This morning, the MSN news feed, which is displayed to millions of people when they open a new Internet tab, prominently displayed an article titled, “The climate crisis is here, the ecosystem is starting to collapse.”
Embedded in the usual debunked claims of worsening extreme weather were claims that climate change is devastating crop production around the world. [emphasis, links added]
In particular, the article singled out rice, sugar, and tomato production as particularly ravaged by climate change. The objective facts, however, show just the opposite.
Fake claims of tomato shortages.
According to the article, “India’s Burger King has taken tomatoes off their burgers after this year’s crop failed and the cost of tomatoes has become prohibitively expensive.”
An anecdotal claim that Burger King is taking tomatoes off its hamburgers in some locations does not prove that climate change is destroying tomato crops.
Instead, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), global tomato production is faring quite well. In fact, the UNFAO reports that global tomato production has set new records an amazing 10 years in a row.
Sugar data is record-sweet, not sour.
The article continued, “The world’s largest sugar trader expects the coming season to see a deficit for the sixth consecutive year as unfavorable crop forecasts in India will reduce global stocks of the sweetener.
‘The world will be as close to running out of sugar as it can be,’ said Mauro Virgino, trading intelligence lead at Alvean, a trading house controlled by Brazilian producer Copersucar SA, in a recent interview.”
Claims by a trading professional who has a financial stake in leading people to expect higher sugar prices are neither evidence of declining sugar production nor evidence of any climate change impact.
Fortunately, the UNFAO also keeps meticulous data for world sugar production. According to the UNFAO, 2019 saw the largest global sugar crop in history.
All 10 of the largest sugar crops in history occurred during the past 10 years. During the past 15 years, global sugar production has increased by more than 33 percent.
Rice crops continue to set records.
Also, claimed the article,
“Most seriously of all, rice yields across southeast Asia have fallen sending prices up across the board. A rapidly escalating rice crisis is unfolding in Asia that has put hundreds of millions of people at food security risk. … The poor rice yields are going to get worse in the coming months due to the record-high seawater, this year’s El Niño effect is expected to be especially strong, which will cause rice yields to fall further. The food issue and soaring prices in Yangon in Myanmar have already become so bad that residents are turning to charity-run food banks for help as they are unable to feed themselves.”
The UNFAO, however, reports an entirely different story. According to the UNFAO, global rice production set a new record in 2021, the latest year for which data is available.
All three of the three largest crop years occurred during the past three years. All five of the five largest crop years occurred during the past five years. All 10 of the 10 largest crop years occurred during the past 10 years.
The article focuses special attention on rice yields in India, China, and Myanmar. However, the growth in India’s rice production is even more impressive than the growth in global rice production.
India has smashed its rice production records six years in a row. In China, 2021 was the second-highest rice crop in history. All six of China’s highest-ever rice crops were produced in the past six years.
Myanmar rice production is declining – an aberration compared to the global trend – but that is because of Myanmar’s horrible domestic political situation, not climate change.
As reported by Human Rights Watch,
“Since staging a coup on February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military has carried out a brutal nationwide crackdown on millions of people opposed to its rule. The junta security forces have carried out mass killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual violence, and other abuses that amount to crimes against humanity.”
Blaming climate change for Myanmar’s declining crop production is giving a pass to political brutality and human rights abuses.
The overall global crop picture is amazing.
It is not surprising that MSN, when cherry-picking its worst-possible scenarios to claim a global crop crisis created by climate change, cannot find even one or two outliers to support its misinformation.
The objective fact, as shown definitively by United Nations crop data, is that crop production of nearly all kinds throughout virtually the entire world is setting impressive and life-providing new records nearly every year.
This is happening in concurrence with more atmospheric carbon dioxide and modestly warming temperatures.
Read more at Climate Realism
Our local Farmers Market which we hold every Saturday from 10:00 to 12:00 Noon from Mid May to Mid October our local Gardens and Crops have not shown any signs of slowing down once again the Lie A Day M.S. Media spews leftists Lies and Propaganda to the masses we have more reasons to tune out and turn off the M.S. Media Bottom Feeders
As the climate-neutral concentration of CO2 has risen, greater crop yields have been the results due to immutable agricultural science.
Only politics can attempt to use myths about CO2 as a weapon to make the world population hungrier and poorer.
I’m risking criticism by saying this, but corn and soybeans yields have been amplified by r+d funded by the biofuels business. Genetics is the key to today’s productivity. In 1982, I grew 60 acres of corn that yielded 160 bushels per acre. That was fantastic at the time. Today, that yield would be considered a failure. Soybeans once yielded 40 bushels per acre. Today 50+ is good. I’m expecting 60+ this year.
Not all crops respond to CO2 the same way. You can google search the RIPE project. C3 crops like soybeans and rice respond positively to increasing CO2. Corn is a C4 plant, responds little to extra CO2, except during drought.
If a buyer of farm produce wants more of it, said buyer can entice farmers to plant what he wants. It’s called forward contracting. Price, quality and quantity are agreed to, the farmer commits to deliver and the buyer agrees to receive and pay. Farmers will shift acres to that crop.
As for harvest results, that’s hard to tally. The USDA tries, with its World Agricultural Supply and Demand reports. It’s guesswork. Nobody really knows what’s in the world’s fields, bins and warehouses. Sellers try to talk the price up and buyers try to talk the price down. American farmers suspect the USDA of talking the price down to encourage exports.
The only thing causing starvation somewhere in the world is lack of money. There’s always good growing weather somewhere.