In the United States corn and soybeans are important cash crops, with a combined value of more than US$90 billionin 2017. We found that climate change is causing a small net increase in yields of these crops – on average, about 0.1% and 3.7% respectively each year.

But these numbers reflect both gains and losses. In some Corn Belt states, such as Indiana and Illinois, climate change is shaving up to 8% off of annual corn yields. At the same time, it has boosted annual yields in Iowa and Minnesota by approximately 2.8%. All four of these states now have slightly warmer and wetter corn growing seasons, but Indiana and Illinois have seen larger increases in warming and smaller increases in moisture compared to Iowa and Minnesota.

Our maps track these changes down to the county level. In eastern Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, climate change has been reducing corn yields even as it boosts them to the northwest in Minnesota and North Dakota. We see similar patterns for soybean farming: Reductions are moving up from the south and east parts of the country, where slightly more warming has occurred than in states farther north. Climate change is also reducing overall yields of other important crops, such as wheat and barley.

Why hasn't the price of food spiked since Trump came into office, then? It rose under Obama and Bush, but largely because of the ethanol mandate, which turned food into gasoline. Why are we doing that if there is a food shortage?

Notice they discuss THIS YEAR'S WEATHER and mistake it for climate. It's been cool, as the article admits, which puts the lie to the whole notion of climate being warmed by CO2. You can't have it both ways, although they have tried by changing the name from Global Warming to Climate Change. But weather and climate aren't the same thing.

Oh, and once again, it is based on a computer model that required quite a bit of "smoothing" to produce aka data tampering. The authors clearly had an agenda to promote this ridiculous notion.

But, the proof in the pudding is in the eating, and food prices have not skyrocketed. The market tells you what is happening, and this isn't it.

If farmers aren't growing as much this year, how much does that have to do with current policy? In case everyone missed it, the U.S. has been in a trade war with China and they aren't buying our agricultural products, so why plant as much? Also, notice that the article mentions Illinois as being seriously impacted while Iowa - just across the Mississippi at the same latitude - is doing better. This is logically inconsistent, until one realizes that Illinois has put in a huge tax raiser, who has raised the price of fuel considerably. Is it any surprise?

This is just another hysterical rant.

One more thing; this is the same tired claim made by every environmental alarmist through history, starting with Thomas Malthus in the late eighteenth century on down through Paul Ehrlich in the seventies. It has NEVER come to pass; we've always found ways to produce more food. In fact, we are now at a point where most of the world has more than enough to eat - something that was not true thirty years ago. We are at the point of ending poverty, and that because of the triumph of free market capitalism. Socialism brings food shortages and poverty - just look at Venezuela today. In fact, the fall of the Soviet Union was in no small part because of food shortages; the mighty empire couldn't feed her own people with the horrible socialist system in place. So, a bunch of people want to fundamentally alter the world economic order to reimpose this failed system, and then when people starve they'll blame it on Climate Change and "greedy capitalists", you know, the guys who actually produced enough food for the whole world.

Posted by: Dana Mathewson at August 14, 2019 01:35 PM (yMRuZ)

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at August 15, 2019 08:39 AM (bQiGF)

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