-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 18, 2007 5:41:55 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Global Warming Already Having Effect on Food Crop Production
Warming temperatures damage cereal crops, report says
By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press, 03/16/2007 03:50:16 PM PDT
SACRAMENTO -- Warming temperatures over the past quarter century
have [reduced] production of cereal crops worldwide by millions of
tons and caused annual losses of roughly $5 billion, according to a
study released Friday.
The news wasn't completely dire. The report from the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory also said the damage has been offset
by production gains from genetically modified crops and better
farming techniques. Researchers also said they did not account for
farmers making their own adjustments to cope with the rising
temperatures.
"The warming we've already experienced since 1980 (about 0.7
degrees Fahrenheit) is having a major impact on the production of
crops," the lead author, David Lobell, said in a telephone
interview. "It is true that the impacts of climate change have been
relatively small compared to the overall increase because of
technology."
The study from the Livermore, Calif.-based lab is the first to
examine how much global food production has been harmed by climate
change, Lobell said.
The study estimated that the global temperature increase from 1980
to 2002 means 40 million fewer metric tons of barley, corn, rice,
sorghum, soybeans and wheat are produced around the world each
year, leading to an annual loss of $5 billion.
The report does not include national or regional breakdowns.
California officials said there would be little effect on the
nation's top agricultural state, which is not a major producer of
grains other than rice.
Farm researchers were skeptical of the study's findings.
"That kind of flies in the face of reality," said Terry Francl, a
senior economist with the Washington, D.C.-based American Farm
Bureau Federation. "The reality is we've had improved trends in
yields during all of that time. It's hard to see how you would
calculate global warming's effect on that."
Longer growing seasons and an increase in carbon dioxide also
encourage plant growth. Yields have improved due largely to genetic
modification of grain crops, and farmers have adjusted to changing
conditions by planting crops where they grow best, Francl said.
Lobell said changes in growing seasons and carbon dioxide levels
have tended to cancel each other out when it comes to crop yields.
He said researchers did not attempt to account for farmers' crop
adaptation.
"Farmers have the ability to adjust," Lobell said. "But over the
last 20 years, there has been little evidence that farmers are
adjusting."
Lawrence Livermore is operated by the University of California for
the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration. The peer-reviewed report was published online in
Friday's Environmental Research Letters, published by the London-
based Institute of Physics.
Lobell wrote the report with Christopher Field, who directs the
Carnegie Institutions' Department of Global Ecology at Stanford
University.
They compared changes in yields with variations in average
temperature and precipitation in major crop-growing regions. They
concluded that yields have been dropping about 3 percent to 5
percent for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase.
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