Climate change boosts odds of slowdown in crop yields | Food and Environment Reporting Network

The odds of a production slowdown for corn and wheat over the next two decades are 20 times higher with climate change than without, say researchers from Stanford University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They used computer models of global climate, as well as weather and crop data, to calculate the chances for climatic trends to slow the growth in corn and wheat yields by 10 percent in the next 20 years. That would mean yields would grow half as quickly as now forecast. “This would have a major impact on food supply,” said NCAR.

Human-induced global warming boosted the chances to 1 in 10 for corn and 1 in 20 for wheat, compared to 1 in 200 for natural climate shifts. “Although further study may prove otherwise, we do not anticipate adaptation being fast enough to significantly alter the near-term risks estimated in this paper,” wrote co-authors Claudia Tebaldi of NCAR and David Lobell of Stanford. They looked at strategies such as breeding heat-tolerant crop varieties and shifting the crop-growing regions to cooler areas. Tebaldi said “climate change has increased the odds to the point that organizations concerned with food security or global stability need to be aware of this risk.”

The study, “Getting caught with our plants down: The risks of a global crop yield slowdown from climate trends in the next two decades,” appears in Environmental Research Letters and is available here.