Forbes is wrong, agriculture is doing well in a context of moderate warming – does Watts care?
Via Linnea Lueken
A recent article in Forbes Magazinetitled “The Impact of Climate Change on Global Agriculture: A Crisis is Coming”, claims that climate change is “damaging” cocoa, olive oil, rice, and soybeans. This is false. Some areas, like the ones author Monica Sanders focuses on, are seeing adverse seasons for these crops, but this does not indicate a long-term trend in those locations or globally. Therefore, this cannot be attributed to the modest warming over the past hundred years, and certainly not to human CO2 emissions.
Sanders stated that important crops “like cocoa, olive oil, rice and soybeans are particularly vulnerable and the yield reductions due to the impacts of climate change are far-reaching.”
Starting with cocoa, Sanders focuses on West Africa, which she says has been “severely affected by El Niño-induced dry weather,” and quotes a climate scientist from Ghana who says the frequency and intensity of droughts are increasing and making “cocoa farming increasingly unsustainable.”
Agricultural data for the region shows this claim to be false.
This year and 2023 have seen some declines in cocoa production, but they are exceptions to the general trend. If climate change had made cocoa production “unsustainable,” one would not have expected record production to occur as recently as 2022. According to the latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), covering the past three decades of climate change:
- West African cocoa production increased by 167 percent;
- West African cocoa yields fluctuated, but overall increased by 8 percent. (See figure below)
Climate realism has delved deeper into the alarm surrounding cocoa beans and climate change. This, ThisAnd This.
Next, regarding olive oil, we see a similar story, and again, Climate realism has denied these claims. This, ThisAnd This. FAO data discussed in those posts shows that olives set production records 11 times between 1990 and 2022.
Rice is a particularly puzzling crop to be alarmed about. Saunders writes that it is “under threat from climate change,” citing Italy, which produces half of the European Union’s rice, and India.
Italy is an interesting case, their rice production and yield have been falling significantly since at least 2020, with their most recent yield record set in 2017, the production record set in 2012. Although according to FAO data, production up to 2020 is within the normal seasonal range for Italian rice, 2022 is a year of major decline due to drought during the year. (See figure below)
There is no reason to believe that the current drought is permanent, nor is there a long-term trend of increasing drought in Italy, nor is Italy showing a sustained decline in its rice crop as the Earth warms slightly. Instead, Italian rice farmers are experiencing what farmers around the world have always experienced, seasonal declines and failures directly linked to short-term weather fluctuations. This is a temporary phenomenon, albeit painful for farmers.
More importantly, Saunders fails to acknowledge that part of the reason for the decline in rice yields has nothing to do with the weather but reflects a nearly 12 percent decline in rice-growing land over the past 14 years.
Sanders’ claim that rice in India is also threatened is absurd. Rice production in India has broken records almost every year since 2015, and since the 1990s, there has been nothing but an upward trend.
Since 1990, Indian rice has:
- Production increased by 75 percent;
- Productivity increased by 61 percent. (See figure below)
Soybeans in both the United States and South America have seen production and yield increases over the past three decades due to climate change, and there are no signs of that stopping. Climate realism discuss US soybean production, ThisAnd in South America, FAO data shows the most recent soybean production record was set in 2021, the most recent yield record was set in 2017. In all, production and yields have increased over three decades that climate alarmists say were the warmest on record.
Since 1990, production in South America has increased by 47 percent, a staggering 424 percent increase in output. (See figure below)
Each section of the Forbes article also provides examples of weather resilience strategies that are worth implementing for farmers regardless of whether climate change is influencing weather. In all cases, overall crop yields are increasing across the board, with no visible climate signal.
These facts take only a few minutes to verify using a public database, which is the bare minimum for good journalism, but it’s clear that for Forbes, pushing the narrative about the climate change crisis is too important for the truth to get in the way.
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