Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Climate Risks to Global Food Production Much Higher than We Think
New hard-hitting results from this study that was 8 years in the making:
- looked at six staple crops
- from 12,658 regions
- capturing two-thirds of global crop calories
- accounts for increases in farmer productivity on yields
- accounts for higher CO2 fertilization effect
- considers mid-range and high-end emission scenarios
- largest, longest study of its kind, with groundbreaking results
When we hit 3 C above preindustrial, everybody on the planet will just have to skip breakfast...
Please donate to PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem. Get an awesome climate T-shirt or baseball cap here: paulbeckwithstore.com
CNN news report:
Children born now may live in a world where the US can only produce half as much of its key food crops
cnn.com/2025/06/18/climate/food-crops-heat-rain
Wikipedia page: Norman Borlaug
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
"Norman Borlaug is often called "the father of the Green Revolution", and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. According to Jan Douglas, executive assistant to the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, the source of this number is Gregg Easterbrook's 1997 article "Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity." The article states that the "form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths." Dennis T. Avery also estimated the number of lives saved by Borlaug's efforts to be one billion. In 2009, Josette Sheeran, then the Executive Director of the World Food Program, stated that Borlaug "saved more lives than any man in human history". He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply."
New peer-reviewed paper published in Nature science journal on June 18th, 2025
Title: Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation
nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w
Abstract
Climate change threatens global food systems, but the extent to which adaptation will reduce losses remains unknown and controversial. Even within the well-studied context of US agriculture, some analyses argue that adaptation will be widespread and climate damages small, whereas others conclude that adaptation will be limited and losses severe. Scenario-based analyses indicate that adaptation should have notable consequences on global agricultural productivity, but there has been no systematic study of how extensively real-world producers actually adapt at the global scale. Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal
data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 1014 kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature (GMST) rise (120 kcal per person per day or 4.4% of recommended consumption per 1 °C; P less than 0.001). We project that adaptation and income growth alleviate 23% of global losses in 2050 and 34% at the end of the century (6% and 12%, respectively; moderate-emissions scenario), but substantial residual losses remain for all staples except rice. In contrast to analyses of other outcomes that project the greatest damages to the global poor, we find that global impacts
are dominated by losses to modern-day breadbaskets with favorable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions losses are also substantial. These results indicate a scale of innovation, cropland expansion or further adaptation that might be necessary to ensure food security in a changing climate.
Please donate to PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem. Get an awesome climate T-shirt or baseball cap here: paulbeckwithstore.com
Climate Risks to Global Food Production Much Higher than We Think
New hard-hitting results from this study that was 8 years in the making:
- looked at six staple crops
- from 12,658 regions
- capturing two-thirds of global crop calories
- accounts for increases in farmer productivity on yields
- accounts for higher CO2 fertilization effect
- considers mid-range and high-end emission scenarios
- largest, longest study of its kind, with groundbreaking results
When we hit 3 C above preindustrial, everybody on the planet will just have to skip breakfast...
Please donate to PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem. Get an awesome climate T-shirt or baseball cap here: paulbeckwithstore.com
CNN news report:
Children born now may live in a world where the US can only produce half as much of its key food crops
cnn.com/2025/06/18/climate/food-crops-heat-rain
Wikipedia page: Norman Borlaug
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
"Norman Borlaug is often called "the father of the Green Revolution", and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. According to Jan Douglas, executive assistant to the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, the source of this number is Gregg Easterbrook's 1997 article "Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity." The article states that the "form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths." Dennis T. Avery also estimated the number of lives saved by Borlaug's efforts to be one billion. In 2009, Josette Sheeran, then the Executive Director of the World Food Program, stated that Borlaug "saved more lives than any man in human history". He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply."
New peer-reviewed paper published in Nature science journal on June 18th, 2025
Title: Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation
nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w
Abstract
Climate change threatens global food systems, but the extent to which adaptation will reduce losses remains unknown and controversial. Even within the well-studied context of US agriculture, some analyses argue that adaptation will be widespread and climate damages small, whereas others conclude that adaptation will be limited and losses severe. Scenario-based analyses indicate that adaptation should have notable consequences on global agricultural productivity, but there has been no systematic study of how extensively real-world producers actually adapt at the global scale. Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal
data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 1014 kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature (GMST) rise (120 kcal per person per day or 4.4% of recommended consumption per 1 °C; P less than 0.001). We project that adaptation and income growth alleviate 23% of global losses in 2050 and 34% at the end of the century (6% and 12%, respectively; moderate-emissions scenario), but substantial residual losses remain for all staples except rice. In contrast to analyses of other outcomes that project the greatest damages to the global poor, we find that global impacts
are dominated by losses to modern-day breadbaskets with favorable climates and limited present adaptation, although losses in low-income regions losses are also substantial. These results indicate a scale of innovation, cropland expansion or further adaptation that might be necessary to ensure food security in a changing climate.
Please donate to PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and videos connecting the dots on abrupt climate system mayhem. Get an awesome climate T-shirt or baseball cap here: paulbeckwithstore.com
