Rapidly Rising Heat Will Cut Maize Harvests

Soon the corn could roast on the cob long before the maize harvests are due.  That could be far sooner than anyone expects.

European scientists have bad news for the world’s farmers:  within a decade, maize harvests will suffer as global temperatures will have reached a level that will turn the once-in-a-decade extremes of heat and drought into the new normal.

That will mean that the worst production losses ever felt by the maize farmers will happen with increasing frequency, if global planetary temperatures reach 1.5°C above the long-term average for almost all human history.

The world is already 1°C hotter on average than it was before the Industrial Revolution and its increasing dependence on fossil fuels to power the global economies.

And if the temperature reaches 2°C, researchers warn, farmlands where maize once flourished will be hit by heat and drought events never before experienced.  The big agribusiness giants will be hurt – and so will the small subsistence farmers who depend on their crop to keep their families alive.

Read more at Rapidly Rising Heat Will Cut Maize Harvests