Climate Change Hottest Topic in Crop Production

A new study by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and collaborators confirmed the detrimental effects of warming temperatures on global agriculture. Increasing temperatures since 1981 have caused annual losses of roughly $5 billion for the major cereal crops. This study is the first to estimate how much global food production already has been affected by climate change.

David Lobell, an LLNL researcher ,and Christopher Field, director of Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, studied climate effects on the six most widely grown crops in the world – wheat, rice, maize (corn), soybeans, barley and sorghum. Using global yield figures for 1961 to 2002 from the Food and Agriculture Organization, Lobell and Field found that, on average, global crop yields respond negatively to warmer temperatures for several of the crops. “A key moving forward is how well cropping systems can adapt to a warmer world,” Lobell said. “Investments in this area could potentially save billions of dollars and millions of lives.”

Read the news release at http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_releases/2007/NR-07-03-08.html.