It’s early November and now is a good time to look at some of this year’s global crop harvest results. Let’s recall that global warming models projected poor harvests and hunger in the future due to droughts (and floods).
But that is hardly the case…at least certainly for this year. And recall how Joe Bastardi last spring projected a “Garden of Eden” harvest for the US Great Plains. Looks like he was right. The story is similar many places worldwide, and not just the US.
10-foot corn
For example Bloomberg here reports of a record US corn harvest in 2014, writing:
From Ohio to Nebraska, thousands of field inspections this week during the Pro Farmer Midwest Crop Tour show corn output in the U.S., the world’s top producer, will be 0.4 percent above the government’s estimate. Months of timely rains and mild weather created ideal growing conditions, leaving ears with more kernels than normal on 10-foot (3-meter) corn stalks and more seed pods on dark, green soy plants.”
All-time high of 3.631 billion bushels of soybean
Bloomberg also writes here that the US production of soybean “will jump 10 percent this year to an all-time high of 3.631 billion bushels, and inventories before the 2015 harvest will be double a year earlier.”
In Europe the story is the similar. Last May the online marktkompass here already wrote of record wheat harvests:
In all regions of Central and Eastern Europe the weather for growth was close to being optimal and the yield potential has drastically improved.”
“All-time records” in Europe
In Germany’s agricultural state of Mecklenburg West-Pomerania, corn and barley reached record harvests. The online bauwesta reports that both winter and summer barley harvests set all-time records. Overall across Europe Crop Site reports this year’s cereal harvest “has generally been strong in Europe and Ukraine“.
Doom and gloom media silent on bumper crop yields
Moreover, numerous analysts report of falling grain and commodity prices. All of this, of course, is great news for consumers and a planet that still has close to a billion people who do not get enough to eat. Yet the good news is generally not getting reported by the doom-and-gloom obsessed media.
“Bounty of wheat, barley and oats”
Almost every country one looks at in Europe, one is finding record bumper crops this year. The usually gloom-obsessed UK Guardian also reported in September on UK 2014 harvests:
Long sunny spells after a mild winter and early spring delivers a bounty of wheat, barley and oats. […] 2014 could be the biggest yield ever for wheat when the final data is released in October.”
If climate change is supposed to be resulting in poor harvests, higher food prices and acute hunger for the poor, as many experts have warned incessantly, then the opposite must mean that climate change is not happening at all, or that it is having a profoundly beneficial effect for man instead.
Glut of apples
The Guardian also reports of bumper apple harvests and that “growers still face losses due to glut of apples and supermarket price wars.” The Guardian adds, “A cold winter gave the trees a good rest, then plenty of rain – especially in August – helped plump up the fruit, and then a dry September allowed the picking to get started early.”
If anything, all the bumper crops are leading to only one single food crisis: the rock bottom prices farmers are getting for their crops!
“bumper world harvest this year”
thompsonslimited.com here reports that the bumper-crop low-price crisis has also not spared Canada for almost everything from apples to zucchini. It writes that the “world commodity prices are worryingly low for arable farmers following a bumper world harvest this year.”
Russia “in awash in grain”
www.martellcropprojections.com here writes that Russia “is awash in grain from a bumper harvest in the growing season just ended. The 2014 grain harvest increased to 105 million tonnes threatening to break a record.”
The Crop Site also reports of record rice production in Bangladesh, and bumper maize harvests in Pakistan. Even Scotland’s 2014 cereal harvest “is estimated to be the largest in 20 years, with favourable conditions expected to produce more than three million tonnes of cereals.”
So, if you are not moping about all the good news on this year’s global harvest, and failed predictions of catastrophe, and wish instead to celebrate the good news with glasses of cheer, the wine-searcher here reports that France is “looking forward to a bigger and better wine harvest“. Indeed all the natural ingredients needed for fermenting or brewing your favorite spirit appear to be in bountiful supply this year.
Visions of Ehrlichian-style widespread crop failures and mass starvations postponed yet again. And they show absolutely no signs of ever materializing any time soon.
In fact one could easily argue that the world is better fed today than at any time in human history. We can in part thank higher CO2 concentrations and warmer climate for that.
Helped along by increased CO2 and a little extra warmth. Pity the environmental movement directs us to put so much of it into fuel tanks and not hungry mouths.
Right now there’s too much food on the market. Best thing one can do to support the farmers in these time of low prices is to eat beef, pork, and poultry. Eating meat will boost demand for grains.
There might be a few flies in this happy harvest ointment in Northern Latitudes for example:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-harvest-will-be-down-this-year-statscan-says-1.2742677
http://iceagenow.info/2014/10/early-snow-deprives-novosibirsk-region-large-grain-harvest/
This could be the commencement of real cooling and as it progresses it will bring real deprivation to the world food supply.
The extra CO2 will help compensate for the downturn up North.
The comment by edmh at 20:35 mentions 2 places that had a problem with harvest. However, one needs to understand that in the US and Canada the patterns of precipitation and warmth (growing degree days) are at, more or less, right angles. Thus, the best growing conditions shift some with the year’s weather. For example, a year’s pattern might be good for crops in Iowa one year, and less good in Ohio. The following year might be very good in southern Indiana but not so good in Kansas. Pockets of poor conditions hurt locally but the big picture is very robust.
In contrast, in the European and Asian steppe (see here) the precipitation and warmth are more parallel (or zonal) and a dry or cold year changes things for a very large agricultural area. Not robust.
However, people in the developed countries source their food from all over the world. Think coffee, cocoa, banana, and others. The source regions have a double problem. Often, one crop is the main source of income. A poor crop in a place will have the buyers going elsewhere with their cash. Various support mechanisms, including insurance, in developed countries mediated such a problem, but poor countries have few such things. In my lifetime it has always been such.
Hi,
According to our local daily, crop yields are decreasing in India due to air pollution and climate change!
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/air-pollution-lowers-crop-yield-study/article6561733.ece
Ah, you fell for it. They worded it carefully. They say yields are lower than they COULD be.
In fact yields have increased with population – leading to slightly rising calories / person /day in India:
http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2007$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=0ArfEDsV3bBwCdGlYVVpXX20tbU13STZyVG0yNkRrZnc;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=lin;dataMin=0;dataMax=1359368470$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=1418;dataMax=3819$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=i101_t001961,,,,
In government-speak nothing is what it seems. Frequently someone will say an agency’s budget has been drastically cut. They asked for a 10% increase but only got 5%. They report to patrons that services may have to be curtailed because of the budget cut.
If there is one telling point that the environmental movement, and the Greens in particular, have long lost credibility, it is their declaration of war against carbon dioxide. So I present these important extracts from “The Many Benefits of Atmospheric Enrichment” by the ‘Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change’:
“Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the elixir of life. It is the primary raw material out
of which plants construct their tissues, which in turn are the materials out of which animals construct theirs. This knowledge is so well established, in fact, that we humans—and all the rest of the biosphere—are described in the most basic of terms as carbon-based life forms.
Nowadays, however, it seems that all we ever hear about atmospheric CO2 are the presumed negative consequences of its increasing concentration. Time and again, world governments, non-governmental organizations, international agencies, societal think tanks, and even respectable scientific organizations attempting to assess the potential consequences of this phenomenon, have spent multiple millions of dollars writing and promoting large reports about it. Yet, nearly all of these endeavors have failed miserably, by not evaluating, or even acknowledging, the manifold real and measurable benefits of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content. As a result, the many important and positive impacts of atmospheric CO2 enrichment remain underappreciated and largely ignored in the debate over what to do, or not do, about anthropogenic CO2 emissions.”
http://www.co2science.org/education/book/2011/55BenefitsofCO2Pamphlet.pdf