Australia's Mean Temperatures In December Are What A 2.5C+ World Looks Like

[hatrack]

Link to tweet

[Kaleva]

1. Upper mid-west is expected to have milder winters, warmer summers, greater precipitation

and longer growing seasons

[NickB79]

2. And more erratic rainfall patterns, heat waves and pest outbreaks

Greater precipitation in the form of 100-yr storms doesn't improve crop yields, just like the massive flooding in the spring of 2019 didn't help farmers at all. Neither does a month of no rain, high temps and high evaporation causing a flash drought that cooks crops in a matter of weeks. I've seen both, and neither are fun when you're trying to grow food.

More frequent heat waves that disrupt corn and soy pollination don't improve yields.

And longer, milder growing seasons mean damaging insect and weed populations that are normally cut down in winter survive in greater and greater numbers, requiring greater applications of pesticides and herbicides.

The increased yields up here in places like Minnesota won't be offset by the loss of yield further south in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and southern Iowa. More troubling is the fact that you can't keep moving farms further north because once you get past the Great Lakes, you hit thin, rocky soil instead of deep prairie loam. You don't see many farms in the northern half of Minnesota for this very reason.

[Kaleva]

3. You are mainly talking about what is expected to happen outside the area I was talking about.

Besides, anywhere from 30-40% of food produced in the US currently goes to waste so we have a big cushion.

"Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill"

https://www.nrdc.org/resources/wasted-how-america-losing-40-percent-its-food-farm-fork-landfill

We also export about 50% of the soybeans and 55% of the rice grown in this country. Overall, we export about 20% of food produced in this nation.



https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/percentage-us-agricultural-products-exported

I live in Upper Michigan north of Wisconsin and if one drives down most any county road, you'll see many barns and acres and acres of former farmland. So sure, the land is not as fertile as land in Iowa or Nebraska but it could be brought back into production.

The US could suffer a major decrease in overall food production because of climate change but with less waste, a reduction in exports, and bring back former farmland in use, there may well be enough to feed the population.