Corn and Climate Change

I began a blog on tracking corn a couple years back within the context of a social and ecological actant. Since then, a lot of data has been coming out about the expected impacts of climate change. It has also come to pass, the effects of globalization, alternative fuels, and other contemporary commodities on food supply (corn shortage in Mexico, etc.). This article sent to be by a friend talks in depth on the affects on growing crops in a post climate change environment. In short, and not surprisingly, increases in global tempartures have an adverse effect on crop yields.

"So what are the prospects for climate change? Well, there's bad news and good news. The bad news first, illustrated in the figure below. The figure shows our key temperature measure: degree days above 29C during the growing season. The big drought years (and bad yield years) show prominently: 1934 and 1936, the worst on record, and 1983 and 1988, the worst years in more recent history (aside from the 1994 flood). I've drawn a line in blue showing what is projected to be typical during the last 30 years of the century under the "nice" warming scenario--an increase of about 104 Degree days above 29C. This is the projection if we sharply curb CO2 emissions in the near term. Under this predicted increase a typical year will be worse that the worst dust bowl years of 1934 and 1936. A second scenario is "business as usual" in which there are no efforts to curb emissions--an increase of 330. I can't draw a line for that scenario because it's off the chart. WAY off the chart. And this projection doesn't account for the recent acceleration of CO2 emissions from China[1, 2, 3]."

Read the whole article here.