According to a new paper entitled Climate change and critical thresholds in China's food security ** if global temperatures continue to rise it would appear imperative that CO2 concentration also continue to rise. Only if CO2 concentrations rise with temperature will China be able to adequately feed its growing population.
Read more here: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V10/N36/B1.jsp
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** Climate change and critical thresholds in China's food security by Xiong, W., Lin, E., Ju, H. and Xu, Y. (2007) In Climatic Change 81: 205-221.
Ian you are right about one thing. Agriculture will have to get more intensive but that is simply as a result of declining energy availability for essential inputs (diesel, nitrogen and pesticides). Agriculture will trend towards perenniality and a legume base which will dictate we will be farming food productive trees. The sandalwood is one such tree but there will be others for different climatic niches. Whilst you're advocating we invest in technofixes like shadecloth, I'm inclined to opt for the installation of organic infrastructure which is self generating. This is simply because I have an inherent tendency to look for the easy, most permanent and cheapest way to solve problems.
PP the biofuel factor has influenced consumption but it has no bearing on grain output, which is dropping like a stone and in a manner where 'demand rationing' is already occurring.
Luke if you were one of the world's main food exporting nations (US) with a major threat emerging from a more populous, rapidly growing nation with tens of millions of its citizens spending 65% of their income on food (China), wouldn't an ethanol subsidy say (US), be a great way to create a major problem to that perceived threat(China)? Agflation - warfare in the 21st century is about who controls the resources.
In a closed system with minimal water waste, even the use of desalinated water is profitable because it is used 20 times a year over 20 or more years. Better buy up some land on the Nullabor.
Really slow off the mark.
Output drops, price goes up, cost of not using shade cloth goes higher.
In closed systems, output doubles, risk is minimised, water use drops, costs of non-shade cloth factors drops, marginal land without closed system becomes viable with a closed system. Agriculture returns to intensive scale because extensive methods are no longer viable.
PP - yes indeed food is a mega strategic issue - the three things that influence food production significantly are the weather, pests and disease, and the quality of the underlying natural resources (land and water). Global population pushes the numbers hard in the developing world.
That's why water supply and rainfall distribution is critical overall - what the 4AR says is this:
"More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics. Increased drying linked with higher temperatures and decreased precipitation has contributed to changes in drought. Changes in sea surface temperatures, wind patterns and decreased snowpack and snow cover have also been linked to droughts."
With drying of sub-tropics predicted to continue it's concerning.
Your refs slide 7 and 17 - nobody ever said that sea level hasn't been increasing for long while. What has been said though is that that increase is trending at the upper levels of current prediction. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/316/5825/709
As for slide 20 - the English is clumsy but if you look at the rainfall graphic map - he's simply trying to say that the return frequency for major flood events looks to increase in southern China.
Luke,
Lim's paper is interesting.
Note the different statements in slides 7 and 17. Note that the seal level has been rising steadily since the beginning of the record, long before serious increasing in CO2 following WW2. Nothing to do with AGW. The record is effectively identical to the Australian record - see the national Tidal Facility report commissioned by the commonwealth government to investigate sea level change and claims by pacific countries eg Tuvalu, of flooding due to sea level rise caused by AGW.
See slide 20, the point about the 100 year flood frequency. He does not understand what the term means, nor how it works.
Note that the assessments of productivity loss, loss of permafrost, dates to before WW2. Natural effect.
But all of the reports, from all over the world, refer to productivity loss. natural effect. But global population is increasing rapidly.
There is going to be an explosion.
Note that Lim refers to food security.
Food is a strategic issue, there is a saying that the country that controls the food supply controls the world. Once a country loses food self sufficiency, it is at the mercy strategically of countries that supply food. This is why the USA, Japan, the european countries will do anything, any subsidy, to maintain the capacity to produce food. This is why the Chinese are afraid of losing food security.
So, productive land is declining due to climate change, food production is declining, population is exploding.
So when global food demand exceeds supply, there will be war. There is about 5% of potential productive land which is not in production now. Once that is taken up?
This is what the USA, and Russia, and japan, Australia and all of the developed countries are up to. national and global survival.
Maybe it will happen before the next ice age is upon us.
PP
PP
Look at the rate of change, that's what is the concern for scientists. If it changed at the rate it did over the last century over a thousand years instead, we'd have a lot less to worry about, as there would be a lot more time to adapt.
Aaron, the earth's climate has been warming naturally since the last ice age, and it will continue to warm, naturally, till the beginning of the next ice age.
As for grain shortages, a fair amount of the shortfall comes from conversion of grains to biofuels in the USA. Much more profitable to sell grain for subsidised biofuels than sell it for animal feed etc.
In the end analysis, the problem is population. If the world's population halved overnight, all of the supposed environmental problems would disappear, also overnight.
PP
Some apocalyptal reading for the next walk to the supermarket Motty ...
The Big Bull Market in Grains (by Sean Brodrick)
9/5/2007 7:30:00 AM
More Mouths to Feed: The world population passed six billion in 1999, and every year there are 78 million more mouths to feed, according to UN statistics.
At the same time, new middle classes are emerging in China and India, which together have over a third of the world's population. So not only do we have more mouths, we have more mouths with more money.
Meanwhile ...
Worldwide, grain production is falling short. That's been the case in eight of the last nine years, in fact. This has lowered grain supplies to the lowest level in 26 years. They continue to fall, and should drop to 114.8 million tonnes by May 31 of 2008. That would be only 67.5 days of supply — the tightest in modern history. (The unofficial reserves are around 50 days according to the Earth Policy Institutes' Lester Brown - AE)
What's the problem? For one …
Crops are being hurt by both droughts and floods. Droughts in Europe will lower harvests in Germany and France by 10%. A drought in Canada means the smallest wheat crop in five years. In Australia, lack of rain is dropping the wheat harvest by 29%. And in the Ukraine, the world's sixth-largest wheat producer, dry conditions are turning 58% of exports to dust.
Meanwhile, both droughts and floods have hammered China, cutting its wheat output by 10%. Hurricane Dean just trampled Mexico's corn harvest. And the impact of Hurricane Felix remains to be measured, but it's probably more bad news for Mexican farmers.
As for the U.S., first drought, then too much rain, hammered corn, wheat and soybean crops.
End result: It's getting tougher and tougher to grow crops around the globe. Those that are brought to market will likely fetch premium prices.
Unfortunately …
Global Warming is making things worse. We can talk ourselves to death debating whether global warming is a natural cycle, man-made, or both. But for whatever reason, the Earth is getting warmer.
And that means tough times for farmers. A recent study showed that global temperatures increased enough between 1981 and 2002 to reduce major grain crop yields by an annual average of 40 million metric tonnes!
Again, this puts more pressure on supplies. Plus …
Demand isn't slowing down … it's rising by 31 million tonnes a year! Overseas orders for U.S. wheat were recently up 77% from a year earlier, government figures show.
Even Iran is buying our corn, and Iran hasn't bought U.S. corn for three years. A flood of overseas orders should keep prices soaring. Speaking of which …
China's hunger for grains is rising above its output. China is a force all on its own. The country's domestic grain supply fell short by 10 million tonnes last year, and despite bumper crops, the problem should get worse going forward.
Thanks to desertification and city-building, farmable land is shrinking in China — dwindling by 19.7 million acres between 1999 and 2005.
China's hunger for soft commodities keeps increasing!
China's soybean imports have almost doubled since 2003 - 2004. Imports from January to July rose 2.6% to 16.9 million tonnes. And the U.S. provided 7.8 million tonnes of that supply.
What's more, China's use of corn-based ethanol is shifting into higher gear, putting even more strain on domestic supply. But wait, there's even more …
Russian Grain Embargo Could Knock
The World on Its Ear (of Corn)
Over the weekend, we got news that Russia, the world's fifth-largest wheat exporter, is concerned about rising local bread prices and inflation ahead of legislative elections in December.
The upshot is that Russia is considering a ban on cereal exports! This could have massive repercussions throughout the markets. And it looks like the beginning of a trend …
While other major exporters may not be considering outright export bans (yet), they are trying to slow down grain exports. I've already told you how Ukraine's wheat harvest has been decimated by drought. Well, in June, the country slapped prohibitive export tariffs on its grains to try and keep local bread prices from skyrocketing.
As countries line up to take their grain off the market, the bidding frenzy that is already underway will worsen. That's why wheat prices surged last week to a record high above the $8-a-bushel level in Chicago!
The good news? If there was going to be an OPEC for grain, the U.S. would be like Saudi Arabia.
The bad news is that consumers around the world, including you and me, would have to foot the bill through higher and higher prices.
And lest I leave you with the impression that cows are no longer valuable, I should point out that China's population is eating four times as much beef today as it did in 1980, a trend that is accelerating.
Globally, beef imports by major importers should increase about 1.4 million tonnes (27%) between 2007 and 2016. So while the Argentineans may find it more profitable to turn their cattle pastures into soybean farms in the short term, I think they'll be moo-ooving back into beef production in a big way down the line.
I think you get the picture — plenty of soft commodities are going much, much higher, and the potential profits could be enormous.
http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/press.asp?rls_id=925&cat_id=6
Motty been shopping lately? Can you grab me some shadecloth for 5000 acres please? ROFL ...