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Writer Marin McKenna said that there is no denying that agriculture has had a difficult year, and that extreme weather has led to storms, floods, unseasonal freezes, extreme heat waves, and prolonged droughts in parts of the world in 2023, and tomato plants did not flower, and no harvests were harvested. The peach crop never came, and the price of olive oil rose.
And you are now a farmer or someone working in the agricultural field; It means realizing how connected these strange weather events are By climate changeThe United Nations Climate Change Summit, which was held in Dubai last month, included an agreement that included 134 countries to integrate planning for sustainable agriculture into countries’ climate maps.
The author explained in her report, which was published on the American Wade website, that while the agricultural sector is looking forward to the year 2024, crop scientists are working to anticipate unstable weather by developing visions of how to adapt to both growth systems and the plants themselves, but time is not on their side.
According to James Schnabel, a plant geneticist and professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “Plant breeding is a slow process, and it takes 7 to 10 years to develop and release a new variety of corn, but we know that it is a result of climate change, depletion of aquifers, changes in policies and commodity prices.” “The environment 7 to 10 years from now will be completely different, and we have no way of predicting the varieties that should be developed today to meet those challenges in the future.”
The author pointed out that concern about the race between climate change and agricultural innovation is not new. In 2019, the Global Committee on Adaptation expected that climate change would lead to a decline in agricultural yields by up to 30% by 2050, and that the impact would be more severe on 500 million small farmers. all over the world.
In the same year (2019), scientists from Australia and the United States found that shocks to food production (sudden and unexpected declines in productivity) have been increasing every year since the 1960s. A research team in Zurich showed that extreme heat waves extending across countries at the same latitudes were rare before 2010, but are now common.
The author confirmed that the year 2023 provided evidence of this to all researchers. The United Kingdom and Ireland experienced tomato shortages after prolonged cold weather in Spain and Morocco reduced yields, and the price of the fruit rose by 400% in India after crop failures.
Last June, potato growers in Northern Ireland said dry weather had left their crop short of £4.4 million.
In India, heavy rains have left farmers unable to harvest corn to feed livestock.
Last September, agricultural authorities in Spain said that the country, which leads the world in olive oil production, would see a lower-than-normal crop for the second year in a row.
In October, authorities in Peru – the world’s largest exporter of blueberries – said the crop would be half its normal size.
The USDA revised its “Plant Hardiness Zone” map for the first time in 11 years, indicating that growing temperatures in nearly half the country have risen by as much as five degrees Fahrenheit.
The author stated that agricultural production is also suffering from slow pressure resulting from rising temperatures and shrinking water supplies. As much as precision breeding produces better traits in food crops, climate change eliminates them.
According to Juan David Arbelaez, a small grain scientist and assistant professor at the University of Illinois; “Oat production decreases by about 1.8 bushels per acre for every degree Celsius, and 0.5 pounds per bushel of test weight (a bushel is a measure of how large the grain is), and this is only related to the amount of oats we gain each year through breeding, so every gain we make “We lose it with that extra degree of temperature.”
The alternative to changing these crops is to move them, and crop scientists can already see that happening. Midwest oat production used to occupy more than 47 million acres, and now that number has shrunk to just 2 million. Most of the oats that Americans consume today are grown in Canada.
The author stated that the loss of traditional agricultural areas – which is expected to reach 30% of current production – does not only affect the main staple crops, as specialized crops such as olives and oranges are also at risk, as are crops that provide the basis for luxuries.
For example, in 2018, a multinational research team used a model to predict that future droughts could reduce barley production by up to 17% globally. Barley is the basis of some beverages, but it is also an important feed for livestock.
The writer explained that one of the alternative solutions to letting plants wither under increasing heat and drought is to move them, and a study published in 2020 confirmed that the transfer of crops is already happening, and crops of corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans moved northward around the world between 1973 and 2012 to escape the most harmful effects. Which results from global warming in the areas where it is found.
But adaptation through migration has limits, says Earth system scientist and professor at the University of California, Irvine; For example, you can move a crop in search of lower temperatures, but you cannot find the water it needs to grow.
Davis adds that soil quality is another concern; “You might find the right temperature and rainfall, but it’s an area where the soil is not developed, it’s rocky and it’s not a place where you would want to try to grow crops.”
The writer added that moving crops to cooler regions – away from the equator to either hemisphere – moves them away from the production range where most of the world’s farmers live, that is, in other words, out of the global south to the already richer global north.
“There will definitely be a disparity between richer countries that have a more hospitable climate for growing crops, and countries in the Global South that rely heavily on crops for a significant portion of their income,” says Robert Fofrich, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, California’s Environment and Sustainability Institute. “It has implications not only for regional food security, but also for the entire economy.”
The author of the report indicated that if it is not possible to transport crops, or if this undermines farmers’ profits and the country’s GDP, then another possibility is to ask whether these crops are still suitable crops. Breeders are always working to improve existing plants, but There are many varieties that have not been exploited by agriculture, and some may possess valuable traits such as pest resistance or drought tolerance.
Another possibility is to find a completely different crop that fills the same niche and can adapt to warming conditions better than the crop it replaces, in the breadbasket of the United States. This may be millet, especially proso millet, because “millet” as a category describes multiple genera of cultivated grains, and proso millet is an ancient grain used in health foods and as an ingredient in livestock feed. Because it has a short growing season, it can fit into a wheat or soybean crop rotation, and it is important for farmers to adopt it; They can be harvested using dedicated soybean equipment, which they likely already own.
The writer stated that Schnabel and his father founded Dryland Genetics, a startup company specializing in the field of millet, about 10 years ago, and saw it as an answer to the continuing loss of rainfall and groundwater in the Midwest. Under ideal conditions, proso millet is slightly less productive than an acre of corn or sorghum, but under dry conditions it produces twice as much grain per unit of water.
The author quoted Schnabel as saying that as corn productivity rose, its need for water steadily increased, so in order to increase productivity we always have to allocate more resources, but proso millet uses water very efficiently, and in much of western Nebraska, eastern Colorado and Kansas, we are limited. More water than land.
The author emphasized that millet is not the only crop that may be more suitable for the new climatic conditions; Researchers and farmers in the Midwest have experimented with planting oilseeds like canola and sunflowers, fiber plants like hemp, and even another type of millet known as pearl millet that thrives at temperatures that kill corn pollen, all of which are examples of the ways in which regions are being transformed. agricultural; Not only through climate change, but also through human efforts to work with it and succeed in confronting it.
