Climate Change Threatens American Agriculture
Author: Kendra Pierre-Louis | Published: January 20, 2017
You may already be mourning the fact that climate change rings the death knell for beloved foreign grown foods like chocolate and coffee, but a recent study in Nature Communications brings the bad news closer to home. The study found that climate change is also going to hurt domestic staples—wheat, corn, and soybeans—with their yields dropping each day the crops experience temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher. For each day that corn and soybeans fields spend at these temperatures, the study found, yield drops by up to six percent.
Researchers used computer crop models that blend physics, chemistry, biology, and observed data on crop yields. “First we simulated yields from past years and checked to see if they show the same response as reporter yields,” said Bernhard Schauberger a researcher at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the lead author on the study. When the data matched, they then used the model to project forward under different climate scenarios.