Stop whining about wine, 60 minutes, data shows Grape production is doing well – Getting better with that?
Via H. Sterling Burnett -December 28, 2021
During a segment on the CBS weekly news program, 60 minutes, Leslie Stahl interviewed a number of French grape growers who say climate change is destroying the country’s wine and champagne industry. Other display data. Although France suffers from low yields in 2021 due to a combination of drought and cold weather, global grape production remains strong, continuously setting records over the past three decades. Local weather conditions, not global climate change, as always, drive the success of viticulture.
In the news segment, titled “The effects of climate change are rooted in the wine industry,” 60 minutes opines:
What are the signs of global warming? Glaciers are melting at an increasingly rapid rate. Persistent drought is widespread. Well, we have something else to tell you – wine, like the one you might have opened for Christmas dinner.
Grape farmers are already seeing the effects of climate change in the soil, in the roots of their vines, and in the yields of their crops.
2021 has been a particularly bad year for wine production in France and to a lesser extent globally. Stahl interviewed a number of established winemakers in France who have linked low alcohol production in 2021 to climate change. The data shows that 2021 is an anomaly, not a sign of a possible long-term trend related to climate change. France and other top wine-producing countries in the region have had a particularly bad year.
“The almost dire numbers from France are due to the very adverse climate [sic] conditions during most of the growing season: frost, hail, storms and humidity in the summer (causing disease),” writes Forbes magazine in an article discuss difficulties in global wine production in 2021.
As Forbes details, although weather conditions in Europe are not favorable for wine production in 2021, other countries have produced more wine than the previous year:
The United States, the world’s third largest wine producer, increased wine production by 6% to 24.1 million hectares (Mhl). “Hectare” is a unit of volume equal to 100 liters. Australia, Chile, Argentina and South Africa, who typically race for five to eight places in the world rankings, have done well or very well in some cases: up 30 per cent for both Australia and Chile (14.2 Mhl and 13.4 Mhl respectively), +16% for Argentina (12.5 Mhl) and a more modest +2% for South Africa (10.6 Mhl).
The yield of grapes, as with all other crops, varies from year to year, due to many factors, such as local weather conditions, farm inputs, and acreage. Despite the yearly ups and downs, the record clearly shows that, as the earth has warmed modestly, grape production has increased. Since grape growers in different countries face different challenges, they have adapted, growing varieties that are best suited to their particular soil and weather conditions.
Indeed, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), shows that the five highest years of grape production on record have all occurred since 2013. (See figure)
Contrary to the impression 60 Minutes gives, during the recent period of modest warming, new records for global grape production were set in 2013, 2015 and most recently in 2018. Between 1988 and 2019 — the last year FAO obtained data and also the second largest on record — grape production increased by about 33 percent.
Looking at individual wine-producing countries, FAO data shows that grape production has increased significantly in seven of the top countries. 10 wine production countries from 1988 to 2019.
Wine production does not directly track grape production. Demand, market prices, competitive demand for grapes, and coordinated market strategies — what some might call collusion or an attempt to fix prices — can limit or contribute to increased production. amount of alcohol. For example, global wine production increased significantly in 2018 in Europe and globally, this is the second highest production year since 2000. In response, the study “State of the World Vitivinicultural Area In 2020,” found a number of “associations of Italian, French and Spanish producers to correct purity volumes at lower levels than in 2019 as demand is expected to decline in the global wine market, the period Favorable weather conditions lead to good harvests in many parts of the EU.”
So in 2020, winemakers in France, Italy and Spain, have been trying to curb wine production to manipulate the market due to the previous year’s high output. This happened just a year before extreme weather conditions resulted in poor grape growing conditions. Bad weather in a year does not equal climate change causing problems for the wine industry.
Real, data display 2018 was the second highest production year since 2000 and 2013 was the third highest production year.
As As CBC recently explained, weather and climate, although often confused or considered interchangeable by corporate media such as CBS 60 minutes, are two different things.
[T]His most common terms – like weather and climate – can be deceiving.
Those two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, and while they are linked, they actually refer to different things.
With weather and climate, the biggest factor is time.
Weather refers to the short term.
…
Weather systems can also bring extremely unusual conditions to an area….
…
[C]limate is determined by the long-term mean.
Climate refers to the atmospheric trends for an area.
It looks at weather conditions specific to a given area and averages them over a certain period of time.
Climate change is considered by most government agencies involved in weather and climate monitoring to be changes in average conditions over a thirty-year period. In 2021, France experienced a spell of bad weather affecting grape production. There has been no significant change in average temperature or precipitation in France or in most European wine-producing countries over the past 30 years.
While the weather outside may have spooked winemakers in France in 2021, in contrast to 60 minutes‘The story, the data clearly shows that long-term climate change is not devastating wine production there or anywhere else.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow in environmental and energy policy at the Heartland Institute. Burnett has worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of the NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environmental and Natural Resources Task Force on the Texas e-Texas committee. Comptroller.
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