Climate Change vs Corn

OK, fair enough. The more I think about this, the less I know.

On the one hand, given the apparent size of heat-related crop losses now, seems like if they could have done it, they would have. The link to the research project on heat resistant corn, up-thread, is a $6M/3 year grant. So something about this doesn't quite make sense to me. Large losses, apparently small investment to fix them, looks like a missed profit opportunity.

On the other hand, I'm not sure a) how much choice farmers in any one area actually have, b) whether anybody has offered a heat-resistant strain commercially, or c) whether farmers would value the trait enough to pay extra for it.

Looks like they are just now doing basic research on it. Maybe this is a new enough idea that there just aren't any heat-tolerant modern hybrid strains available yet.

Edit: Well here's something interesting. These guys say that the drive for increase yields actually reduced heat tolerance post-1960. Something about single-cross hybrids displacing double-cross, whatever that means. Same NBER researchers as I cited above:

www4.ncsu.edu/~mjrober2/Papers/NBER09_11_05.pdf

Apparently, as it has evolved, heat tolerance lost in a tradeoff with yield, to date. Or maybe just wasn't on the radar.

 

I stand corrected. I didn't want to pay to read it in full, and the abstract doesn't even mention precipitation. They must have estimated substantially smaller changes in precipitation than the UCAR group.

Well, maybe not. Here's a fairly complete description. They modeled temperatures in detail to get estimates of temperature and temperature variation, then fed those temperature results into something else. Doesn't look like they actually modeled the hydrological cycle. What it doesn't say is that they modeled temperature and precipitation in a GCM, then used those results. Based on this, they fed predictions of future temperature extremes into an otherwise static model of the hydrology, plus a technology trend. Per this, which appears to be taken directly from the Purdue U press release:

http://kraneuspeladenmedioambiente.blogspot.com/

"[FONT=&quot]The study used a high-resolution climate model for the United States that takes into account climate history to produce 25-kilometer "snapshots" of the Midwest under projected future climate scenarios, Hertel said. Five simulations from 1950-2040 were combined to estimate future temperature extremes. Those predictions were paired with a model that uses temperature, precipitation and technology trends to predict corn yields."

[/FONT]If that's true, then would explain the divergence between this and the UCAR results.

If you've actually read the paper and know that's wrong, I apologize. But it seems to me that if they'd model the hydrology and were anywhere in the ballpark of the UCAR results, it would have deserved mention in somebody's writeup, if not the abstract.

 

The florida/Wisconsin/Iowa State study I posted is looking at individual genes for heat tolerance. The genes have all be sequenced and we know what many do. This is different than say gmo for bt, they are only looking at corn genes. They can select these in breeding. There are many heat tolerant strains of corn, they just pick other strains for other characteristics. The wild maize looks nothing like modern corn.

You need to understand that corn crops are irrigated, which means that variations in rain fall will have less effect. Irrigation was a big part of the rise of civilization. As I mentioned places like texas may choose to use the water for other needs, but most corn is grown in areas where irrigation water is less of a problem.

 

You mean all the subsidies and polices demanded by the corn farmers and their associates via our democratic, representative government.

Talk to the corn farmers. They are the "government" in this case.

 

20 years of the best science we can apply says otherwise.

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

But enough of that scientific hoohah, why do you drive a Prius? Unless one is motivated by oil wars and/or climate change, there's no reason to drive a Prius.

 

I know that some corn is irrigated, hence the reference to recharge of aquifiers. Varies widely. Almost none around here is.

Can I find a US average? Beats working. Surprisingly slippery thing to find. Snippets make it look like it's small (15% says Wikipedia Environmental impact of meat production - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
US crops as a whole, 15% www.naicc.org/meeting/2011/Irrigation%20Quiz2.pdf
USDA lists 55M acres irrigated, out of like 440M acres total cropland, consistent with the 15%.
Here's 16%: Farmland Forecast: Irrigation Uses in Farming

Well, that's all the time that's worth. Only the Wikipedia entry is specific to corn, and I can't find the underlying reference. And, anyway, can't irrigate in the long run if the aquifers don't recharge.

Edit: Found it: 15% of US corn acres, 20% of US corn production, is irrigated.
www.mccormickcompany.net/pioneer/cropinsights/115.pdf

Obviously can change, but that's where it stands today.

 

Florida Sugar has been hammered by Corn Sugar. The prime reason for bailing is loosing the sugar price war. Meanwhile, the land is only going up in value. Not hard to connect dots.

 

Is shouldn't be hard, but if you can email a student they might compile it for you. Here you will see non-irrigated corn in my state and the drop between a normal year 2010 and drought year 2011

Texas Non-Irrigated Corn County Estimates
Production dropped from 90 million bushels to 27 million. Its pretty bad business to plant non-irrigated corn in a drought. The cotton crop is more drought resistant.

 

Couple of notes. Looking at Figure 1 of the reference study, look at the immensely steep rate of yield. Now how fast is the heat related problem(s) going to rise? It may reduce the rate of climb, but unless the climate change totally takes effect in a couple of decades or less, there is quite a bit of time to hybridize the heat genes gradually.

For agriculture, especially mono-culture plants, the indirect climate effects on parasites (including fungus and insects) could be the real issue. Heat tolerance is one thing, low resistance to an organism that needs warm winters to survive is another. It may be hard to convince a lot of farmers that a big temperature change is going to affect them in the next decade. However it is very easy to get their attention by identifying pest changes enabled by very small temperature changes. (humans can debate climate change, pests just take advantage of it.)