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Category: Climate Change

Drought, Extreme Temperature, and the Consequences of High Food Prices

I wish I’d had a chance to write on this topic earlier, but travel to the West Coast for work last week and working on my research this week prevented me from taking the necessary time to read everything I could find on food prices, digest it all, and write something worth reading on the topic.

The crop season started out nicely this spring, with corn producers setting out to cultivate almost 100 million of acres of corn,  the largest cultivated area in 75 years. At the beginning of summer, however, things took a turn for the worst, with many areas experiencing both drought and extreme temperature.

Worry about Extreme Temperatures, Not Drought

Before anything else, I’d like to make one thing clear: Rather than drought, it looks as though it is extreme temperature that is the problem.

Indeed, according to my colleague Mike Roberts at NC State, drought is a poor predictor of crop yields, whereas extreme temperature — defined as the number of days for which temperature exceeds 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit — does a much better job of predicting crop yields.

The impact of temperature on crop yields looks like this (see the original research article here):

Corn Yields and Temperature (Source: Schlenker et al., PNAS 2009).

In other words, though there is a roughly linear relationship between temperature and corn yields from about 10 to about 29 degrees Celsius (i.e., from about 50 to about 84.2 degrees Fahrenheit), at which point corn yields drop sharply.

Free Download of Calestous Juma’s “The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa”

Calestous Juma’s most recent book The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa is now available for free from the Kennedy School of Government website. Here is an overview of the book:

African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa faces three major opportunities that can transform its agriculture into a force for economic growth: advances in science and technology; the creation of regional markets; and the emergence of a new crop of entrepreneurial leaders dedicated to the continent’s economic improvement.

Filled with case studies from within Africa and success stories from developing nations around the world, The New Harvest outlines the policies and institutional changes necessary to promote agricultural innovation across the African continent. Incorporating research from academia, government, civil society, and private industry, the book suggests multiple ways that individual African countries can work together at the regional level to develop local knowledge and resources, harness technological innovation, encourage entrepreneurship, increase agricultural output, create markets, and improve infrastructure.

If you are like me and prefer to have the entire book in a single .pdf file, scroll down on the page for a link to the complete text of the book.

Calestous is also a prolific tweeter. You can follow him on Twitter by clicking here.