROUND THE CANADIAN ECONOMY – AND WILL BE SUCCESSFUL AGAIN
Use similar economic turnaround policies for the USA, Europe and Australia (switch shale fracking for oil sands).
__________________________________
THE REAL CLIMATE CRISIS IS NOT GLOBAL WARMING, IT IS COOLING, AND IT MAY HAVE ALREADY STARTED October 27, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/27/the-real-climate-crisis-is-not-global-warming-it-is-cooling-and-it-may-have-already-started/
“The Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (“CAGW”, aka “Global Warming”, “Climate Change”, “Climate Crisis”, “Climate Emergency”) scare is a failed hypothesis and the greatest scientific fraud in history.”
ANALYST WARNS WORLD HAS JUST ‘TEN WEEKS’ OF WHEAT SUPPLIES LEFT IN STORAGE
By Jack Phillips May 22, 2022
https://www.theepochtimes.com/analyst-warns-world-has-just-10-weeks-of-wheat-supplies-left-in-storage_4482789.html
_______________________
Earth is cooling, not warming, even as atmospheric CO2 increases – just as we correctly predicted in 2002 – another disproof of the failed Global Warming hypothesis. This global cooling is the primary cause of food shortages – Russia and the Ukraine war just add to the problem.
I foresaw this food shortage decades ago and since then I recommended ceasing the fuel ethanol program and pivoting production to food grains – far too smart for woke politicians.
SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE – THE ABILITY TO CORRECTLY PREDICT
20Oct2021 Update12May2022
https://correctpredictions.ca/
Everything that we predicted and feared and tried to prevent is now happening – all consequences 100% opposite to the Global Warming/Green Energy fraud – once again the radical Greens are responsible for the deaths of multitudes – like their previous campaigns against DDT, Yellow Rice, and their woke campaigns in favor of food-for-fuels (Corn Ethanol and Biodiesel) and grid-connected wind-and-solar power generation – all Crimes Against Humanity – “Time Overdue for Nuremberg 2”.
Brain Cramp:
Yellow RiceGolden RiceCOLD RECORDS TUMBLE ACROSS NORTH AMERICA; AN EXCEPTIONAL CHILL SWEEPS BOTSWANA; LATE-MAY FROSTS IN TURKEY; MISERY FOR AUSSIE GROWERS; + 10 WEEKS OF WHEAT LEFT, GLOBALLY
May 23, 2022 Cap Allon
“We currently only have 10 weeks of global consumption sitting in inventory around the world,” Sara Menker, CEO of Gro Intelligence, told the UN.
Earth is cooling, not warming, even as atmospheric CO2 increases – just as we correctly predicted in 2002 – another disproof of the failed Global Warming hypothesis. This global cooling is the primary cause of food shortages – Russia and the Ukraine war just add to the problem.
I foresaw this food shortage decades ago and since then I recommended ceasing the fuel ethanol program and pivoting production to food grains – far too smart for woke politicians.
SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE – THE ABILITY TO CORRECTLY PREDICT
20Oct2021 Update 12May2022
https://correctpredictions.ca/
There’s so much junk now in this world, one might be wondering if there’s anything worth salvaging.
Spain’s agriculture, as pointed out, depends on ‘greenhouses’ – be they plastic or glass
The Spanish farmer/horticulturists use the greenhouses to protect from the hideous desert climate that Te Romans created by cutting birning grazing ploughing and fertilising what was a a very verdant place.
How I justify my opeing here is that The Romans used Spain to cultivate Olive Oil, which was shipped to Rome in vast amounts in the classic Ali-Baba style Amphora ‘pots’
We know this because there is a ~50 metre high pile of broken/discarded Amphora somewhere near the centre of Rome to this day.
(Is that one of the original ‘7 Hills’ or does Rome now have 8 hills)
Contemporay know-it-alls will tell you that this is because of the lovely healthy Mediterranean Diet which evolved there. Near The Mediteranean.
No, not quite.
The Romans used the Olive Oil to clean and ‘wash’ themselves, seeing as soap hadn’t been invented.
They weren’t especially eating the oil
And what do we have now –
Eat Olive Oil.
Its good for you.
Its goy faturated natusated polyunflatulated assids ouilds and fats
It’s the Mediterranean Diet.
Live long and be healthy
Olive Oil is what The Romans used for soap – and we eating it and are utterly convinced that it’s good for us.
Repeat: Is there anything worth salvaging or taking with us when we decamp to Planet Zog
PS The other significant thing grown in Spanish polytunnels is another Mediterranean staple = tomatoes and peppers
OK, science time
Get yourself some perfect undamaged tomatoes from your local shop/store = ones with the stalk still attached & no cuts bruises scratches.
Bring them home and put them on a saucer/small plate, loosely covered with tissue and place them on a sunny windowsill.
After a few weeks, they will turn a very lovely deep shade of red, go moderately squishy and if you want, take one and eat it.
It will be lovely. Sweet and actually tasty
But that is not the point, the point was that it and the others were NOT a mouldering pile of horrible fungus mush.
Maybe run your experiment for a few months until they finally do turn to mush.
Note how long it took
They hold up for so long because they are = Nightshades and protect themselves, as you witness, extremely well from bacterial, fungal, yeast attack – also from critter attack and do that via an Alkaloid poison and Nicotine mimic.
That Alkaloid is a VERY potent bactericide and fungicide.
Our entire digestive system, how we process, digest and use ‘food’ depends on bacteria and fungi within us.
You can kill them all if you like by drinking Lye – inside 30 minutes you will have died an extremely painful, unpleasant and ugly death
Do you REALLY think its a good idea to eat too many tomatoes?
Ask my 100 year old Italian relatives…
Seriously, Peta, please just stop posting.
PCman – everyone including Peta is entitled to a bad day.
I’m not feeling that great either – when every terrible consequence of Green Lies seems to be coming true, just as we predicted 20 years ago, the latest being imminent global famine, my mood is not positive either.
“The Greens -The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse”
I am not sure that the graph shown is that useful. Given that the land area being used to grow olives more than doubled in some parts of Spain and that the new farms had more irrigation and higher tree densities than the old ones it is not surprising that the total amount of olives produced increased by 146%.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837722000928
Massive increases in ag production don’t surprise me either, Zak. But then I’m not a wacky climate alarmobot. Warmer is Better for biological productivity. CO2 is the foundational molecule/substance for All Life. Clearly, beyond any shadow of doubt, warmth and CO2 are boons and blessings.
Now if we can convince the Greta Resettas, with whatever means necessary, we can shovel this giant Hoax into the garbage dump of history. Are you with me, Zak?
You’d better check the status of olive trees in, for instance,
https://wikifarmer.com/olive-tree-water-requirements/
There are many other…in Spanish
Cheers
For the last three or four years there have been regular stories about European olive trees being destroyed by an insect spread (bacterial?) disease. I’m fairly sure Almond are affected too. There was also something that killed old Box hedges in Europe a couple of years ago, which might have been an insect.
These things usually get attributed to Climate Change, but are usually introduced on plants imported to an area from well outside and find an ideal environment to thrive.
I drove from the East Midlands of England to Glasgow at the weekend for the first time in several years at this time of year. I was struck by the number of Rhododendrons growing at the road side, they flower at this time of year. Another introduced invasive species with no natural enemies here. But no doubt their spread and any future disease/insect that kills them will be down to Climate Change.
Warmists lie.
The Global-Warming and Green-Energy scam is supported by scoundrels and imbeciles – the scoundrels know they are lying; the imbeciles believe them.
The article linked to just describes the usual scaremongering warmunist model studies where they invent bad stuff out of whole cloth. As if models are reality and reality is unreal.
“Olive production increased by almost 142 percent…”
So that’s what happened. Have a friend who grows olives in California. He and his consortium bid on supplying Walmart – at straight cost. They were under-bid by a Spanish supplier. (The California ‘costs’ included $18/hour for pickers.)
Even the Scientologists say the earth has only warmed 1.1c since “pre-industrial”. And then they will also say that the Arctic and high latitudes have warmed “twice as fast”.
But the 1.1c is a supposed world wide average, meaning that the temperate and tropical areas where 99.9% of humans live has to have hardly warmed at all.
Certainly not enough to be noticeable, when no one can notice 1.1C change.
It’s all so silly