Forbes is incorrect, agriculture is doing effectively regardless of reasonable warming – what's happening with it?

From the climateREALISM

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article in Forbes titled “The Impact of Climate Change on Global Agriculture: A Looming Crisis” claims that climate change will have “devastating effects” on cocoa, olive oil, rice and soybeans. This is false. In certain regions, like those focused on by author Monica Sanders, harvests for these crops are poor, but that is not an indicator of long-term trends in those places or globally. So it cannot be attributed to the moderate warming of the last hundred-plus years, and certainly not to man-made CO2 emissions.

Sanders argues that key crops “such as cocoa, olive oil, rice and soybeans are particularly vulnerable, and their declining yields due to climate-related stressors have far-reaching consequences.”

Sanders begins growing cocoa and focuses on West Africa. “The country has been hit hard by drought, exacerbated by El Niño,” she says. She quotes a climate scientist from Ghana who claims that droughts are becoming more frequent and intense and that this is making “cocoa farming increasingly unsustainable.”

Agricultural data for the region suggests that this claim is false.

There have been some lower cocoa yields this year and in 2023, but that is an outlier in the overall trend. If climate change made cocoa production “unsustainable,” one would not expect record production to have occurred until 2022. According to the latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), covering the last three decades of climate change:

• West African cocoa production increased by 167 percent;
• Cocoa yields in West Africa fluctuated but increased by 8 percent overall. (See figure below)

Climate Realism has addressed concerns about cocoa beans and climate change in more detail here, here and here.

Next, we see a similar story with regard to olive oil, and again, Climate Realism has already debunked these claims here, here and here. The FAO data discussed in these posts show that olives have set production records 11 times between 1990 and 2022.

Rice is a particularly worrying crop. Saunders writes that it is “threatened by climate change,” citing Italy, which produces half of the European Union's rice, and India.

Italy is an interesting case because rice production and yield have declined significantly since at least 2020. The last yield record was set in 2017, and the production record in 2012. However, according to FAO data, production until 2020 was within the usual seasonal fluctuations for Italy. 2022 saw the largest decline due to that year's drought. (See figure below)

There is no reason to believe that the current drought is permanent, nor is there a long-term trend of increasing droughts in Italy, nor has Italy experienced a steady decline in rice harvests since the earth warmed slightly. Rather, rice farmers in Italy are experiencing what farmers all over the world have always experienced: seasonal crop declines and failures directly related to short-term weather fluctuations. This is a temporary phenomenon, but painful for farmers.

Equally important, Saunders fails to acknowledge that the decline in rice area is partly unrelated to weather, but rather is due to a nearly 12 percent decline in the area used for rice cultivation over the past 14 years.

Sanders' claim that rice cultivation in India is also under threat is absurd. Rice production in India has broken records almost every year since 2015, and there has been an overall upward trend since the 1990s.

Since 1990, Indian rice has:

• Production increases of 75 percent recorded;
• Yield increased by 61 percent. (See figure below)

Soybeans have also seen production and yield increases in both the United States and South America over the past three decades of climate change, and there are no signs of stopping. Climate Realism discussed soybean production in the United States here, and in South America, FAO data shows that the most recent soybean production record ever was set in 2021, the most recent yield record was set in 2017. In short, production and yield have increased over the three decades that climate alarmists have called the warmest period on record.

Since 1990, yields in South America have increased by 47 percent and production by an incredible 424 percent. (See figure below)

Each section of the Forbes article also provides examples of weather resilience strategies that are worthwhile for farmers whether or not climate change affects the weather. In each case, crop production generally increases without any climate signal being visible.

Verifying these facts using publicly available databases took only a few minutes – which should be the minimum for good journalism. But apparently Forbes is too concerned about spreading the climate crisis narrative to let facts get in the way.

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