Author: Ray, Deepak K.; West, Paul C.; Clark, Michael; Gerber, James S.; Prishchepov, Alexander V.; Chatterjee, Snigdhansu
Description: Crop yields are projected to decrease under future climate conditions, and recent research suggests that yields have already been impacted. However, current impacts on a diversity of crops subnationally and implications for food security remains unclear. Here, we constructed linear regression relationships using weather and reported crop data to assess the potential impact of observed climate change on the yields of the top ten global crops-barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat at approximately 20,000 political units. We find that the impact of global climate change on yields of different crops from climate trends ranged from -13.4% (oil palm) to 3.5% (soybean). Our results show that impacts are mostly negative in Europe, Southern Africa and Australia but generally positive in Latin America. Impacts in Asia and Northern and Central America are mixed. This has likely led to an approximately 1% average reduction (-3.5 X 1013 kcal/year) in consumable food calories in these ten crops. In nearly half of food insecure countries, estimated caloric availability decreased. Our results suggest that climate change has already affected global food production.
Subject headings: Agricultural Irrigation; Climate Change; Crop Production; Crops, Agricultural; Food Supply; Global Health; Agriculture; Food production; Crop yields
Publication year: 2019
Journal or book title: PloS One
Volume: 14
Issue: 5
Pages: e0217148
Find the full text: https://www.strategian.com/fulltext/Ray2019.pdf
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Serial number: 3633