How US Corn Farmers Adapted to Climate Change
Changing weather and planting practices in recent decades have led to increased corn yields, but whether the findings will apply to other crops and regions remains unknown.
Few of climate change’s varied dangers are more dire than its potential to make the world’s farms produce less food. While we live in boom times of agricultural abundance, marked by record crop yields and cheap food, climate change threatens to slash yields and cause worldwide food busts. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment, droughts, temperature extremes and plagues of insect pests will increasingly harm farming worldwide.
But some experts hope humanity will be able to weather the wiles of climate change through adaptation -- that farmers will be able to overcome climate-related threats by adjusting how they grow crops.
A new study analyzing U.S. corn yields over the last few decades seems to support that notion. It looked at temperature trends in the Midwest, examined how farmers adjusted their planting practices to take advantage of them, and showed that U.S. farmers were able to grow more corn, not less.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-us-corn-farmers-adapted-climate-change
= new reply since forum marked as read
