Image courtesy of Alamy
Joel
Kontinen
Evolution and global warming are the trends we have been forced to look at, but this has not been present in Finland.
Global
warning -fuelled heat and drought is already hitting yields of maize,
wheat and soybeans to the tune of $20 billion a year, a study has estimated.
There is
great uncertainty about these kinds of projections, not least because so much
depends on how farmers respond and adapt to a continually changing climate, for
instance, by switching to different crops or adopting irrigation where
it is possible. In fact, the whole point of this study is to raise awareness
and encourage adaptation, to help ensure these projections turn out to be
overestimates, says team member Kai Kornhuber, also at IIASA. “This is the entire mission of
climate scientists: we make these cases for people to react, so our projections
turn out to be wrong.”
The
researchers started by gathering data on the yields per country of maize, wheat
and soya from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Next, they took
past climate data and calculated the drought level, using a standard approach
that estimates soil moisture levels from rainfall and evaporation levels.
The
researchers then calculated the economic losses, based on FAO data showing how
much farmers would have been paid for their produce at the time. Finally, they
used the same approach to project future losses in several different emissions
scenarios, assuming that some adaptation takes place.
This could
be an underestimate of the full impact of climate change for a number of reasons: it’s
just three crops, and it doesn’t include flood, storm or rain damage, or the possibility that shortages could lead to big price
increases, as is
already happening with some other crops such as coffee and cacao.
Source:
Michael Le Page 2026 Global warming already causing crop losses of over $20 billion a year | New Scientist 10 July
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