As if it weren't bad enough that we may be facing a food shortage by 2050 and natural disasters have alreacy caused food shortages, climate change may already be reducing our ability to produce food for the seven billion people already here. In March, Denise Chow of LiveScience wrote Draft UN Report: Global Warming Could Cost $1.45 Trillion.
The effects of global warming could cost the world $1.45 trillion in economic damages, with the planet's crop production projected to decline up to two percent every decade, according to news coverage of a new UN report.Last week, North Carolina State University contended that this may be happening this year in the U.S. as Increased Drought Portends Lower Future Midwest Crop Yields.
Increasingly harsh drought conditions in the U.S. Midwest’s Corn Belt may take a serious toll on corn and soybean yields over the next half-century, according to research published today in the journal Science.As 'Years of Living Dangerously' is pointing out, climate change is NOW.
Corn yields could drop by 15 to 30 percent, according to the paper’s estimates; soybean yield losses would be less severe.
North Carolina State University’s Roderick Rejesus, associate professor of agricultural and resource economics and a co-author of the Science paper, says that corn and soybean yields show increasing sensitivity to drought, with yields struggling in dry conditions in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana during the 1995 to 2012 study period.
“Yield increases are getting smaller in bad conditions,” Rejesus said. “Agronomic and genetic crop improvements over the years help a lot when growing conditions are good, but have little effect when growing conditions are poor, like during droughts.”