The Associated Press (AP) released a story claiming climate change is causing windstorms to worsen, threatening corn production, leading farmers to consider a new short corn variety. This story is false on almost every front. If farmers are considering a newly developed corn variety, its due to clever marketing by the company developing the crop, not changing climate conditions. Wind speeds and storms haven’t been increasing, aren’t forecast to at any time in the foreseeable future, and corn yields and production continue to set records with existing corn types.
The AP story, titled, “‘Short corn’ could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate,” the news agency writes:
Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower.
. . .
But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long.
The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. (emphasis mine)
The facts tell a different story, however. Long corn is in no way being “steamrolled.” Corn yields and production continue to set new records, with some regularity, and there is no evidence that windstorms are becoming more frequent, or that wind speeds are increasing.
To the latter point first. The AP and other mainstream media outlets usually treat reports and pronouncements of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as authoritative on climate change. The IPCC’s latest report is clear concerning the impacts of climate change on wind speeds and damaging windstorms: no change has been detected at present; and, under the even the most extreme climate scenario, no change is anticipated in the foreseeable future, through 2100 at least. (see the figure, below)
So much for the AP’s claim that worsening winds pose a threat to corn production.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also show no climate change impacts on corn yields or production in the United States or globally.
A recently updated USDA report says that corn yields are expected to set a new record in 2024, increasing by 0.5 bushels per acre over the previous estimate, and by a full six bushels per acre of the previous record set in 2023. (See the graph, below)
Data from the FAO confirm the USDA’s findings concerning U.S. corn production and also determine that corn production and yields are regularly setting records around the world as well. Between 1990 and 2022 (the last full year of FAO records), spanning the three decades climate alarmists commonly assert have been the warmest on record:
- Corn yields in the United States have increased by nearly 60 percent’
- Corn yields globally have increased by more than 54 percent.
On record yields, crop production has similarly set new records repeatedly as well between 1990 and 2022. (See the graph, below)
Even if, contrary to the AP’s suggestion, corn production is not being harmed by worsening climate conditions, Bayer’s short corn variety may prove beneficial for farmers. It seems that, per the AP, “[t]he smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits.” The shorter corn may also use less water. Both conditions should, in theory, make corn production more profitable, regardless of climate change, so there is a bit of good news in the AP’s otherwise unjustifiably foreboding climate change tale.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
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These are precisely the reasons these varieties were developed. Shorter plants mature and ripen more quickly, using less fertilizer, nutrients, and water, all while producing less waste biomass. All done so that seed companies can charge a premium, farmers can reduce risks and earn more, and more people can eat nutritious food.
This kind of selective breeding and hybrid development is what has been going on continuously since corn or maize was first domesticated by humans about 9 thousand years ago … ditto with every other agricultural crop.
There may be places where “short corn” may be a distinct advantage, relative to local climatic conditions, and other places where its not. Again, just like every other agricultural product.
I remember hearing about “short” crops many years ago, with two goals: reduce non-edible growth, and make them more resistant to winds and falling over from top weight.
There’s nothing magical about it, it’s not in response to climate change, it’s just old-fashioned genetic modification through breeding.
A short wheat was developed after a discovery that the energy in an ear of wheat is created by a local photosynthesis and not transferred from other parts of the plant. I wonder why it took decades to apply to corn.
Market.
Norman Borlaug did two things to create his ‘green’ wheat revolution. One was the short stem. The other was wheat rust (fungus) resistance. He did both thru conventional cross breeding. Worthy of his Nobel prize.
It’s been said that a very large number of people are alive today because of Borlaug’s work. He is truly one of the most consequential people of the 20th century.
When I was growing up in the middle of wheat fields, the wheat stems were 4 – 5 feet long. Today they are 2 feet tall. Less load on the combines and less energy to grow that stalk. I will miss the tall corn stalks.
Using less water and fertilizer for the same yield is a climate change decision?
Bayer spent time researching hybrids to help with climate change?
I don’t think so.
Farmers plant for profit. Seed companies develop hybrids for profit. That’s all the incentive they need.
Genetically modified seed aka Roundup Ready has been in use for quite a while.
It’s been used along with “smart farming” equipment. If you aren’t involved with
that your successor will be. Kinda surprised the media didn’t look at that.
I went to the Bayer website to read what they said. Four advantages.
Bayer also aims to keep the ear > 2 feet high at the stalk, so that no change in harvesting equipment is required.
Just drove Ohio River north in both Ohio and Indiana. The fields are full of the healthiest corn crop I’ve ever seen despite the drought.
The political climate is changing.
Labour MP Rosie Duffield resigns
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1954666/labour-mp-resign-keir-starmer-freebies
So instead of farmers saying “Knee high by July” it’s now “Ankle high by July”?🤔😂
“The corn is as high as a short corvids eye” just doesn’t sound like Rogers and Hammerstein
There is room for both varieties of corn, short and tall. It depends on the purpose of growing the corn.
If the object is to feed silage to milk cows, then the tall corn with juicy fermentable stalks is better. There is more bulk, and a sugary taste that cows like. Farmers are not going to let 2000 valuable milk cows wander the open range because they have to be brought in to milk twice a day. They are mostly fed indoors where they are protected from the elements and wild animals, especially in the Northern climes like Wisconsin.
If the object is to have shelled and ground corn fed to chickens, cows and ethanol distilling machines, then short corn stalks that waste less energy and water growing taller stalks for the same weight of grains of corn would be better.
Fun fact. On my Wisconsin Uplands dairy farm, we used to put green ‘tall corn’ chopped silage into two tall blue ‘Harvestor’ fermenters, along with molasses, to produce fermented green silage as a winter supplemental feed. No longer.
We harvest all the corn (either tilling in fall spent for soil carbon or baling spent for barn bedding before tilling in the spring after manure spreading for extra nitrogen), then sell all corn for ethanol. We buy back the spent (yeast protein enhanced) ‘distillers grain’, which is an ideal ruminant supplemental feed to primary alfalfa. We no longer even maintain the two Harvestors.
Dairy farm technology has moved along in several ways since I started owning one four decades ago. Small square 60# hay bales with hay bale hooks to huge 1000# round bales on a tractor mounted bale fork. Barn square bale hay store via a conveyor loader to field store rounds wrapped in plastic. Fermented silage to distillers grain. Individual milking stalls to a round continuous milking parlor. So far, dairy cows still remain dumb dairy cows.
I grew up on a small farm in Southern Indiana. I threw and stacked square bales until the barn wouldn’t hold more. We filled the silo with as much as we could blow in, the corn that we couldn’t chop because there was no room we picked and ground into feed for various animals. I escaped from there 55 years ago.
Round bales were invented after I left.
Very nice Sterling. The press is given far too much leeway. Freedom of the press does not mean free to lie. Today’s press lies without a second thought, that needs to end, lying is not okay.
Bob, I know the press lies, or as often just say things that they know nothing about.
That being said, I don’t trust you to tell anyone what they can and can not say and I sure as hell don’t trust the government to tell us the truth if telling the truth would cause us to choose a different government.
The solution to bad information is better information. As long as no one is forbidden to give us better information then we will be OK.
The things that can be shown wrong like production of wheat, corn, rice and so on are proof that the press is lying. Lying is not okay. Even the IPCC reports show that much of what the press reports are lies. You don’t have to take my word or the governments word for what is a lie.
The idea of global warming/climate-change has seeped into many in the same way folks think the moon comes out at night, despite it being visible in the daytime sky about 25 days per month. Most of the media are unaware of their ignorance.
Wheat is also getting shorter. Not because of climate but rather due to selective breeding.
Plants with short stalks have more energy available to build seeds. More seeds, greater yield, for grains and corn.
Heavy objects fall faster. Even if false, it sounds true. That is today’s Press. Much like in Ben Franklin’s time, the press does not exist to tell the truth. It exists to sell newspapers (clicks).
I am sure that the media, today, exists primarily to manipulate. These media companies would still be pushing out propaganda even if they lost billions a year. I am pretty sure a lot of popular media companies operate at huge loses every year. They don’t exist to make money.
“...12-foot-tall green, leafy walls”
Twelve foot tall corn? I must be missing something when I drive out to my brother’s place in Illinois.
“ powerful windstorms that could become more frequent “
Whoa!
The article I read said a key benefit is easier cultivating and harvesting.
And perhaps plant rows a bit closer thus have more plants for the land used.
Yes, benefit of less damage when high winds hit, as they will.
Thus claim of marketing using climate alarmism is much.
Hint: Machines used to cultivate for weed control and harvest have to be tall (usually small wheels on long legs).
One error in the claims is the notion that the new varieties will tolerate heat better. But corn is grown in hot climates like Brazil. Corn needs a threshold of heat-days, hence good news in botany is development of a variety that needs fewer so can be grown in volume in southern Alberta.
PPS: I presume corn is harvested before early snow comes, whereas in NE BC wheat is vulnerable.