Warming Threatens to Cut Crop Yields

Projecting the impact of climate change on global food production is no easy task.  A warming climate might result in better crop yields in one region, but cause drought and crop failure in another.

A new US study, published in the journal Environmental Letters, assesses the odds of a major slowdown in global food production over the next 20 years.

Overall, the study’s authors say, the likelihood of a sharp drop in yields of crops vital to food supply, such as wheat and maize, is “not very high” - but global warming does markedly increase the chance of such events happening.  The risk to global food supplies is about 20 times greater when man-made climate change is taken into account.

“Climate change has substantially increased the prospect that crop production will fail to keep up with rising demand in the next 20 years,” says Claudia Tebaldi, a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a co-author of the study.

Warming Threatens to Cut Crop Yields