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And from "Business Insider" http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-as-wheat-harvest-heads-to-parched-north-europe-braces-for-more-losses-2018-7
As wheat harvest heads to parched north, Europe braces for more losses
PARIS (Reuters) - Europe's grain market is bracing for more downgrades to the size of this year's wheat crop as harvesting reaches the northern regions that have been worst hit by exceptional drought and heat since spring..
There will always be droughts but we know that during the Holocene Climate Optimum (probably as warm or possibly quite warmer (and maybe without Arctic Ice)) we had Green Sahara, we had 1000mm rain per year in Jerusalem, etc. Warmer weather by and large gives you more rain, not less. Certainly there will be regional variations, but some regions will be big winners and some will be losers. (Let's not forget that Egypt was the grain basket of the Roman Empire). Ukraine and Russia are ramping up production of grains like crazy and it shows on the price charts. We do have enough food. The problem is much more in the loss of Soil organic matter but not too many people care about that. If you have soils with high SOM you can hold more water in your soil and withstand warmer/dryer temps...Governments should focus on regenerative agriculture not their current stupid subsidy programs...
Charts from here:
https://www.macrotrends.net/2531/soybean-prices-historical-chart-data
Attached 10 year price charts of wheat, soybeans and corn which are at levels clows to the lows of the economic crisis of 2008-2009. This shows that there is more than enough food for all.
This is not exactly what the latest research papers are showing, warming and especially increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean will have a serious impact on the quantity and nutrient quality of major staple food crop, thus leading to highly significant price hikes :
Interview of Michelle Tigchelaar, a research associate at the University of Washington the lead author of the research paper "Future warming increases probability of globally synchronised maize production shocks".
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michelle_Tigchelaar/publication/325704284_Future_warming_increases_probability_of_globally_synchronized_maize_production_shocks/links/5b3bbfbb0f7e9b0df5ec4ebf/Future-warming-increases-probability-of-globally-synchronized-maize-production-shocks.pdfAbstract :
« Meeting the global food demand of roughly 10 billion people by the middle of the 21st century will become increasingly challenging as the Earth’s climate continues to warm. Earlier studies suggest that once the optimum growing temperature is exceeded, mean crop yields decline and the variability of yield increases even if interannual climate variability remains unchanged. Here, we use global datasets of maize production and climate variability combined with future temperature projections to quantify how yield variability will change in the world’s major maize-producing and -exporting countries under 2 °C and 4 °C of global warming. We find that as the global mean temperature increases, absent changes in temperature variability or breeding gains in heat tolerance, the coefficient of variation (CV) of maize yields increases almost everywhere to values much larger than present-day values. This higher CV is due both to an increase in the SD of yields and a decrease in mean yields. For the top four maize-exporting countries, which account for 87% of global maize exports, the probability that they have simultaneous production losses greater than 10% in any given year is presently virtually zero, but it increases to 7% under 2 °C warming and 86% under 4 °C warming. Our results portend rising instability in global grain trade and international grain prices, affecting especially the ∼800 million people living in extreme poverty who are most vulnerable to food price spikes. They also underscore the urgency of investments in breeding for heat tolerance. «
The research indicates that the probability of a synchronous decline in yield of respectively >10% or >20% for the world’s three largest maize exporters is virtually zero today but jumps to 86% (yield drop >10%) and 46% (yield drop >20%) under 4°C warming (7% for >10% and 0%>20% for a 2°C warming). Simultaneous production shocks among these large trading countries will have a direct impact on urban consumers, agribusiness, grain producers, and 800 million in extreme poverty that spend a large share of their income on staple foods. The top 3 exporters produce 46% of world maize and export 72% (US, Brazil, Argentina). "Indeed, breeders are well aware of the importance of heat stress for yield. Unfortunately, the mechanisms for heat tolerance in maize (and other major grains) are extremely complex and poorly understood, and progress in this area has been modest despite the innovation of techniques to accelerate breeding. Breeding for heat tolerance is an as-of-yet unattained goal in maize development"
A paper issued in May 2018 shows that increase in CO2 will lead to lower protein and vitamin content of rice, food staple for 2billion people (Sciences Advance, Chunwu Zhu et al May 2018) :
Abstract :
« Declines of protein and minerals essential for humans, including iron and zinc, have been reported for crops in response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, [CO2]. For the current century, estimates of the potential human health impact of these declines range from 138 million to 1.4 billion, depending on the nutrient. However, changes in plant-based vitamin content in response to [CO2] have not been elucidated. Inclusion of vitamin information would substantially improve estimates of health risks. Among crop species, rice is the primary food source for more than 2 billion people. We used multiyear, multilocation in situ FACE (free-air CO2 enrichment) experiments for 18 genetically diverse rice lines, including Japonica, Indica, and hybrids currently grown throughout Asia. We report for the first time the integrated nutritional impact of those changes (protein, micronutrients, and vitamins) for the 10 countries that consume the most rice as part of their daily caloric supply. Whereas our results confirm the declines in protein, iron, and zinc, we also find consistent declines in vitamins B1, B2, B5, and B9 and, conversely, an increase in vitamin E. A strong correlation between the impacts of elevated [CO2] on vitamin content based on the molecular fraction of nitrogen within the vitamin was observed. Finally, potential health risks associated with anticipated CO2-induced deficits of protein, minerals, and vitamins in rice were correlated to the lowest overall gross domestic product per capita for the highest rice-consuming countries, suggesting potential consequences for a global population of approximately 600 million. »
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/5/eaaq1012A paper issued earlier in the year by Rutgers University shows that :
« Climate change is forcing fish species to shift their habitats faster than the world’s system for allocating fish stocks, exacerbating international fisheries conflicts, according to a study led by a Rutgers University–New Brunswick researcher.
The study, published online in the journal Science, showed for the first time that new fisheries are likely to appear in more than 70 countries all over the world as a result of climate change. History has shown that newly shared fisheries often spark conflict among nations.
Conflict leads to overfishing, which reduces the food, profit and employment fisheries can provide, and can also fracture international relations in other areas beyond fisheries. A future with lower greenhouse gas emissions, like the targets under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, would reduce the potential for conflict, the study says. »
for example « Under rules agreed to by EU member nations, fishers harvest a certain number of mackerel each year. But by 2007, those mackerel had begun to move to colder waters near Iceland, which is not an EU member. Iceland began fishing the sudden abundance of mackerel, but could not agree with the EU on sustainable fishing limits. The dispute became a trade war and is still ongoing »
https://news.rutgers.edu/climate-change-means-fish-are-moving-faster-fishing-rules-rutgers-led-study-says/20180612#.W18EnvZuJjo...there is of course also the impact of ocean acidification (from CO2 absorption by the ocean), leading to the demise of calcium carbonate, the main component for shelves and especially shelves of some very important phytoplancton, that will almost certainly disrupt the food chain and lead to significant fish stock reduction, even to complete disappearance of staple fish in most part of the ocean by the end of the century, fishes provide protein for more than 1billion people on earth.
There are many other papers on google scholar regarding the impact of CO2/ warming on crop yield.
All these above will certainly have an impact on food price, leading to social and political unrest, let alone the depleting of soil due to intensive agriculture and over use of pesticide and insecticide, and the increase number of people in Asia looking to eat more meat and diary product resulting in more use of agricultural land deforestation, reduce forest and decrease of CO2 sink potential of the rain forest, pressure on staple price and so on..