Bishop Hill Crop yields and dumb farmers
Apr 11, 2013 Climate: WG2 Matt Ridley points me to a paper published a few days ago, which finds that, despite the impact of climate, variability in crop yields has not changed. As the authors Tom Osborne and Tim Wheeler conclude
This study has taken a broad-scale view of crop yield variability and its relationship with climate. Whilst general conclusions are difficult to draw when considering diverse crop production systems across the globe it appears that, for the majority of crop–country combinations examined, crop yield variability has not increased. Indeed, in half of the cases yield variability has decreased. Direct attribution of the drivers of change in variability, as in previous studies, was not attempted. However, for the first time, the potential role of climate variability was elucidated. The variation of several growing season climates was shown to have changed significantly during the past 50 years. The use of empirical relationships between crop yield and climate identified several countries, in particular maize in Indonesia and rice in India, where significant changes in climate variability have led to the observed reductions in yield variability. In the remainder of cases it was found that climate has not contributed.
They also say:
At the global scale the variability of wheat and rice yields have declined significantly between 1960 and 2009, whilst the variability of maize peaked during the middle of the time period (figure 5). Consideration of the observed relationship between yield and climate suggests that a significant reduction in the variability of rainfall may have contributed to the reduction in rice yield variability, but that wheat yield variability declined despite an increase in the variability of associated climate.
The authors seem to be somewhat bemused by these findings, suggesting that 'it is unclear how rising CO2 concentrations might have significantly impacted the variability of yield'. This is an odd thing to say; I thought it was fairly well established that high carbon dioxide levels tended to reduce water loss in plants, thus protecting them from drought.
Matt also points out this 1991 paper by Jesse Ausubel, which notes that even 20 years ago it was becoming clear that technology was profoundly reducing mankind's vulnerability to climate:
In many respects we seem to be climate proofing society, making ourselves less subject to natural phenomena. For centuries and millennia we relied mainly on behavioural and social adaptation. We took siestas when the sun was high and sought refuge in hill stations in the monsoon season. Large pastoral and nomadic populations followed the seasonal availability of resources and avoided climatic stresses. Much of the planet remained seasonally or entirely uninhabitable for climatic reasons. With current technology many people can live in virtually any climate that now exists. Modern water supply and heating and ventilation systems, along with medicines (for example, quinine and vaccines) and public health measures, have enabled large populations to inhabit formerly uninhabitable regions
It is worthy of note that Ausubel's comments came even before the GM and telecommunications revolutions, which have had such profound effects on agriculture. So much for the dumb farmer assumption. One wonders just how many of these innovations - particularly the system innovations such as telecoms - are factored into the impacts assessments and the economic models.
Perhaps one of the Richards can help here.
Reader Comments (37)
I can't read all of that got through first few pages, but have work to do. I hope they looked at the annual price for these grains and considered that as a potential driver for small reductions in national production and didn't just assume every nation in the world was bravely attempting to produce more of everything against the face of the massive heat of global warming.
This paper is just silly. The authors would be wise to google "missing variable bias" and check the bad things it does to an analysis.
Technological progress in agriculture is focused on making crops grow in bad years and in bad spots. That reduces yield variability. Market integration, irrigation, pest control, fertilizers, weather forecasts and what not have all improved over the sample period. All work to reduce yield variability.
Once you have corrected for all that, you can start looking at weather variability.
On a purely anecdotal note, my crop yield varied from the norm considerably last year, with production being well down on the norm. This I attribute to a colder, wetter and less sunny growing season. The same was true of my neighbouring farmers. This year looks to be heading the same way, unless there is a considerable improvement in temperature and sunshine, together with a longer and drier autumn to make up for the non-appearance of spring.
Hope they took 'set aside' EU madness into account.
Maybe the climate is also responsible for the depletion of cod in the North Sea as the decline in stocks coincides with the catastrophic global warming seen since the 70's?!?!
Regards
Mailman
@ Richard
would you consider them equally stupid if they attempted to forecast the price of grain 100 years into the future?
"So Th' Ministry begins a-complainin' and a-questionin', and at last they sends down a gennelman from Lunnon...a Mr Parker-Pole....an ivery day un comes up to th' farm an' de-dottles me wi' advice. There were no peace, an things did go from bad t' worse. He - he did say as I were never agricultoorally eddicated."
"I am very sorry Reuben." Flora laid her hand upon her cousin's for a moment.
"No, you are not agriculturally educated; you only know how to make things grow. But go on."
Extract from "Conference at Cold Comfort Farm" Stella Gibbons
The Sun
"BRITAIN’S winters are getting colder because of melting Arctic ice, the Government’s forecaster said yesterday.
"Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said climate change was “loading the dice” towards freezing, drier weather — and called publicly for the first time for an urgent investigation."
Prof Slingo said: “If you look at the way our weather patterns have behaved over the past four or five years, we’re beginning to think that there is something happening. "
So climate isn't 30 years, it's now 4 years and why did they predict warmer wetter winters? Shows they haven't got a clue about our climate.
That 1991 paper is an embarrassment. They discovered the idea that man now adapts his environment with technology??? "we used to take siestas..."
Ummm. Didn''t we know that some time ago?
Sorry to stray O/T but
Julie Slingo - "“If you look at the way our weather patterns have behaved over the past four or five years, we’re beginning to think that there is something happening. "
and please can we have some more money to look in to it?
That is just laughable straw grasping at its worst.
16 years of no warming means nothing, but a few cold winters means "something is happening". Really?
Arctic sea ice is near average at present for the 30 year satellite era. 2007 looks like the lowest "melt" area not the storm driven breakup of 2012 - when only one NSIDC product showed a low record anyway. AND strangely NSIDC's new much improved multi-sensor product MASIE showed no record. The rest were much bigger areas than 2007. The Met Office at the time had the BBC weather presenter spouting this "record" loudly. Activism not science.
See here -
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/27/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-11-part-2-other-sources-show-no-record-low/
Geckko - I was an embarrassment in 1991 - I believed in AGW.
The work of Jesse Ausubel is well worth reading.
@Geckko
I don't think that Ausubel presented this as a new finding. He just reminded the climate=destiny crowd that there is more under the sun, and that history suggests that future societies will be less vulnerable to climate change than current societies.
Ausubel's point may be blindingly obvious to you, but it has yet to penetrate the skulls of many climate change impact researchers.
Here's something that would seriously effect crop yields: fizzy volcanoes.
Well, here's a Warmist Expert, Prof Tim Benton - or, to give him his proper title, 'Professor of Population Ecology; UK Champion for Global Food Security and Professor of Population Ecology' - talking to a meeting of farmers, saying just the opposite.
http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/14/12/2012/136761/farmers-must-adapt-to-climate-change.htm
Here's his killer quote: "Over the next decade, I predict there will be at least one year where worldwide production of major crops will decrease by up to 25%, due to extreme weather from climate change", said Prof Benton, speaking at Holt Farmers' Club in Norfolk on Wednesday (12 December)
Ten seconds looking at over 100 year's-worth of harvest records suggest that as predicitons go, he's on fairly safe ground.
http://www.ukagriculture.com/farming_today/long_term_yields.cfm
Seems to me that occasional 25% drops in yield have been going on rather longer that the Global Warming industry.
Charlie
The variability in wheat yield since the mid-1990s is probably in some measure a consequence of environmentalism.
Ecofascists demanded that the sulphur be taken out of diesel fuel. The main application for extracted sulphur is as a fertiliser, so the fact that it was no longer falling out of the sky would have had an adverse effect on yields.
Charlie,
Benton's role is to promote his pointless position of 'UK Champion for Global Food Security', spawned of course by John 'blinder' Beddington. He spouts the same fearmongering and fundamentally fact-free drivel at every meeting he is invited to. Meanwhile, in your real world, you get on with providing a remarkably resilient service to humanity in spite of £millions of taxpayers' money being wasted on dressing the vacuously empty windows of Government which would be far better spent on actual crops research. But DEFRA don't fund that any more because people might actually have a use for it (in their special code they call it 'too near market').
The lack of sulphur is a well-known problem in crops nowadays. My liquid fertiliser comes with 7% SO3 in it. I went through a stage a few years ago of adding Epsom Salts to the mix in my cropsprayer. Back then I was a little less careful with protective clothing, and smoked heavily. Didn't take long for the, ahem, laxative properties of Espom Salts to make themselves known. I was a bit more careful with gloves after that.
I heard on the radio that the soggy year of 2012 was likely to result in higher prices for potato products. I found this odd because potatoes were the one crop that grew really well in my veggie patch last year. Sweetcorn and onions did reasonably well, carrots were a disaster. the biggest success was docks as we just couldn't get any weeding done. Maybe those who wish to study crop yield variability need to look at my garden which is very low tech and hence quite variable.
Charlie Flindt - how are you getting on with the reservoirs, or was it flood defences, or both?
Mailman 10:11 AM
Cod stocks in Barents Sea (probably the largest Cod fishery in the world) are at record high:-
http://barentsobserver.com/en/nature/record-northern-distribution-cod-stock-03-10
Funny, all the usual suspects haven't said much about that.....
Off topic, has anyone seen this in the Telegraph on line.
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You can get round this by using a proxy.
@Rob
You can also get round it by deleting cookies.
Martin Brumby,
Not only that BUT cods so common those crab fishermen use it as bait fish.
Just a pity cod tastes like deep fried sea water! Don't see what the poms see in that fish???
Regards
Mailman
BH"GM and telecommunications revolutions,"
Would the GM revolution be the one that allows Monsanto to sue farmers next door to gm crops when wind cross contaminates their own crops.?
Would that be the same revolution where the US govt decided that GM crops were the same as non GM crops..science be damned..so lets just rush the legislation through and full speed ahead.?
Would that be the same revolution where properties of Golden Rice were extolled..and how many years later..no papers..nothing.
Would that be the same GM revolution with the dearth of papers published showing the GM crops were safe.
Would that be the same GM revolution that destroyed Arpad Pusztai career after he was muzzled when he found some "problems" cough cough with the potato strains he was testing..
I could go on..but whats the point eh.. :).
No point at all. Quite right.
Yes.
Not every cloud has a sulphur lining.
Regarding what technologies are generally considered in studies of the impact of climate change on agriculture and food security consider the so-called Fast Track Assessments (FTAs) funded by DEFRA. These studies were considered to be state-of the-art for the AR4 and were a major source of Nicholas Stern’s so-called analysis. Here’s my analysis of those FTA studies (taken from this paper, page 22):
(9) Goklany IM. Is a Richer‐but‐warmer World Better than Poorer‐but‐cooler Worlds? Energy & Environment 2007, 18 (7 and 8):1023–1048.
(17) Parry ML, Rosenzweig C, Iglesias A, Livermore M, and Fischer G. Effects of climate change on global food production under SRES emissions and socio‐economic scenarios. Global Environmental Change 2004, 14(1):53–67.
(97) World Bank. World Development Indicators. http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do (accessed June 13 2011).
(100) James C. Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops: 2010. International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA) Brief No. 42‐2010, Ithaca, N.Y., 2011.
(101) Silva CB, de Moraes MAFD, Molin JP. Adoption and use of precision agriculture technologies in the sugarcane industry of São Paulo state, Brazil. Precision Agriculture 2010, 12:67‐81, DOI: 10.1007/s11119‐009‐9155‐8.
(102) Yan X, Jin J, He P, Liang M. Recent Advances on the Technologies to Increase Fertilizer Use Efficiency. Agricultural Sciences in China 2008, 7:469–479.
I have looked at a few more recent studies published in the last few years, and they have not advanced much on this score (so far).
"....I could go on..but whats the point eh.. :)."
Apr 11, 2013 at 10:08 PM | Unregistered CommenterDrapetomania
--------------------------
You already did go on. What IS your point about GM in relation to variability of crop yields?
Apr 11, 2013 at 9:36 AM | Unregistered CommenterRichard Tol
Spot on.
There is a worrying trend away from replenishment of minerals taken with the crop, with artificial fertilizers. The so called 'organic farming' cult is getting too much oxygen. As a group, they appear not to comprehend that the minerals that sustain people from food are taken from the land that provided the food; and that this supply exhausts. So, the effect of crop management is likely to be in need of quantification long before one starts worrying about climate. Because that is usually decided on a farm by farm basis, the figures would not be easy to collect.
Britain could become top wine growing region
According to a majority of climate models Britain could become one of the world's top wine-producing regions by 2050 if climate change continues unabated, a study suggests.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/9979146/Britain-could-become-top-wine-growing-region.html
Rob,
I believe this is the same story.
http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2013/04/scientists-unveil-world-wine-map-by-2050/
and they link to the paper.
http://www.conservation.org/Documents/CI_PNAS_Climate-Change-Wine-Production-Conservation_Lee-Hannah_March-2013.pdf
I don't think the authors are fully up to date with the latest developments in Climate Change Theory which fully accounts for the fact that the last few summers have been miserable and winters severe in Nort West Europe.
drapetomania:
Would the GM revolution be the one that allows Monsanto to sue farmers next door to gm crops when wind cross contaminates their own crops.?
Genetic analysis showed no parent that not resistant. In other words, it was straight from the last years crop, and thus violated the license.
Would that be the same revolution where the US govt decided that GM crops were the same as non GM crops..science be damned..so lets just rush the legislation through and full speed ahead.?
Man has been producing GMO for 10,000 yeras. But in answer, all GMOs need to be approved. But even then as in the case of salmon, if it proves safe, it is still withheld because its an election year.
Would that be the same revolution where properties of Golden Rice were extolled..and how many years later..no papers..nothing.
Golden rice will save 100,000s of children a year, but Greenpeace has effectively blocked the use.
Would that be the same GM revolution with the dearth of papers published showing the GM crops were safe.</I>
Nope. there has been close to zero literature that shows GMOs are unsafe. The consensus of publised papers is that GMo is safe. Empirically, over a trillion meals containg GMO have been consumed, with not a signle known ill effect.
Would that be the same GM revolution that destroyed Arpad Pusztai career after he was muzzled when he found some "problems" cough cough with the potato strains he was testing..
the Institutre where Arpad worked intially supported him However, after auditing his data they critisized his work. Six independent reviewers also were critical.
According to a majority of climate models Britain could become one of the world's top wine-producing regions by 2050 if climate change continues unabated, a study suggests.
In the same way, I could be mistaken for a toffee apple by 2050 if I pour treacle over my head and stick a cricket stump up my bottom.
All it takes is a consensus of models.
Les, isn't that ten trillion meals? Same result, still no doom. And a large proportion in the most litigious society on Earth. If there was a sniff of a problem, hell would be have been raised several times over.
What does it take to discredit precisely the same folk who give us the same level of fearmongering dishonesty about CAGW?
Les Johnson "Genetic analysis showed no parent that not resistant. In other words, it was straight from the last years crop, and thus violated the license.
sigh..
The resistance angle has nothing to do with what I said.
The farmers in australia are getting sued because the gm crops are contaminating adjacent fields.
They then get sued by monsanto for copyright breech..and . lose the value of their crops which were previously getting a higher price for not being GM.
How you can not understand this simple point is..amazing.
Les Johnson "Man has been producing GMO for 10,000 yeras. But in answer, all GMOs need to be approved. But even then as in the case of salmon, if it proves safe, it is still withheld because its an election year."
Not sure if you are winding me up Les.
If you don't understand the different between breeding and Gene insertion..why bumble into this thread.
There are NO SAFEY TRIALS.
Les Johnson""Nope. there has been close to zero literature that shows GMOs are unsafe. The consensus of publised papers is that GMo is safe. Empirically, over a trillion meals containg GMO have been consumed, with not a signle known ill effect."
False.
1/Genetic Roulette BY J.Smith shows hundreds of papers.
2/"Consensus" is a political term and has zero to do with science.
3/In the bad old days of real science, products had to be proven safe..now, postmodernism means the product comes out and other people have to prove its unsafe.
4/Your "empirical" guess and claims are supported by..nothing.
Les Johnson"Golden rice will save 100,000s of children a year, but Greenpeace has effectively blocked the use."
Pure industry propaganda..
I am no friend of greenpeace..but in the real world..there would be one published paper showing the wonders of golden rice.
There is not one.
Go and ask the Golden Rice foundation for it.. :)
Les Johnson"the Institutre where Arpad worked intially supported him However, after auditing his data they critisized his work. Six independent reviewers also were critical."
Yes, until his findings (which he did not expect)meant they would lose their funding.
Then they muzzled him and his wife, placed false statements attributed to him and then muzzled him from correcting him publicly.
His work was published and "criticism" doesn't mean diddle squat by people with vested finiancal interests in outcomes that might effect their bank balance.
SayNoToFearmongers "If there was a sniff of a problem, hell would be have been raised several times over. "
Sniff..???????
There is more than a sniff. but relying on MSM articles and Monsanto press releases for quotes and education is just sad.
Read the published papers.
Do you really believe that possible long term effects, would somehow miraculously show..with no long term analysis..of anyone.
Seriously..Beyond parody
SayNoToFearmongers "No point at all. Quite right."
Brilliant refutation of my points.. :)
If your even more confused than Les..why even show it here.
michael hart "You already did go on, What IS your point about GM in relation to variability of crop yields?"
If you read what I wrote I replying to BH statement. "BH"GM and telecommunications revolutions,"
Yep..how boorish of me to point out their was scientific evidence of possible long term health problems with gm crops.
You guys seem to have the same blinkers on to GM, as Greenies have to CAGW.
No difference at all..no science involved, just knee jerk reactions and really lame sarcasm..
Do some research first before you even try and "debate" anyone on these subjects,,its just embarrassing to read these replies....
Drapetomania,
You're just indulging in psychological projection. You have no grasp whatsoever of the field you're trying to lecture us in.
Take Golden Rice - 'pure industry propaganda' - golden rice is a humanitarian, not-for-profit programme. You are either deliberately lying or incapable of basic research.
http://www.irri.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=10202&lang=en
http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who4_IP.php
Take your toxic disinformation elsewhere. I'll save my keystrokes for a worthwhile discussion.