Global warming be damned — full speed ahead on the Maize Train
The numbers are in from USDA, and 2017 saw a new record in average corn yield, with 176.6 bushels per acre (BPA).
In fact, the last four growing seasons (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) had higher yields than any previous years. The last time that happened was in 1964.
And compared to 1964, the U.S. is producing nearly three times as much corn per acre as we did back then.
There is no indication of a slowdown in the long-term upward trends in corn yields.
While the 176.6 BPA U.S. average for 2017 is a huge increase compared to just 50 years ago, the latest winner for the highest yield produced by a single farmer has risen again to over 542 BPA, which is fully three times the U.S. average yield.
While the global warm-mongers continue to wring their hands over rising temperatures hurting yields (the Corn Belt growing season has indeed warmed slightly since 1960), improved varieties and the “global greening” benefits of more atmospheric CO2 have more than offset any negative weather effects — if those even exist.
Globally, upward trends in all grain yields have been experienced in recent decades.
Of course, droughts and floods cause regional crop failures almost every year. That is normal and expected. But there has been no global average increase in these events over the last century.
In his latest movie, Al Gore claimed just the opposite for wheat yields in China. While I hesitate to call him a liar, since I don’t know where he got his information — Gore was just plain wrong.
The sky is not falling. Life on Earth depends upon CO2, even though there is so little of it — now 4 parts per 10,000 of the atmosphere, compared to 3 parts a century ago. No matter how much we emit, nature gobbles up 50% of it.
Most of the evidence suggests that life is now breathing more freely than any time in human history, thanks to our CO2 emissions.
Read more at Roy Spencer’s Blog
Plenty of acres and acres of corn becuase for the fact that the Deep Ecologists want to force all Farmers and Ranchers off the land and turn it all into Wildlands just as invisoned by Radical Greens and the Nazis
Farmers were forced off of their land in the Klamath area. During a period of draught they were denied water in order to keep the lake high enough to protect a bottom feeding fish. Yet this fished had survived previous draughts.
Corn does very well at current CO2 levels. It won’t show a big yield increase with increasing CO2 concentration.
What has driven corn yields higher is financial incentive. The biggest impact came from the Renewable Fuels mandate. One third of American corn goes to ethanol plants .
Seed companies plowed billion$ into genetic engineering . In a very short period of time, innovation has more than satisfied the new demand from ethanol . When farmers start harvesting the 2018 crop, there will be more than 2 billion bushels of 2017 corn still in storage. If there’s a threat to the world food supply, CO2 is not it. If some cataclysmic event destroyed the crops in the fields, the world’s grain stocks could be immediately diverted to human consumption. Livestock, ethanol etc. would go to the back of the line. My point is that the ethanol business has created a massive pile of grain that could get us through an emergency.