Climate change is already affecting global food production — unequally

Science Daily  May 31, 2019
The world’s top 10 crops supply a combined 83 percent of all calories produced on cropland. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Minnesota, Denmark) constructed linear regression relationships using weather and reported crop data to assess the potential impact of observed climate change on the yields of the top ten global crops–barley, cassava, maize, oil palm, rapeseed, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane and wheat at ~20,000 political units. They found that the impact of global climate change on yields of different crops from climate trends ranged from -13.4% (oil palm) to 3.5% (soybean). The results show that impacts are mostly negative in Europe, Southern Africa and Australia but generally positive in Latin America. Impacts in Asia and Northern and Central America are mixed…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE