How will climate change affect crop yields in the future?
Posted by Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 56 comments
At 2°C of warming, one study estimated that wheat yields would decline by 6.6% without carbon fertilization. Once that was included, they projected a 1.7% increase.6 Winter wheat yields in Europe could decline by 9% by 2050 without CO2 effects, but with them, this changes to a 4% increase. A large study that looks at the potential increase in waterlogging in future climate scenarios finds that yield penalties under high climate scenarios could increase from 3% to 11% in the past, to 10–20% by 2080. The authors highlight that these impacts can be offset by changing crop practices but without adaptation, more intense rainfall could make food markets more volatile.
No_Climate_-_No_Food@reddit
Look, it will take longer for me to piece by piece this article but lets talk about some methodological short-comings in the papers linked to by Mr. Gates Technofix website.
-> Crops grow, mature and/or die by the weather, and they do not respond linearly and uniformly to changing conditions, but most modelling of climate change doesn't try to produce a weather hypothetical output and the models that do have a hard time reproducing and predicting existing local weather conditions, let alone a trustworthy output under future conditions. These models may guess at heat-waves and rainfall patterns, but are averaging away extremes or don't have the resolution needed to capture them. The noise in a climate model is the lived experience of your crops. Crop modelling software is notorious for giving you the yield you'd get if none of the things that regularly happened on farms happens. Like a well-pump breaking and losing 3 days of irrigation in the heat... or pest out-breaks that aren't strictly seasonal. Or supply chain issues, or a microburst snapping the stalks. Derecho's are not well modeled in the front-range, and flooding that happens from storm 500 miles away in the same watershed likewise.
-> the offseting practices that are touted are : convert most or all remaining small land holders to large scale agribusiness using GMO seeds, fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides, irrigation and big machines. Now, that has been the successful (subsidized) recipe with which Europe, North America the Soviet Union and China have done, and so it is understandable that "why don't we just make eveything run on industrial ag to compensate for climate change" is Mr. Gates go-to tech solution. And he is heavily invested in ag-land both in the US and through his foundations charitable work. But that industrial ag is a big part of how we got climate change in the first place - nitrogen oxides are potent GHGs, tillage releases soil CO2, synthetic ammonia is energy intensive, etc. The pesticides are also an entirely separate devastation to the biosphere that is apparently outside the scope of mr gates concerns. As are the civil socieity impacts of throwing people off their land to gain industrial efficiency.
-> the offsetting practices don't actually rescue a plant that has died from over-heating, or drown in a flood, or gotten killed by disease. He's saying you can compensate for the decreased home value from a house fire by hanging nicer curtains while the house is still burning. If everything is just a correlation-coefficient in a spread-sheet, then yes, adding 2x nitrogen fertilizer gets you as much extra bushels as you lose from accidentally harvesting two weeks early... but, the fertilizer isn't a time machine that undoes your mistake, its mathematically the same scale, but the physical system isn't additive like that. Plants hold a grudge.
-> Lastly, 2 degrees C over the whole planet means 4 C on land, and higher toward the poles (though lower toward the equator. 10F as an average increase, means your extreme weather is above 10F. A field that was 88 and growing optimally, becomes 98+ and is at lest stunted if not killed. It doesnt help that you get unseasonably cool weather after the extreme... just like it didn't help french aristocrats to have nothing touch their neck for days after the guillotine. 2C is also an extremely optimisitic, bordering on comical value to use given our current state of affairs.
-> Extra lastly, the market forces gates so loves will prevent the investment his technofix requires because food is abnormally cheap, and the locations where food is produced are very risky investments compared to buying treasuries etc. No one is investing trillions of dollars to get a 2% yield increase in a market that operates prolonged gluts followed by catestrophic supply crashes - crashes that feature price-controls often.
Our World In Data can go suck eggs.
Midithir@reddit
The harm his world view has caused is being noted:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2024/09/02/why-african-groups-want-reparations-from-the-gates-foundation/
Indigo_Sunset@reddit
Glad to see Ritchie be called out on a targeted meta analysis that favours their viewpoint.
Another point is nutritional components skated over
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3116/nasa-at-your-table-climate-change-and-its-environmental-impacts-on-crop-growth/
And sprouting temps for later season crops alongside rubisco disruption will have an impact. Then there's the reliance on heavy fertilizing with no desire to address run off issues approaching a slow motion volcanic event in nutrient depositing, algae blooms and anoxia/fish kills in waterways.
No_Climate_-_No_Food@reddit
indeed, and soil erosion. The industrial ag of the 20th century is unsustainable even if the climate wasn't going to clean our clock. But the people who were most successful in the system of exploitation are the least prepared to imagine that system failing and what it would take to operate differenly. We should pity and assist the billionaires in freeing themselves of that burden of privledged ignorance and pathological hoarding. Its all in the head.
pippopozzato@reddit
In the future ... LOL ... It's happening now. Every time you see a story on the news about a flood, a huge fire, drought any extreme weather event, it means in that area they did not grow food.
A great example of this is the cold weather last year in BC Canada that caused the 2023 vintage to be like 3 % of what it could have been. Then they needed to rip out all of the dead grape vines.
Nobody cares but the BC Wine Industry.
Cease-the-means@reddit
UK wheat harvest was 20% less this year because of increased rainfall. So the percentages check out, but it's happened already. Most of north western Europe will get wetter, while Spain and Italy get dryer.
pippopozzato@reddit
This year no but I remember last year reading about the Po River Valley in Italy and it was pretty upsetting.
Conutu@reddit
It never ceases to amaze me how misleading articles like this can be simply by focusing on too narrow of a scope. Fuck how CO2 PPMs will affect crop yields, top soil health is a MUCH more pressing issue. Who cares if CO2 levels reduce winter wheat yields in Europe by 9% when >90% of global top soil is on track to be degraded by 2050. https://earth.org/95-of-the-earths-soil-on-course-to-be-degraded-by-2050/
Gibbygurbi@reddit
Exactly why didn’t she mention soil erosion. She came up with the ideal scenario for Kenya with the best fertilizer, technology etc. That would be a short term solution at best right? Their soil will end up eroded, pollution will occur bc of pesticides. Why is there no attention to diversify our agriculture.
Conutu@reddit
The elephant in the room is degrowth. Diversification is essential as monoculture simply cannot sustain long-term yields, however, the biggest issue as it relates to soil is that we simply don’t give the land time to rest. Ask any scientist or environmental agency what the solution to soil degradation is and the first thing out of their mouths will be crop rotation. Everyone knows this… but no one likes to admit what it actually means in terms of human cost. Hence all the deflections.
Gibbygurbi@reddit
Do you mean with human costs human lives? The question which keeps spinning in my head is if we can sustain the current world population with a more diverse form of agriculture. I think most ppl have been gaslighted that “the current industrial agriculture” is the only way to keep 8 billion ppl alive and that there is no alternative. When I look at my small garden + greenhouse and how much food I can get from it seems possible to me, but it’s going to be much more labour intensive.
Conutu@reddit
Yes, human lives unfortunately. It’s great that you’re providing for yourself! We need as much “farm to table” as possible since supply-chain waste is one of the few areas that we can actually do something about. Roughly 1/3 of food goes to waste (mostly during shipping or at grocery stores). Outside of this, however, the crux of the issue is synthetic fertilizer. I’ll try to keep this rant concise but prior to the advent of the Haber-Bosch process fixed nitrogen was a finite resource. Inconsequential amounts have been added to the environment over millions of years via lightning strikes and some very special bacteria only found in the root nodules of legumes, but for the most part the total supply has remained mostly constant for billions of years. This fixed nitrogen undergoes transformation through what is called the nitrogen cycle, and this cycle has served as a concrete bottleneck for all life on Earth. The Haber-Bosch process broke this cycle and removed the bottleneck. Organically we maxed out at ~1.8 billion globally prior to the HBP and famines were becoming widespread. Not to mention this was before we fucked up the planet. The point being that 8 billion is only possible because of synthetic fertilizer. We’ve created so much new nitrogen that 50% of what’s in your body was created in a lab. This increase (paired with the intensive land use it brings) is what is driving soil degradation. The more we rely on it the worse the soil gets and, thus, the more we need it. Other side-effects include ocean acidification, algae blooms / dead zones, acid rain, nutrient depletion, etc. A return to organic agriculture is necessary for longterm survival, but the capacity loss is frankly insurmountable. A lot of people will cite advancements in farming technology over the past century as a potential source of net carrying capacity increase for organic farming methods, but to that I would argue that any progress has been canceled out or even reversed by environmental degradation.
TuneGlum7903@reddit
Sadly you are correct in everything you state.
On a side note have you ever read "The Wizard and the Prophet"?
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
I don’t see anything wrong with the narrow scope you say, I think both the issues mentioned in the article and what you have mentioned are both important imo
Conutu@reddit
Both are definitely important issues, but my beef with the framing in this article is that uneducated readers (as well as downstream publishers) don’t draw a distinction between climate change and broader environmental degradation. Most people will interpret this headline as “There will be a x% reduction in crop yields by 2050” not “One particular issue among a myriad of others will specifically cause a x% reduction in crop yields by 2050.” By the time the scientific community can say “actually things are 1000x worse because x,y,z” the damage has been done and fatigue around the issue builds. People go about their lives thinking “Well that’s sad, but famine is for those people. I’ll be fine.” I’m a broken record on this issue given my background in AgSci, but I wholeheartedly believe it to be THE collapse issue. Nothing else matters if billions starve by 2050, and every second we waste not focusing on this particular issue will result in more direct deaths than any other issue.
TuneGlum7903@reddit
Preach Brother!
The most terrifying aspect of Climate Change is it's ability to CRASH the food supply. We are only EVER a couple of BAD harvests away from famine.
Have you read this report?
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/01/report-warmer-planet-will-trigger-increased-farm-losses
January 18, 2024 Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
For every 1 degree Celsius of warming, yields of major crops like corn, soybeans and wheat fall by 16% to 20%, gross farm income falls by 7% and net farm income plummets 66%.
Those findings, reported in a policy brief released Jan. 17, are based on an analysis of 39 years of data from nearly 7,000 Kansas farms. The brief is a collaboration between the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Kansas State University.
I am forecasting 1.5-2.5 Billion dying by 2035.
Just-Giraffe6879@reddit
The website linked by OP is owned by bill gates so maybe that has something to do with it
ndilegid@reddit
Yeah, but we’d just go and make more people with any extra food. We just dig deeper so that we don’t have to change how we were taught to live.
Substantial_Impact69@reddit
I’m more worried about not being able to transport the pot ash and nitrogen to make the fertilizer.
Cease-the-means@reddit
If you have a sustainable source of hydrogen (ie. Produced using renewable electricity when there is a surplus) then you can still use the Haber-Bosche process to make nitrates. So this will be less of a problem for developed countries who can afford it and have power infrastructure.
Potassium is more difficult and the biggest exporter is russia.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
So many things will go wrong
Gibbygurbi@reddit
Not a single word about soil erosion tho.
AlmosThirsty@reddit
Plus there's way more that just climate change, insects dying also affect crops a lot. Maybe in the future there will be legion of robot fertilizer that will manually fertilize plants. Or if we could not produce enough robot, people will be force to work in fields like in the old time so there's enough food produced. Cities will die, because people will need to live just before were food will be produced, because there will be no oil to fuel transport. Cities will be fortress were the elite and his army will live, forcing people in the crops to work to live for them. A new feodalism. Sorry i'm freestyling .
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
Yep many insects help fertilize crops too and when they die out so many crops won’t event be able to grow at all
Individual_Bar7021@reddit
And if you say this to some people they say well I guess we just only eat what isn’t pollinated by insects…which really isn’t much at all.
ConfusedMaverick@reddit
The loss of so much insect life is devastating for the ecosystem as a whole, but a lot of food crops wouldn't be directly effected, at least not immediately...
Wheat, maize/corn, rice etc (grasses) are wind pollinated. Some plants (eg tomatoes) are self pollinating. Quite a lot of veg (eg brassicas - cabbage etc) comes from tiny seeds where a few plants produce enough seeds for acres.
Many fruits, beans and plenty else do need insect pollination, and will disappear if pollinators disappear, but it's not our whole food supply by a long shot.
Even if we have enough to eat in the short term, though, something has to give when the base of the food web has been destroyed... I don't understand the mechanisms though.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
It’ll basically just be scraps
miniocz@reddit
It is not just about fertilization. Insects dying -> birds and insectivores dying -> pest insects thriving...
NoseyMinotaur69@reddit
We could easily feed 10 billion vegetarians, but just 1 billion daily meat eaters is unsustainable
BTRCguy@reddit
The pollution in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from generating fertilizer for animal feed crops is indeed significant. However, if you turned that cropland over to feeding a vegan world (estimates are about 80% of Earth's cropland would be needed), then all of those emissions would still be there. And it would still require massive (i.e. unsustainable) fossil fuel use for the fertilizer production.
The problem is more of "how many people need to be fed?" than it is "what are those people eating?"
NoseyMinotaur69@reddit
Close. It would actually reduce the land use for agriculture by up to 75%
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
We have an unsustainable form of agriculture
jedrider@reddit
This article seems like a 'white-wash.' Interesting how the decline of maize (corn) is the only one forecast to take a deep dip which, actually, is not all that bad. The US losing corn is a big PLUS! No more ethanol production, feed for cattle, Coca-Cola, etc, all pluses!
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
You would think in our heavily interconnected society that we would make some of our main priorities protecting our global food supply. But that doesn’t not seem to be the case, the higher these temperatures go the more difficult it will become to grow and harvest crops. Our society has many things backwards, money and material things come first, and our environment and our food supply seemingly come last. Our obsession for material things will inevitably lead to our collapse of the environment and our natural resource supply.
PineapplePiazzas@reddit
Reaching above 100% domestic food supply and divert that supply across as many fields as possible (eggs in many baskets) should be a high priority for any nation by now - Sadly thats not the case.
Without alturistic governments and resilience against playing into the hands of self-serving interests, its not much we can do if outside government key roles and major players.
Even if the 90% of global population which is poluting 50% of the co2 made their best efforts to reduce their own impact, it would not amount to much without the support of those that controls the means of production and drives consumer behaviour with the blessing of government bodies.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
I don’t see that happening sadly, the message will only truly come across once many are already gone imo
PineapplePiazzas@reddit
Seems the impact so far, both victims and areas affected by floods, fires, desertification, loss of flora and fauna is not enough to wake them up.
If we even have the needed organizational capabilities when such a point hopefully is reached, remains to be seen.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
I don’t have any faith we’ll coordinate anything sadly
PineapplePiazzas@reddit
Yeah, a coordinated push on the gas is what the timeline shows this far.
huehuehuehuehuuuu@reddit
Human faith is a powerful thing, when the leadership needs willful blindness from the populace. Don’t look at crop failures, look at the gram and fight amongst yourselves.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
A collapse from within
Purua-@reddit
We’re so damn self absorbed we’re neglecting our own supply of food because we take it for granted
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
We would’ve lasted much longer for so many different reasons, but our selfishness and our seemingly increasing lack of remorse for others that we see as different from one other I why I think they’re won’t be much left
AnthonyGSXR@reddit
They’ll just genetically modify the soybeans to be more resilient to anything global warming will throw at them.. my soybean trains will never stop making it to the port to be loaded onto huge ships .. and sold to china or some other country 🤷🏻♂️ too much money in the game
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
I wish it were that simple
normanhome@reddit
Did anyone read the article?
beanscornandrice@reddit
I did not, did you? I'm just here enjoying the scenery.
Vegetaman916@reddit
The effect you are looking for is called "Multiple Breadbasket Failure." Look that up. It is super fun and coming very soon.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
That kind of failure won’t be good but won’t be surprised when it happens
normanhome@reddit
Fascinating read, I didn't understand the title really as it hops around with percentage without a reference point mentioned but the article actually tells about increase of yields for some crops (rice, wheat, soy) and even higher increase with worse cases.
I'm surprised. Would be interesting to see this expanded on other crops.
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
Yeah they did a good analysis on those crops tbh
Purua-@reddit
We just care about consuming consuming consuming with out any regard to our own food supply
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
Selfish creatures we are, we can barely take care of each other since we hate those that our different from us so easily of course we’ll neglect our own food supply inevitably
Purua-@reddit
Fr, I see so many mistreat each other and I’ve been mistreated most of my life so I came pessimistic asf towards my own people, no way we’re fuckin makin it
Ok_Mechanic_6561@reddit (OP)
I hear you, I would have probably been more optimistic for humanity if I didn’t get treated like crap when I was growing up, but what can we do? Just keep pushing 🤒
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Ok_Mechanic_6561:
You would think in our heavily interconnected society that we would make some of our main priorities protecting our global food supply. But that doesn’t not seem to be the case, the higher these temperatures go the more difficult it will become to grow and harvest crops. Our society has many things backwards, money and material things come first, and our environment and our food supply seemingly come last. Our obsession for material things will inevitably lead to our collapse of the environment and our natural resource supply.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1g3dltv/how_will_climate_change_affect_crop_yields_in_the/lrv0wi5/