Latest news with #foodproduction
The Independent
a day ago
- Climate
- The Independent
Heatwave latest hit to farmers struggling with increasingly extreme weather
The heatwave is piling more pressure on farmers who were already struggling to produce food in the face of the very dry conditions. Much of the country is sweltering in a heatwave, with temperatures set to climb above 30C in many places over the weekend and an 'amber' heat-health alert issued warning of 'significant' impacts for health services. For farmers, the heatwave threatens to worsen the outlook for food production already struggling off the back of a record-hot and the driest spring in decades that has left north west England and Yorkshire in drought and other regions in prolonged dry conditions. The hot, dry spring came after a record wet spell which left many farmers struggling to sow crops last autumn, and led to warnings earlier this month of potentially the worst harvest on record for major arable crops if conditions did not improve. Farmers say the heatwave, following the dry spring, is putting 'real pressure' on farms across the country, and warn it will affect not just this year's harvest, but food availability into next year. They are warning of the need for investment in more resilient water supplies to help them cope with the more unpredictable extremes that climate change is bringing. National Farmers' Union (NFU) vice-president Rachel Hallos said: 'As the Met Office forecasts a heatwave this weekend, it's yet another reminder of the increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather our farmers and growers are facing. 'After warnings of thunderstorms at the start of the month, this switch to hot, dry weather reinforces just how urgently we need long-term planning and investment in water resilience. 'Drought puts immense pressure on crops, livestock and grass growth and threatens the availability of homegrown fruit and veg. 'Investing in water infrastructure – from on-farm rainwater harvesting to more flexible abstraction rules – will help farmers manage these extremes, grow more fresh produce here in the UK and reduce reliance on imports from other water scarce countries.' Martin Lines, chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), who farms in Cambridgeshire, said: 'The ongoing heatwave, following an already dry spring, is putting real pressure on farms across the country. 'Crops are struggling, harvests are coming earlier and lighter, and many farmers are seeing yields fall without any meaningful uplift in prices to offset the loss. 'What's worrying is that this doesn't just hit the current harvest – it will affect food availability into next year too.' He warned most farms do not have infrastructure to store water, and without rainfall they do not have reserves to draw on, and he called for long-term support for water storage and better planning across river catchments. He also said nature-friendly farming plays a 'vital role' in building resilience to weather extremes. 'Practices like improving soil health, using cover crops, and integrating habitats into fields are helping farmers stay productive while cutting back on inputs. 'More support would help farms go further – it's practical, makes business sense, and helps protect the land they rely on,' he said. Earlier this week, the Environment Agency warned England faces 'huge' water shortages of billions of litres a day by the middle of the century to provide for public water supplies as well as for areas such as food and energy production, without action to cut leaks, curb use and build new infrastructure.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Heatwave latest hit to farmers struggling with increasingly extreme weather
The heatwave is piling more pressure on farmers who were already struggling to produce food in the face of the very dry conditions. Much of the country is sweltering in a heatwave, with temperatures set to climb above 30C in many places over the weekend and an 'amber' heat-health alert issued warning of 'significant' impacts for health services. For farmers, the heatwave threatens to worsen the outlook for food production already struggling off the back of a record-hot and the driest spring in decades that has left north west England and Yorkshire in drought and other regions in prolonged dry conditions. The hot, dry spring came after a record wet spell which left many farmers struggling to sow crops last autumn, and led to warnings earlier this month of potentially the worst harvest on record for major arable crops if conditions did not improve. Farmers say the heatwave, following the dry spring, is putting 'real pressure' on farms across the country, and warn it will affect not just this year's harvest, but food availability into next year. They are warning of the need for investment in more resilient water supplies to help them cope with the more unpredictable extremes that climate change is bringing. National Farmers' Union (NFU) vice-president Rachel Hallos said: 'As the Met Office forecasts a heatwave this weekend, it's yet another reminder of the increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather our farmers and growers are facing. 'After warnings of thunderstorms at the start of the month, this switch to hot, dry weather reinforces just how urgently we need long-term planning and investment in water resilience. 'Drought puts immense pressure on crops, livestock and grass growth and threatens the availability of homegrown fruit and veg. 'Investing in water infrastructure – from on-farm rainwater harvesting to more flexible abstraction rules – will help farmers manage these extremes, grow more fresh produce here in the UK and reduce reliance on imports from other water scarce countries.' Martin Lines, chief executive of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), who farms in Cambridgeshire, said: 'The ongoing heatwave, following an already dry spring, is putting real pressure on farms across the country. 'Crops are struggling, harvests are coming earlier and lighter, and many farmers are seeing yields fall without any meaningful uplift in prices to offset the loss. 'What's worrying is that this doesn't just hit the current harvest – it will affect food availability into next year too.' He warned most farms do not have infrastructure to store water, and without rainfall they do not have reserves to draw on, and he called for long-term support for water storage and better planning across river catchments. He also said nature-friendly farming plays a 'vital role' in building resilience to weather extremes. 'Practices like improving soil health, using cover crops, and integrating habitats into fields are helping farmers stay productive while cutting back on inputs. 'More support would help farms go further – it's practical, makes business sense, and helps protect the land they rely on,' he said. Earlier this week, the Environment Agency warned England faces 'huge' water shortages of billions of litres a day by the middle of the century to provide for public water supplies as well as for areas such as food and energy production, without action to cut leaks, curb use and build new infrastructure.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Science
- Telegraph
Climate change impact on food ‘like everyone giving up breakfast'
The impact of climate change on food production will be equivalent to everyone on the planet giving up breakfast, a study has warned. Every additional degree Celsius of global warming will drag down the world's ability to produce food by 120 calories per person per day, or 4.4 per cent of current daily consumption, the American research found. Global warming will dramatically alter which parts of the world will be able to grow crops in the coming decades, reducing the total amount of food that can be produced. 'When global production falls, consumers are hurt because prices go up and it gets harder to access food and feed our families,' said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford University and a co-author of the study. 'If the climate warms by three degrees, that's basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.' US 'bread baskets' could experience 40pc drop The researchers modelled the future farming impact in 54 different countries for six crops – corn, soybean, barley, wheat, rice and cassava. They factored in changes farmers are likely to make to adapt to the altering climate, in order to make their most accurate projections yet. Arable heartlands are predicted to be hit hardest, the study found. Production of corn in the US, for example, could drop by as much as 40 per cent by the end of this century. The UK and northern Europe could see a 10 per cent rise in corn production, but the global outcome is a net negative. 'Places in the Midwest US that are really well suited for present day corn and soybean production just get hammered under a high warming future,' said Andrew Hultgren, a study author and an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 'You do start to wonder if the Corn Belt is going to be the Corn Belt in the future.' But while the US and other 'bread basket' regions are major losers in the future, according to the study, other regions will become better-suited, including Russia and China. 'We will be making Russia and China richer' 'This is basically like sending our agricultural profits overseas. We will be sending benefits to producers in Canada, Russia, China,' said Prof Hsiang. 'Those are the winners, and we in the US are the losers. The longer we wait to reduce emissions, the more money we lose.' The study looked at a range of different global warming scenarios up to and including 2100 to determine the range of possible outcomes. 'Any level of warming, even when accounting for adaptation, results in global output losses from agriculture,' said Dr Hultgren. The modelling points to a 50-50 likelihood that global rice yields will increase on a hotter planet in the future because rice cultivation benefits from warmer nights. However, it is up to 90 per cent likely that yields will decline by 2100, the scientists found, The study authors wrote: 'We find that global impacts are dominated by losses to modern-day bread baskets with favourable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions are also substantial.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Climate change impact on food ‘like everyone giving up breakfast'
The impact of climate change on food production will be equivalent to everyone on the planet giving up breakfast, a study has warned. Every additional degree Celsius of global warming will drag down the world's ability to produce food by 120 calories per person per day, or 4.4 per cent of current daily consumption, the American research found. Global warming will dramatically alter which parts of the world will be able to grow crops in the coming decades, reducing the total amount of food that can be produced. 'When global production falls, consumers are hurt because prices go up and it gets harder to access food and feed our families,' said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford University and a co-author of the study. 'If the climate warms by three degrees, that's basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.' The researchers modelled the future farming impact in 54 different countries for six crops – corn, soybean, barley, wheat, rice and cassava. They factored in changes farmers are likely to make to adapt to the altering climate, in order to make their most accurate projections yet. Arable heartlands are predicted to be hit hardest, the study found. Production of corn in the US, for example, could drop by as much as 40 per cent by the end of this century. The UK and northern Europe could see a 10 per cent rise in corn production, but the global outcome is a net negative. 'Places in the Midwest US that are really well suited for present day corn and soybean production just get hammered under a high warming future,' said Andrew Hultgren, a study author and an assistant professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 'You do start to wonder if the Corn Belt is going to be the Corn Belt in the future.' But while the US and other 'bread basket' regions are major losers in the future, according to the study, other regions will become better-suited, including Russia and China. 'This is basically like sending our agricultural profits overseas. We will be sending benefits to producers in Canada, Russia, China,' said Prof Hsiang. 'Those are the winners, and we in the US are the losers. The longer we wait to reduce emissions, the more money we lose.' The study looked at a range of different global warming scenarios up to and including 2100 to determine the range of possible outcomes. 'Any level of warming, even when accounting for adaptation, results in global output losses from agriculture,' said Dr Hultgren. The modelling points to a 50-50 likelihood that global rice yields will increase on a hotter planet in the future because rice cultivation benefits from warmer nights. However, it is up to 90 per cent likely that yields will decline by 2100, the scientists found, The study authors wrote: 'We find that global impacts are dominated by losses to modern-day bread baskets with favourable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions are also substantial.' The paper is published in Nature. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Climate crisis could hit yields of key crops even if farmers adapt, study finds
Some of our critical staple crops could suffer 'substantial' production losses due to climate breakdown, a study has found, even if farmers adapt to worsening weather. Maize, soy, rice, wheat, cassava and sorghum yields are projected to fall by as much as 120 calories per person per day for every 1C the planet heats up, according to new research in Nature, with average daily losses that could add up to the equivalent of not having breakfast. The study found rising incomes and changes in farming practices could stem the losses by about a quarter by 2050 and by one-third by 2100 – though they would not stop them entirely. Related: European and British soils seriously degraded by intensive farming 'In a high-warming future, we're still seeing caloric productivity losses in the order of 25% at global scale,' said Andrew Hultgren, an environmental economist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and lead author of the study. 'It's not as bad as a future where adaptation doesn't happen at all, but it's not this rosy 'agriculture is going to benefit from climate change' kind of picture.' Farmers are among those hardest-hit by extreme weather events, but scientists have struggled to quantify what climate breakdown will do to food production. A major source of uncertainty is the extent to which farmers will adapt to hotter temperatures by changing which crops they use, when they plant and harvest them, and how they grow them. The team of researchers from the US and China used data from 12,658 regions in 54 countries to capture the extent to which food producers have adapted to different changes in the climate. They applied these historical relations to models simulating future crop production as temperatures rise and economies grow, and compared the losses with a hypothetical world in which global heating stopped in the early 2000s. In an extreme heating scenario, the study found, the relative yield for a crop such as soy would fall by 26% by 2100, even after accounting for adaptation, rising incomes and the effect of plants growing faster due to extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A more realistic heating scenario – closer to the level that current policies will cause – would lead to yield losses of 16% for soy, 7.7% for wheat and 8.3% for corn, the study found. Rice was the only one of the six crops the researchers studied whose yields would rise because of climate change, with an expected gain of 4.9%. The global population is projected to rise from about 8 billion today to 10 billion by the end of the century, increasing demand for food as carbon pollution warps weather patterns. The researchers found the greatest losses would hit modern-day 'bread basket' regions with highly productive lands, but added that people in poorer countries would be among the ones least able to afford food. 'In a lot of climate impact studies, the global poor get hurt, and that's true here too,' said Hultgren. 'What is different from a lot of the previous work out there is that relatively rich, well-to-do portions of the world that are bread baskets are actually hit the hardest.' The research, which uses econometric methods to gauge the total effect of adapting, contrasts with previous studies that explicitly model biophysical interactions. A study in Nature Communications in 2022 using the latter approach found timely adaptation of growing periods would increase actual crop yields by 12%. Jonas Jägermeyr, a researcher at Columbia Climate School and co-author of the study, said the new research did not cover adaptation options that are not implemented today and that its results were likely to be pessimistic. 'Empirical impact studies are known to be overly pessimistic when it comes to far-into-the-future scenarios,' he said. 'Process-based models show the importance of plant growth interactions that cannot be empirically trained on historical data.' But such models have also been criticised for exploring what is theoretically possible without reflecting real-world constraints, such as market failures, human error and the availability of funds. 'The findings [of the new study] are reasonable but represent one end of a legitimate scientific debate,' said Ehsan Eyshi Rezaei, a crop scientist at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research. He added: 'I view these results as a valuable empirical reality check showing we cannot assume perfect adaptation will save us – even if the truth likely lies between their pessimistic projections and [other researchers'] optimistic ones.'
