Monday, June 02, 2014

Europe Faces Cereals Crop Crash

Cereal failures: yields could be slashed from barley fields such as this one in Suffolk, England (Credit: Eileen Henderson via Wikimedia Commons) Click to enlarge.
Harvests of wheat and barley across Europe could be 20% lower by 2040 as average temperatures rise by 2°C.  And by 2060, European farmers could be facing very serious losses.

As the likelihood of weather extremes increases with temperature, the consequences of lower yields will be felt around the world. Europe produces, for example, 29% of the world’s wheat.

Two consecutive studies in Nature Climate Change examine the challenges faced by the farmers - the first of the reports being by a team led by Miroslav Trnka, of the Czech Global Change Research Centre in Brno.

They considered the impact of changing conditions in 14 very different wheat growing zones - from the Alpine north to the southern Mediterranean, from the great plains of Northern Europe to the baking uplands of the Iberian peninsula, and from the Baltic seascapes of Denmark to the fertile flood plains of the Danube.

It is a given that farmers are at the mercy of the weather, and that crops are vulnerable to unseasonal conditions.  But a rise in average temperatures of 2°C is likely to increase the frequency of unfavourable conditions.

Europe Faces Cereals Crop Crash

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