If you ask a metrologist you will get this answer. But from what I’ve heard from eu farmers are: Russian fertilisers and gas dependence have caused quite a blow to the market, it will need time to normalise.
Not trying to downplay extreme weather though!
boudin · 12h ago
That's part of the equation for sure but extreme weather events have a massive impact where I live. Talking to producers, they are losing way more of their production way more frequently due to intense rain or dry events. As an exemple, someone who manages orchards was telling me that the norm now is to lose 1 year of harvest every 5 years when it was every 10 years 20 years ago.
Talking with small scale organic veg growers who are less dependent on russian oil, managing weather events is the hardest part of their job. Currently, the soil is as dry as it usually is end of august where i am.
worldsayshi · 12h ago
> the norm now is to lose 1 year of harvest every 5 years when it was every 10 years 20 years ago.
That sounds apocalyptic given that these things have only just begun.
bostik · 10h ago
> apocalyptic
Bingo. Wars are already expanding, and the world is preparing for more. With food production suffering from climate change impacts, we are witnessing famine gaining ground in real time. The breed of politicians in power are doing their best to give pestilence a newfound hold on populace at large.
And the fourth horseman is comfortably trotting in the wake of the other three.
vidarh · 8h ago
It's worth noting that while these dangers are real, they are largely economic, and so effectively a moral and political choice.
Most production of most staple crops are higher than they have ever been, and still increasing most years.
World bank data estimates for population growth is a 10% increase from 2020 to 2030, 26% from 2020 to 2050, and 42% between 2020 and 2100.
OECD (FAO Agricultural Outlook 2021-2030) estimates agricultural production to increase by 1.4% per year for the decade, which translates to ~15%.
So agricultural output is increasing faster than the population at this point despite the climate challenges.
But this increase itself creates risks (e.g. soil degradation, pressure on water supply) that is compounded by climate risks and creates variability on a regional level that absolutely will be a massive problem even though it could be "easily" protected against.
The famine risk largely comes down to pushing food out of economic reach of poor countries at points where local crops fail, and the very same economic conditions makes those countries less likely to be able to afford to maintain sufficient emergency stores.
Of course, that there's food elsewhere that is just too expensive will be of no comfort to those who end up starving.
boudin · 8h ago
Do you know if the agricultural production increase is driven by exploiting more land (e.g. taking over land from forest) or by increased productivity of the practice?
Is it an increase in term of value or volume?
Is it an increase of food production for human or raw agricultural output (which also include things like crops to produce ethanol, feed for cattle, etc...)?
vidarh · 2h ago
It's an increase in volume. As to exploiting more lands, I've not looked for data on that.
While some of the increase would be used for other purposes, that increase is still available for food production, and so that also boils down to an economic/moral/political issue, which was the main point: We can feed everyone; it's not a given that we will choose to feed everyone.
southernplaces7 · 6h ago
>Do you know if the agricultural production increase is driven by exploiting more land (e.g. taking over land from forest) or by increased productivity of the practice?
That would depend on the country in question, and in some cases it can be both, with more land being used while production per hectare (or acre) increases too. From wht I know of most developed countries, it's a case of steadily less land used, but much more productively than ever.
For example, the United States today produces more food in absolute terms than at any time in its history (an increase of nearly 200% in the last 70 years alone), while land used for agriculture has at pretty much the same time steadily been decreasing since the mid-20th century. Forests are even growing back as a result, with total forest cover having been very gently increasing since 1910 (links below)
Sorry for pushing the logic but this doesn't account for the land, labour and resources required for the input which replaced former, less technical ways. How much is required to produce the seeds, seedlings, chemicals, energy and machines that weren't used before? In a really old approach farms tended to be fairly independant (e.g. producing their own fertilizers and using animal traction, animal who lived on the farm). This used land and labour which was accounted for but seems unaccounted for in more modern practice. In my opinion this underestimate the land and labour cost and creates a biased vision of the actual efficiency of modern agriculture.
troyvit · 3h ago
> It's worth noting that while these dangers are real, they are largely economic, and so effectively a moral and political choice.
I bet you're right. I'd just add that those are actually more difficult choices than technical ones. These are global issues and we don't have a global moral or political fabric to use, which means the best we'll come up with is a patchwork of competing ideas. If you think the Linux desktop is bad, wait until you see an attempt at a coordinated international response to drought.
For a microscopic view you could look at the U.S.A. and how much five western states fight each other over water rights for the Colorado River. Those states are all part of the same country and they can't even figure it out.
vidarh · 2h ago
100% agree they're immensely difficult. Even convincing people that there is a case to mitigate famines have at many times in modern history been a massively uphill battle.
southernplaces7 · 6h ago
What a pile of nonsense you've just said. Our human society produces far more food than is even necessary to feed the entire human population. We produce so much that absolutely vast amounts are regularly discarded as refuse. Climate is not creating any real problems with food production that couldn't be remedied with a whole bunch of economic, logistical and practical solutions long before humanity ever reached genuine food shortages due to climate. Enough with this nearly religious forcing of a specific narrative.
Also, famine isn't gaining ground in real time for the above reason, or at all for that matter. In absolute terms, more people today eat better than ever, and in nearly any case you care to look at of people starving, it's universally due to some regional political bullshittery instead of climate change. (case in point, children going hungry in Gaza right now)
Temporary, shifting price rises on food are not the same thing as famine conditions by the way.
Incredible how some people here just pull random claims out of their ass because they want them to be true as opposed to actually finding out if they have anything to do with reality.
arbitrary_name · 2h ago
>Climate is not creating any real problems with food production that couldn't be remedied...
I interpret this and GPs comment as the same: we have ways to solve these issues technically, but currently lack the other dimensions (trust, collaboration, incentives).
As climate change adds risk, cost, and complexity, we are increasingly further from a solution, not closer.
Your aggressive and dismissive rhetoric provides little in the way of substantive evidence or reasoning, either.
mike_hearn · 6h ago
Where do you live? Rain and dry has not become more intense in most parts of the world, so local climate change of that sort isn't driven by CO2. For example, in the UK rainfall levels haven't changed since recordings began, there's no increase in outlier events either.
A doubling of crop failure rates in just 20 years is definitely not something that should be immediately blamed on global climate change. It's possible there's some local climate change for non-CO2 reasons. In 20 years there's been just 0.2 degrees of average warming, which is barely detectable (CIs on weather stations are often much larger!)
boudin · 5h ago
Ah the propaganda troll...
Talking about one thing and trying to deny it using another. That's lame.
I'm talking about events not average.
I'm also talking about facts.
And if you really are in the uk you would know there has been lot of heatwave, intense rain and thunderstorm events in the uk the past few years.
Just to push back on your bullshit, you can have the same rain yearly avearge as every other year and have no rain during the whole year but one. Your average would look good but your agriculture certainly not.
Go bother someone else...
mike_hearn · 2h ago
You mentioned an anonymous anecdote about a farmer in an unnamed country. That's not facts. The facts say that frequency and outlier events in rainfall haven't changed. I used the UK as an example because it has unusually long records on this topic. So, it's worth checking the Met Office's data on this to ground the discussion in something more concrete.
Pages 5 and 6 show annual rainfall. It increased a little around 1870, but today it's not much different to rainfall levels in the 1910s. Winter average is a little higher recently but only due to heavy rains in the winter of 2013, otherwise there'd be nothing to see. Rainfall in other seasons hasn't changed at all.
Page 7 shows just the most extreme years. "most of the ten wettest years occurred in the years up to and including 1960 (Figure 10a). The only two exceptions are 2000 and 2012. The situation regarding the ten driest years is even starker, with the most recent significant year being 1964 (Figure 10b)."
Nor are there more or stronger storms. Wind speeds have actually been falling over time (page 10). It's turning into a financial issue for wind farms. The British government itself says that, also for the whole North Atlantic:
> The UK State of the Climate report states that there are no compelling trends in storminess when considering maximum gust speeds over the last four decades. More comprehensive studies across the North Atlantic region have reached similar conclusions.
You need to stop attacking people who are responding to your anecdotes with data. A lot of people believe untrue things about the weather because they struggle to separate predictions about the future vs statements about the present. It's certainly possible there are places where rainfall has become markedly more intense. But if so, it's not a global phenomenon.
ndsipa_pomu · 5h ago
> For example, in the UK rainfall levels haven't changed since recordings began, there's no increase in outlier events either.
The UK is in a peculiar place for weather patterns though - we're pretty much on the cusp of five different weather systems, so we're kind of used to changeable/outlier weather events.
Britain has very stable weather compared to a lot of places. Not much difference in temps between summer and winter, no monsoon seasons, no hurricanes etc.
ndsipa_pomu · 1h ago
I would consider it "mild" weather rather than "stable". We don't tend to get extremes, but we do get fluctuations over the course of a day.
I expect things will be different if the Gulf Stream shifts and plunges Britain into a mini ice age.
hollerith · 5h ago
A metrologist is a person who studies and practices the science of measurement.
I see the war in Ukraine as one of them. They have huge areas of farm land, valuable in times where climate change makes farming impossible in other regions. And many big companies and countries are already invested in there. You can already see how dependent some countries are on this base on the different price spikes. (While the question remains if farm products should be traded on stock markets).
phtrivier · 10h ago
I can also be interpreted as an "energy-transition" war, given how the territories captured by Russia "just happen" to contain the mines... [1]
So if we stop buying oil & gas from Russia, and instead buy batteries made in part out of "Russian" minerals from Eastern-Ukraine... yaay progress, I guess ?
I see the war in Ukraine as more of a war for people that has gone badly wrong. Russia (the same applies to Ukraine) has birth rates far below replacement, and faces total demographic collapse if they can't reverse it.
Russia also won't need more farmland. Russia has far more land. Especially as climate change if anything is likely to open up regions further north where farming has not been practical - in that respect, Russia is better placed that most other countries (including Ukraine) to see off the worst effects of climate change -, but also because their crashing population will reduce their agricultural demand.
Doesn't mean Putin doesn't also want the land and resources, but if taking over Ukraine were to shore up Russia's population and buy them decades to solve the demographic problem, I think that would be far more economically valuable to him.
See e.g. also the large-scale abduction of children from the occupied areas, that while a classic way to try to destroy an enemy is also a move that "makes sense" (though of course reprehensible) to someone who is worried about the very perpetuation of his people.
Of course, then he failed to get the quick win, and the potential win is literally bleeding away on the battlefield, to the point where there's every reason to question whether Russia will survive the after-effects of this as a country 20-30 years down the line.
FirmwareBurner · 7h ago
Your comment of Russia invading Ukraine in order to get people to replenish demographics makes zero sense, when Ukraine was also having the same demographic issue, let alone the fact you can't easily assimilate people you just conquered since they'll hate you and revolt, and the fact that Ukrainians are free to flee west if Russia were to manage to take the whole country.
No matter how you slice it, what you said just makes no sense.
vidarh · 2h ago
Ukraine has the same declining population, yes, but it would still mean a 40m+ injection of people. It'd also mean the ability to selectively drain Ukraine of parts of the population, which we've already seen one example of:
Large-scale abduction of children.
With respect to assimiliation, you 1) assume rational people, 2) assume they accept that they will be unable to subjugate Ukraine the same way they're keeping control over a country where every single region have independence movements.
Again: They've already engaged in large-scale abduction of children - you're not dealing with a rational adversary.
As for people fleeing west, there is still substantial population in the occupied territories, as direct evidence that they'd still keep a substantial population.
I think your arguments makes just as little sense as you claim mine does.
FirmwareBurner · 2h ago
> but it would still mean a 40m+ injection of people.
HOW?! Ukrainians aren't bolted to that land you know. They can just leave for safety to the EU if Russia were to take over the whole country.
People aren't interchangeable cogs of equal usefulness. What would Russia do with millions of Ukrainian retirees as the youth flee?
>Large-scale abduction of children.
Can you share any sources of this "large scale abduction"? Are you saying the Ukrainian parents just left tens of thousands of kids behind for the Russians to abduct as they made their way through a few KM of countryside in the eastern part of Ukraine? Sorry, I'm not buying this without proper sources.
Not saying a few kids haven't been abducted in the war, I'm saying it's not enough for this to be the main reason Russia invaded as you originally claimed since if that were the reason, then it's a very bad return on investment to justify the exorbitant costs in money and bodies of a full scale war just to gain a few abducted kids added to your population.
jajko · 10h ago
There are massive oil, gas and metal reserves on eastern Ukraine. Sure, russia has those too but as a nation they are the very definition of greedy. When you have parts of their mafia state fighting for a bigger grab of money and power, you end up with such wars.
southernplaces7 · 5h ago
>They have huge areas of farm land, valuable in times where climate change makes farming impossible in other regions
Have you put any genuine thought into what you're saying about that specific war? If any country on Earth aside from maybe Canada would benefit agriculturally from warming climate, it's Russia. I can assure you that despite its many problems, feeding its badly decreasing population isn't one of them even now, and especially not to the point of having to invade another state over it.
Let's not misplace blame here in ridiculous ways. Putin started that particular heap of idiocy, with zero climate-related need to do so. He did it for a bunch of half-baked political/social/historical reasons pulled right out of his own ass.
_DeadFred_ · 2h ago
Agriculture in Russia might not being doing so good even with increased areas under cultivation ...
Ofc it is "climate change". You forgot to prefix "man-made".
luckys · 13h ago
In the little corner of Europe where I live food became more noticeably expensive with the Ukraine war. Not everything but a number of items. At one point, the price of olive oil was raised because vegetable oil had to be cheaper than olive oil!
Ukraine is the largest exporter of sunflower oil with Russia being #2. They are still #1 as of 2023 [1] so the war appears not to have completely interrupted supply but may have made it more expensive to distribute. WSJ reports that the war's effect on sunflower oil is causing a rise in price of all cooking oils.
We're talking about mainly 4 countries in the Mediterranean Sea.
The way I see it is that while it's true that there is an issue with the weather, they increased the prices in 2022 due to old high-demand/low-offer law (other cheaper oil not available, buy whatever is there: olive oil). The prices never decreased though, or if they did, it's unnoticeable. This pattern I have seen multiple times in my life: once companies realize people are going to pay for something for a certain price, why reduce it?
GoblinSlayer · 6h ago
I guess plants don't respect Adam Smith. To lower prices you should increase production, but you can't increase production of plants by just pressing a button and have two times more copies of them, you need more land and wait many months for them to grow.
luckys · 12h ago
Portugal. You would have to live here I guess. It was about 2 years ago and I don't have any sources to give you. Ask the locals if you know any.
Olive oil may be more expensive in general now because of poor harvests but at the time local production had been good and there was no reason to raise the price. The rationale? I guess it was profit.
hnhg · 7h ago
I feel across Europe at least companies are using data to optimise price by demand closely - large corporate suppliers almost definitely have the staff at hand to increase prices using data in the same way that "surge" pricing is calculated these days. They have every incentive to do so since they want to maximise profit.
graemep · 10h ago
> at the time local production had been good
Ye,s but prices are not just local. In general these are world prices as it can easily be imported or exported. Even more so within the EU single market which IS your national market.
On top of that its entirely normal for the prices of products that can substitute for each other to move together. If one oil goes up in price so will all the others. This is market forces acting as expected.
mk89 · 12h ago
There was a huge spike in demand, due to the lack of cheaper alternatives.
Sadly enough, the prices have stayed the same, although the demand has very likely normalized, now that people can buy "again" sunflower and other vegetable oil.
nudgeOrnurture · 11h ago
have you been on the grounds of the olive oil producers? they had to increase prices because crisis talk and civil conflicts increased prices elsewhere. even unrelated prices cause increases up the graphs in all directions. it's mostly lies, of course, but they catch up.
don't take my word on it, obviously, but the math checks out "if you follow the money". essentially, logistical cost increases as well as oil and insurance prices were the determining factors, not extreme weather. despite zero change in the scarcity of any of the factors. (they found more oil etc)
crisis talk was also the reason for increased demand in some countries as idiots started to stock up and panic buy. I remember buying flour at a local producer and she said "they are all fucking crazy, nothing changes". the Russians were still stuck for days in front of the border in a long convoy, wahahaha, according to the news.
aivisol · 12h ago
Can confirm this. I think it was sunflower oil which went through the roof when war started not vegetable though.
mk89 · 12h ago
As well as rapeseed oil. Here in Germany it reached the prices of olive oil, which was insane.
Kichererbsen · 11h ago
(canola oil i think is what americans might know it as. or something similar)
stormdennis · 10h ago
Yes, with the 'can' in canola being the first 3 letters of Canada.
They though up the name as they reckoned the name rapeseed was problematic from a marketing point of view.
I've heard that like all oils that require extensive processing canola/rapeseed oil is not good for you as it contains the wrong sort of fatty acids as a result of that processing.
Olive oil, lard, butter, coconut and ghee are all far healthier.
soco · 7h ago
Also almost any seed oils, even cold processed, are emitting toxic components when overheated - and who can avoid overheating in a pan? I think there was a HN discussion recently about a higher incidence of lung cancer related to hot oil cooking...
mk89 · 6h ago
Do you mean reaching/exceeding the smoke point? Or just generally "heating up oil"?
soco · 5h ago
Yes I meant above the smoke point. There are pans (Tefal?) which get red when the they get too hot, but as it depends a lot on the type of the oil and anyway the pan bottom is covered by the very food you're overheating... not helping. I understand there are better vegetal options (coconut, refined avocado) but still animal fat looks to be the safest. Or just pay good attention when frying.
We will see much more of this. Consequences of climate change start to really ramp up. We have been seeing temperature records year after year way beyond expectations. It’s coming fast and it is happening now, not just affecting our children and grandchildren. Recommend the „time is up“ talks from Mark Benecke (most are in German, subtitles and looking at the graphs should give you the gist though).
LightBug1 · 9h ago
Yep, but don't forget to blame immigrants for causing these issues. That's really what's at the heart of this.
ManBeardPc · 9h ago
Of course. And don’t look up. I’m always amazed at how good we humans are at denying reality.
xyzal · 8h ago
And don't forget to drill, baby.
No comments yet
dzink · 10h ago
Cherries, Apricots, and Peaches produced no fruit this year in the Balkans (and possibly elsewhere in Europe), due to an early winter warm followed by a frost that destroyed all blooms. That will likely impact a lot of european canning and food producers.
astahlx · 12h ago
I do not understand all the relativations here: If we crash the climate, we destroy the foundations for living on this planet, at least for most of us (billions). Sure, the current question is why we suddenly have none for weapons and even mightier AI while this would better be spend to get away from fossil fuels.
AlecSchueler · 5h ago
Weapons and AI make more money in the short to medium term. We have no direction other than where the market guides us, even if that's towards death
PeterStuer · 9h ago
Over here yield is extremely variable. For fruit, last year was extremely poor due to a late (one night) freeze that killed of all the flowers and buds. This year, biggest bumper crop I have ever witnessed.
9rx · 8h ago
I started farming 15 years ago. It is mind boggling how much yields have jumped since I began. What was once cause for celebration is now considered failure. Some of that is attributable to improved technology, to be sure, but it mainly seems to be a result of climate change.
vidarh · 8h ago
Indeed, I looked up OECD numbers, and the indicate primary crop outputs are on average expected to grow by 1.4% each year, outpacing population growth.
A lot of what is causing concerns over famines etc., though, is that we're seeing dramatic variability that drives cost that is likely to see a lot of people priced out of access in bad years even as overall food production goes from height to height.
9rx · 4h ago
> is likely to see a lot of people priced out of access in bad years
Especially as we move further and further away from there being international trade. The article indicates that potato crop losses is driving higher prices, but at the same time Canadian potato farmers, after a string of contract cancellations, are struggling to find anyone who wants their product and figure that they'll have to throw potatoes away.
soco · 7h ago
I assume the populations living on subsistence agriculture are also the ones much more exposed to these climate risks.
octo888 · 11h ago
Makes you wonder if these climate-driven food shocks would have happened if COVID/ZIRP ending hadn't ...
Are there any comparable periods of weather extremes resulting in such widespread price hikes?
9rx · 9h ago
There was a price shock following the 2013 derecho that ravaged the US breadbasket.
But the 2020s shock was far more shocking because of the triple whammy. It started with the 2019 derecho again ravaging the US breadbasket much like in 2013, but continued with EU fertilizer plant shutdowns, soon followed by Russia attacking Ukraine — which also cut off access to Russian fertilizer and constrained access to Ukraine food production. COVID/ZIRP might have also played into it, but there isn't much to suggest it was a significant factor.
vlckohoh · 9h ago
I wonder if more and more food production will shift to giant, climate-controlled greenhouses?
Where I’m from we get fresh locally produced tomatoes and cucumbers in winter, although it’s freezing outside. It seems like an obvious band-aid if food prices rise enough to make it economical for more crops.
ManBeardPc · 8h ago
Lack of water and extreme weather events (hurricanes, landslides, strong floods, long droughts, heat, cold) will play a major role in the future. Locations/facilities that protect from these problems will be desired and fought for. War and crime probably will also be an issue, as such locations are sparse compared to how much we need to feed the world.
owebmaster · 6h ago
I think importing from warm countries will continue to be economically better
What is particularly interesting is the spike in prices of beef. If climate extremes are causing food price shocks one would think that the beef price spike is caused by feed price shocks.
Feed prices are down at 2019 levels. And most cattle farmers are bitching that their wholesale prices are down. The fed data here seems to be MOSTLY from the processors and only some of it (the data with lower prices) from the larger market.
I dont doubt that there are shocks to the market, but it looks like there is a lot of gouging going on that is a hang over from the pandemic.
disgruntledphd2 · 10h ago
It's energy plus food. Fertiliser is made from gas (generally) so there's a double hit. First feed prices go up, then fertiliser prices go up, then beef prices go up.
We really (as a species) need to get off oil based stuff if we want to reduce inflation over the longer term (and for all the other climate based reasons too).
lotsofpulp · 6h ago
> What is particularly interesting is the spike in prices of beef. If climate extremes are causing food price shocks one would think that the beef price spike is caused by feed price shocks.
This is specious reasoning because the cost of goods sold for beef involves more than just feed. Labor prices, especially at the low end which meat processors typically pay, have increased.
The largest publicly listed beef processors are reporting very low single digit profit margins (as do grocery stores) :
It is reasonable to assume Cargill and National Beef are in the same boat (since processing beef does not involve some secret technology that would give them a leg up).
southernplaces7 · 6h ago
I'd be damn leery here of assigning such an explanation for global food prices to such an ambiguous connection, when plenty of interconnected geopolitical factors offer lots of causes of their own. Promoting good climate science isn't helped by shoehorning it as a cause for anything that most people don't like unless your evidence is damn good.
seydor · 10h ago
olive oil price is back down now, but the biggest problem with it is expensive workers , as it is labor intensive, and despite the inflow of illegal immigrants to south europe.
FirmwareBurner · 10h ago
>despite the inflow of illegal immigrants to south europe
Why "despite"? How many people who move illegally to Europe want to go work hard labor on farms if they can have easier avenues of making money?
From what I read in newspapers, most farm workers at least in DACH region tend to be Romanians, which are EU citizens, and in Scandinavia they tend to be Asians on legal work visas, basically all legal workers who wanted those jobs from the get go.
So you can't fix the Europe's famously perpetual "muh (cheap) labor shortage" with open borders to illegals, if those people don't want those jobs to begin with. That's like leaving your house front door wide open, hoping that from all those people who walk in, someone might want to be your maid for cheap, and not just eat your food and walk out.
brador · 8h ago
We need to stop relying on the sun for our food security.
vixen99 · 11h ago
Interesting that this is happening in concert with "a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning)."
The paper suggests "CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States. "
Not trying to downplay extreme weather though!
Talking with small scale organic veg growers who are less dependent on russian oil, managing weather events is the hardest part of their job. Currently, the soil is as dry as it usually is end of august where i am.
That sounds apocalyptic given that these things have only just begun.
Bingo. Wars are already expanding, and the world is preparing for more. With food production suffering from climate change impacts, we are witnessing famine gaining ground in real time. The breed of politicians in power are doing their best to give pestilence a newfound hold on populace at large.
And the fourth horseman is comfortably trotting in the wake of the other three.
Most production of most staple crops are higher than they have ever been, and still increasing most years.
World bank data estimates for population growth is a 10% increase from 2020 to 2030, 26% from 2020 to 2050, and 42% between 2020 and 2100.
OECD (FAO Agricultural Outlook 2021-2030) estimates agricultural production to increase by 1.4% per year for the decade, which translates to ~15%.
So agricultural output is increasing faster than the population at this point despite the climate challenges.
But this increase itself creates risks (e.g. soil degradation, pressure on water supply) that is compounded by climate risks and creates variability on a regional level that absolutely will be a massive problem even though it could be "easily" protected against.
The famine risk largely comes down to pushing food out of economic reach of poor countries at points where local crops fail, and the very same economic conditions makes those countries less likely to be able to afford to maintain sufficient emergency stores.
Of course, that there's food elsewhere that is just too expensive will be of no comfort to those who end up starving.
While some of the increase would be used for other purposes, that increase is still available for food production, and so that also boils down to an economic/moral/political issue, which was the main point: We can feed everyone; it's not a given that we will choose to feed everyone.
That would depend on the country in question, and in some cases it can be both, with more land being used while production per hectare (or acre) increases too. From wht I know of most developed countries, it's a case of steadily less land used, but much more productively than ever.
For example, the United States today produces more food in absolute terms than at any time in its history (an increase of nearly 200% in the last 70 years alone), while land used for agriculture has at pretty much the same time steadily been decreasing since the mid-20th century. Forests are even growing back as a result, with total forest cover having been very gently increasing since 1910 (links below)
https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/legacy_files/med...
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/look-agricultural-...
I bet you're right. I'd just add that those are actually more difficult choices than technical ones. These are global issues and we don't have a global moral or political fabric to use, which means the best we'll come up with is a patchwork of competing ideas. If you think the Linux desktop is bad, wait until you see an attempt at a coordinated international response to drought.
For a microscopic view you could look at the U.S.A. and how much five western states fight each other over water rights for the Colorado River. Those states are all part of the same country and they can't even figure it out.
Also, famine isn't gaining ground in real time for the above reason, or at all for that matter. In absolute terms, more people today eat better than ever, and in nearly any case you care to look at of people starving, it's universally due to some regional political bullshittery instead of climate change. (case in point, children going hungry in Gaza right now)
Temporary, shifting price rises on food are not the same thing as famine conditions by the way.
Incredible how some people here just pull random claims out of their ass because they want them to be true as opposed to actually finding out if they have anything to do with reality.
I interpret this and GPs comment as the same: we have ways to solve these issues technically, but currently lack the other dimensions (trust, collaboration, incentives).
As climate change adds risk, cost, and complexity, we are increasingly further from a solution, not closer.
Your aggressive and dismissive rhetoric provides little in the way of substantive evidence or reasoning, either.
A doubling of crop failure rates in just 20 years is definitely not something that should be immediately blamed on global climate change. It's possible there's some local climate change for non-CO2 reasons. In 20 years there's been just 0.2 degrees of average warming, which is barely detectable (CIs on weather stations are often much larger!)
I'm talking about events not average. I'm also talking about facts. And if you really are in the uk you would know there has been lot of heatwave, intense rain and thunderstorm events in the uk the past few years.
Just to push back on your bullshit, you can have the same rain yearly avearge as every other year and have no rain during the whole year but one. Your average would look good but your agriculture certainly not.
Go bother someone else...
Look at the graphs in this report:
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2024/11/UK-Weather-2...
Pages 5 and 6 show annual rainfall. It increased a little around 1870, but today it's not much different to rainfall levels in the 1910s. Winter average is a little higher recently but only due to heavy rains in the winter of 2013, otherwise there'd be nothing to see. Rainfall in other seasons hasn't changed at all.
Page 7 shows just the most extreme years. "most of the ten wettest years occurred in the years up to and including 1960 (Figure 10a). The only two exceptions are 2000 and 2012. The situation regarding the ten driest years is even starker, with the most recent significant year being 1964 (Figure 10b)."
Nor are there more or stronger storms. Wind speeds have actually been falling over time (page 10). It's turning into a financial issue for wind farms. The British government itself says that, also for the whole North Atlantic:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/understanding-...
> The UK State of the Climate report states that there are no compelling trends in storminess when considering maximum gust speeds over the last four decades. More comprehensive studies across the North Atlantic region have reached similar conclusions.
You need to stop attacking people who are responding to your anecdotes with data. A lot of people believe untrue things about the weather because they struggle to separate predictions about the future vs statements about the present. It's certainly possible there are places where rainfall has become markedly more intense. But if so, it's not a global phenomenon.
The UK is in a peculiar place for weather patterns though - we're pretty much on the cusp of five different weather systems, so we're kind of used to changeable/outlier weather events.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24305230
I expect things will be different if the Gulf Stream shifts and plunges Britain into a mini ice age.
So if we stop buying oil & gas from Russia, and instead buy batteries made in part out of "Russian" minerals from Eastern-Ukraine... yaay progress, I guess ?
[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-ukraines-mineral-res...
Russia also won't need more farmland. Russia has far more land. Especially as climate change if anything is likely to open up regions further north where farming has not been practical - in that respect, Russia is better placed that most other countries (including Ukraine) to see off the worst effects of climate change -, but also because their crashing population will reduce their agricultural demand.
Doesn't mean Putin doesn't also want the land and resources, but if taking over Ukraine were to shore up Russia's population and buy them decades to solve the demographic problem, I think that would be far more economically valuable to him.
See e.g. also the large-scale abduction of children from the occupied areas, that while a classic way to try to destroy an enemy is also a move that "makes sense" (though of course reprehensible) to someone who is worried about the very perpetuation of his people.
Of course, then he failed to get the quick win, and the potential win is literally bleeding away on the battlefield, to the point where there's every reason to question whether Russia will survive the after-effects of this as a country 20-30 years down the line.
No matter how you slice it, what you said just makes no sense.
Large-scale abduction of children.
With respect to assimiliation, you 1) assume rational people, 2) assume they accept that they will be unable to subjugate Ukraine the same way they're keeping control over a country where every single region have independence movements.
Again: They've already engaged in large-scale abduction of children - you're not dealing with a rational adversary.
As for people fleeing west, there is still substantial population in the occupied territories, as direct evidence that they'd still keep a substantial population.
I think your arguments makes just as little sense as you claim mine does.
HOW?! Ukrainians aren't bolted to that land you know. They can just leave for safety to the EU if Russia were to take over the whole country.
People aren't interchangeable cogs of equal usefulness. What would Russia do with millions of Ukrainian retirees as the youth flee?
>Large-scale abduction of children.
Can you share any sources of this "large scale abduction"? Are you saying the Ukrainian parents just left tens of thousands of kids behind for the Russians to abduct as they made their way through a few KM of countryside in the eastern part of Ukraine? Sorry, I'm not buying this without proper sources.
Not saying a few kids haven't been abducted in the war, I'm saying it's not enough for this to be the main reason Russia invaded as you originally claimed since if that were the reason, then it's a very bad return on investment to justify the exorbitant costs in money and bodies of a full scale war just to gain a few abducted kids added to your population.
Have you put any genuine thought into what you're saying about that specific war? If any country on Earth aside from maybe Canada would benefit agriculturally from warming climate, it's Russia. I can assure you that despite its many problems, feeding its badly decreasing population isn't one of them even now, and especially not to the point of having to invade another state over it.
Let's not misplace blame here in ridiculous ways. Putin started that particular heap of idiocy, with zero climate-related need to do so. He did it for a bunch of half-baked political/social/historical reasons pulled right out of his own ass.
https://bsky.app/profile/prune602.bsky.social/post/3lulihhfj...
[1] - https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/sunflower-seed-or-safflower-... [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rtWDmo0rKg
The way I see it is that while it's true that there is an issue with the weather, they increased the prices in 2022 due to old high-demand/low-offer law (other cheaper oil not available, buy whatever is there: olive oil). The prices never decreased though, or if they did, it's unnoticeable. This pattern I have seen multiple times in my life: once companies realize people are going to pay for something for a certain price, why reduce it?
Olive oil may be more expensive in general now because of poor harvests but at the time local production had been good and there was no reason to raise the price. The rationale? I guess it was profit.
Ye,s but prices are not just local. In general these are world prices as it can easily be imported or exported. Even more so within the EU single market which IS your national market.
On top of that its entirely normal for the prices of products that can substitute for each other to move together. If one oil goes up in price so will all the others. This is market forces acting as expected.
Sadly enough, the prices have stayed the same, although the demand has very likely normalized, now that people can buy "again" sunflower and other vegetable oil.
don't take my word on it, obviously, but the math checks out "if you follow the money". essentially, logistical cost increases as well as oil and insurance prices were the determining factors, not extreme weather. despite zero change in the scarcity of any of the factors. (they found more oil etc)
crisis talk was also the reason for increased demand in some countries as idiots started to stock up and panic buy. I remember buying flour at a local producer and she said "they are all fucking crazy, nothing changes". the Russians were still stuck for days in front of the border in a long convoy, wahahaha, according to the news.
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A lot of what is causing concerns over famines etc., though, is that we're seeing dramatic variability that drives cost that is likely to see a lot of people priced out of access in bad years even as overall food production goes from height to height.
Especially as we move further and further away from there being international trade. The article indicates that potato crop losses is driving higher prices, but at the same time Canadian potato farmers, after a string of contract cancellations, are struggling to find anyone who wants their product and figure that they'll have to throw potatoes away.
Are there any comparable periods of weather extremes resulting in such widespread price hikes?
But the 2020s shock was far more shocking because of the triple whammy. It started with the 2019 derecho again ravaging the US breadbasket much like in 2013, but continued with EU fertilizer plant shutdowns, soon followed by Russia attacking Ukraine — which also cut off access to Russian fertilizer and constrained access to Ukraine food production. COVID/ZIRP might have also played into it, but there isn't much to suggest it was a significant factor.
Where I’m from we get fresh locally produced tomatoes and cucumbers in winter, although it’s freezing outside. It seems like an obvious band-aid if food prices rise enough to make it economical for more crops.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories
What is particularly interesting is the spike in prices of beef. If climate extremes are causing food price shocks one would think that the beef price spike is caused by feed price shocks.
Feed prices are down at 2019 levels. And most cattle farmers are bitching that their wholesale prices are down. The fed data here seems to be MOSTLY from the processors and only some of it (the data with lower prices) from the larger market.
I dont doubt that there are shocks to the market, but it looks like there is a lot of gouging going on that is a hang over from the pandemic.
We really (as a species) need to get off oil based stuff if we want to reduce inflation over the longer term (and for all the other climate based reasons too).
This is specious reasoning because the cost of goods sold for beef involves more than just feed. Labor prices, especially at the low end which meat processors typically pay, have increased.
The largest publicly listed beef processors are reporting very low single digit profit margins (as do grocery stores) :
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSN/tyson-foods/pr...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JBSAY/jbs-sa/profi...
It is reasonable to assume Cargill and National Beef are in the same boat (since processing beef does not involve some secret technology that would give them a leg up).
Why "despite"? How many people who move illegally to Europe want to go work hard labor on farms if they can have easier avenues of making money?
From what I read in newspapers, most farm workers at least in DACH region tend to be Romanians, which are EU citizens, and in Scandinavia they tend to be Asians on legal work visas, basically all legal workers who wanted those jobs from the get go.
So you can't fix the Europe's famously perpetual "muh (cheap) labor shortage" with open borders to illegals, if those people don't want those jobs to begin with. That's like leaving your house front door wide open, hoping that from all those people who walk in, someone might want to be your maid for cheap, and not just eat your food and walk out.
The paper suggests "CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States. "
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004