Up Is Down

Crop yields have more than doubled since 1961.  The press reports this as a 21% decline.

“between 1961 and 2021, climate change reduced global agricultural yield by 21%.”

How agriculture is exacerbating global warming | S&P Global Commodity Insights

Crop Yields – Our World in Data

During the 1960s millions of people were dying in Asia from famine, and US academics said the world would run out of food by 1975.

17 Nov 1967, Page 9 – The Salt Lake Tribune at Newspapers.com

Aug 03, 1962, page 4 – The Winchester Sun at Newspapers.com

Feb 19, 1966, page 7 – The News-Messenger at Newspapers.com

“Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds”

Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds – NASA

About Tony Heller

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12 Responses to Up Is Down

  1. Bob G says:

    so crop yields are down at the same time the population of the world doubled. hhmmm. what are people eating? Soylent Green? this is the kind of junk science that Congressgirl AOC was pushing 4 years ago. let’s hope it doesn’t make a comeback in 2028

    • arn says:

      How do they feed a global population that went up from 3 billion to 8.2 billion with a 21 % decline in food?

      This combined with the ” fact” that
      ” 10 mio hectars of arable land are being lost every year and that
      1 /4 of earths soil already has significantly less humus and nutrients than 25 years ago and can no longer be used as cropland”
      Maria Kreutzberger, German Environment Agency

      And all this combined with endless droughts and rainbombs and climate emergencies.

      The math doesn’t add up.
      And why are western government trying so hard to reduce farming if the food situation is so dire?

      • Bob G says:

        the math adds up if you are AOC or one of her dingling followers

      • conrad ziefle says:

        Not only that, more people are also fat. This can only come from someone that is a wholesale liar, or is so caught up in their alternative reality, that they cannot think clearly about what they are reading and repeating.

        • arn says:

          An increasing population(no matter the species),that gets older and fatter is impossible in a scenario with decreasing food = energy.
          And attacking energy and food production,as governments do right now, in such a scenario is quiet an genocidal act.

          This is Paul Ehrlich logic – the expert who predicted the immediate end of humanity by several different scenario but advocated at the same time for population control and forced sterilization.
          (but his fellow experts somehow ignored his contradicting views)

          And then there is one question that a 5 year would ask in a scenario of decreasing food production,experts always forget to ask :
          Why are they wasting trillions on Solar and Wind – but not a single dollar to counter food production?

        • arn says:

          * to counter food production decrease.

    • Michael Abbott says:

      Yes. Your don’t even have to have the actual figures to realise this is rubbish. We all know the the World’s population is growing year on year so dropping food production by a fifth would cause widespread famine and we are not seeing that.

      Ridiculous.

  2. Tel says:

    This contradictory quote from the very same article.

    The growth in agricultural output has comfortably outpaced the rise in global population. Between 2000 and 2021, agricultural production growth at 54% had been faster than the population growth at 29%, the FAO said. This was made possible by the intensification in farming activities — with an increased use of irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers and cropland expansion — and enhanced production technologies, including improved farming practices and growing high-yield crops.

    So they want us to simultaneously believe that yields are up, but Climate Change is driving them down?

    With AI generating so much bulk crap news, that only AI can have a hope of keeping up with reading it all … it is entirely possible that Tony Heller was the first human to read that specific article … and this includes both the S&P editors and even perhaps the person listed as nominally the author.

    Every time a little bit of signal creeps through, they just turn up the noise a little harder. You will notice there’s no actual reference provided for the claim from the Asian Development Bank. I did a search around their website and I believe that actually they never said any such thing.

  3. Luigi says:

    S&P writes in the press note:
    “With the rapid rise in global population, the need to feed billions has placed tremendous pressure on agriculture. Millions of hectares of forests have been cut in South America, Asia and Africa to accommodate the swift expansion of farmlands. Local governments and multinational food companies are collaborating to enhance the farm productivity. Over the past couple of decades, enormous efforts have been made by policymakers to enhance investments in agricultural infrastructure.

    The results are there for everyone to see. Global production of primary crop commodities reached 9.5 billion mt in 2021, up 54% since 2000, while meat production grew by 53% and milk production by 58%, according to the latest data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
    The growth in agricultural output has comfortably outpaced the rise in global population. Between 2000 and 2021, agricultural production growth at 54% had been faster than the population growth at 29%, the FAO said. This was made possible by the intensification in farming activities — with an increased use of irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers and cropland expansion — and enhanced production technologies, including improved farming practices and growing high-yield crops.
    Despite the speed at which agricultural output is growing, the food security challenge will only become more difficult. According to the World Bank, the world will need to produce about 70% more food to feed an estimated 9 billion people by 2050. With the agricultural commodity prices surging amid ever-rising demand, just imagine the pressure the farming sector and forests will be bearing in feeding the world in the coming years.”

    SO apparently S&P recognises that agric. production has grown in the past 50 years, despite GW, but it is sure that it won’t grow further to feed 9 blm inhabitants by 2050.

    Now I just want to point out that we do not need at all 9bln inhabitants in 2050 and this is a real task for governments, not of the western world, which already have population shinking, but of emerging countries, like China, India, and those in Africa to keep population under control.

    But even if we don’t keep population under control and in 2050 we (they, cause I’ll be dead by the date) be 9 bln, well this is only 1bln more than now and I do not see why production could not cope with a further 12,5% pop. increase.

    • conrad ziefle says:

      While they are cutting down forests in South America, they are forcing American, Dutch, German, Irish, etc. , food producers out of business, demanding that they kill their cattle, tearing down the dams that store their water, creating stifling regulations, etc. so as to put them out of business.
      If this is not insanity on the level of Peanut the Squirrel, then I don’t know what is.

  4. Arun says:

    The Asian Development Bank does not say global yields are down. This is what they say:
    https://www.adb.org/news/features/qa-how-can-agribusiness-help-fight-climate-change

    “Climate change has reduced global agriculture productivity by 21% since 1961, according to a recent study by Nature and Climate Change. ”

    Productivity is down means more inputs are needed to keep the same output, it does not mean that “yields are down”.

    This is the paper that they cite:
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01000-1
    Anthropogenic climate change has slowed global agricultural productivity growth

    Abstract:
    Agricultural research has fostered productivity growth, but the historical influence of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) on that growth has not been quantified. We develop a robust econometric model of weather effects on global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) and combine this model with counterfactual climate scenarios to evaluate impacts of past climate trends on TFP. Our baseline model indicates that ACC has reduced global agricultural TFP by about 21% since 1961, a slowdown that is equivalent to losing the last 7 years of productivity growth. The effect is substantially more severe (a reduction of ~26–34%) in warmer regions such as Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. We also find that global agriculture has grown more vulnerable to ongoing climate change.

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