Sort & Cull

The Conflicting Signals Around Agriculture and Climate Change

Chris Clayton
By  Chris Clayton , DTN Ag Policy Editor
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Farmers and agribusinesses must adapt to manage the warmer temperatures that will come from climate change.

But farmers shouldn't be allowed to help mitigate climate change by producing crops for biofuels.

That's the takeaway from some of the climate-related news for agriculture over the past couple of weeks. Farms, biofuels and livestock operations are increasingly under the microscope, being probed for inherent environmental flaws in producing feed, food, fiber and fuel.

Two weeks ago, the Risky Business Project released a new report. The project is essentially funded by a group of corporations and wealthy people looking to bring some rational risk management to the debate about climate change. Climate change could shake up the traditional agricultural productivity of the Midwest, as the group stated in "Heat in the Heartland: Climate Change and Economic Risk."

Climate is changing and if we don't reduce our trajectory for greenhouse-gas emissions, then agriculture in parts of the Midwest could struggle with hotter temperatures and more volatile weather extremes.

The Midwest is likely to experience significant economic impacts if we continue releasing greenhouse gases at the rate we are.

It's going to get hotter. It will be a blast living in the Midwest when our great-grand kids are trying to make a living. "The average Chicago resident is expected to experience more 95 F each year by century's end than the average Texan does today, with a 1-in-20 chance that these extremely hot days will be more than double Texas's average."

You can pretty much take those hot scenarios and spread them all around. It's going to be warmer throughout the Corn Belt. The average Midwesterner 70 to 80 years from now is likely to see a lot more days over 95F than we've experienced over the last 30 years. The humidity is going to get worse, as well.

The Northland is going to be the place to be. Risky Business Project's analysis says over the next 25 years farmers in some parts of Illinois, Indiana and Missouri will see average commodity crop losses up to 18%-24% "without significant adaptation."

Lower parts of the Midwest, notably Missouri, would see significant yield losses in key crops such as corn in the coming decades. Illinois, an even bigger corn state, could see short-term yield losses of up to 20%. The Upper Midwest would see warmer seasons. Minnesota could see soybean yields continue to increase.

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The downside is that more warm-season pests would also continue to move north as well. More invasive species will further exacerbate the rising costs farmers face for weed and insect control.

The Risky Business Project report reiterates several themes that have been used for the National Climate Assessment and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

http://riskybusiness.org/…

The New York Times followed up on the study in its Sunday edition with a profile of the Risky Business Project and Greg Page, executive chairman of Cargill Inc. The article highlights some of the problems of getting the message of climate change across to a farm audience as Jon Doggett, executive vice president of the National Corn Growers Association notes his skepticism that such reports would influence NCGA members.

"Are we going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today because we believe there's an economic benefit 15 years from now? That's way too hypothetical for a family-owned and operated business that has to make a payment this year," Mr. Doggett said. "The banker doesn't get paid in hypothetical dollars."

Dale More, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau, noted his members are skeptical of the role people play in climate change.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

While agriculture must adapt, the World Resources Institute released a study last week from anti-biofuel crusader Tim Searchinger. The crux is that the growing biofuels' industry globally exacerbates competition for land and will stress the ability to produce enough food calories in the future.

Land used to grow corn, soybeans or biomass also translates into land used to grow food or feed. The production on that ground satisfies multiple needs. Corn dedicated from a field for an ethanol plant also ends up feeding cattle, hogs or poultry. Soymeal winds up being exported to feed livestock elsewhere.

The World Resources Institute paper laments the fear that bioenergy policies would drive massive deforestation globally. As more countries put in biofuel mandates, those biofuel crops could consume a higher percentage of the world's available calories. Thus, something should be done to prevent this. Getting rid of biofuels would reduce the risk of land conversions globally and reduce agricultural demand for fresh water, the report states.

Searchinger calls for maintaining the 10% blend wall for biofuels. Doesn't that effectively translate into keeping a 90% mandate to use oil? Wasn't part of the goal of biofuels to displace at least some fossil fuels to at least stretch out the world's fossil-fuel reservoirs for future use?

Searchinger and WRI state they believe countries should get rid of subsidies for biofuels and prevent biofuels from being factored into a low-carbon standard. The paper is written with the demand that farmers increase production of their commodities; yet the researcher, the institute and its backers argue farmers should be limited in their market opportunities.

Whether intentionally or ironically, the paper is a dream document for the high-carbon fossil fuels industry. Why build ethanol or biodiesel facilities to take up the landscape with all their mandates and such? We can just run some more oil-pipeline infrastructure across rural America, right?

Biofuel, renewable energy groups and corn growers all leaped to the defense of biofuels, just as they have done so many times in the past. Biofuel backers are challenged now because the politics in Congress don't favor them like they did only a few years ago. Congress will again mount a challenge to the Renewable Fuels Standard in the coming months.

This focus on the cause and effect of climate change, food production and biofuels, all comes as The New York Times, Stanford University and the group Resources for the Future released a study citing that "74 percent of Americans said that the federal government should be doing a substantial amount to combat climate change, the support was greatest among Democrats and independents. Ninety-one percent of Democrats, 78 percent of independents and 51 percent of Republicans said the government should be fighting climate change."

http://www.nytimes.com/…

Such a convoluted debate on the role of agriculture and climate change requires leadership within both agriculture and policymakers to come up with both answers and a cohesive direction. You can create a vision of the future or you can let someone else create it for you.

Follow me on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN

(AG)

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Comments

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Jerome Fitzgerald
5/25/2015 | 5:15 PM CDT
BULL GO TO GEOENGINEERING WATCH > ORG FOR SOME ANSWERS
Curt Zingula
2/4/2015 | 7:09 AM CST
Hope you're just the messenger about these climate change predictions Chris. We are at just 390 ppm of CO2 and optimal CO2 for plants is about 1500 ppm. Alarmists expect us to lower CO2 when we are already starving crops. I expected alarmists to have a hissy-fit about this plant CO2 perspective, so I Googled. Stanford U. agreed about CO2 being too low for plants but said it didn't matter because with global warming rainfall will be so intense, plants will be drowning. I then Googled another report which also agreed that CO2 is too low for plants but said the science is settled, global warming will cause world wide drought and deserts will spread across the globe and plants will wither and die. How long will it take before the masses realize this modeling stuff is a crock!