The agriculture of the XXIth century will have to fit to climate
By Denis Delbecq • January 8th, 2009 in 21:37 · Category: Actuality
This is going to heat up for agricultural production. It is at least of what thinks David Battisti (University from Washington to Seattle) and Rosemond Naylor (Stanford's University), that publishes their jobs on Friday in the magazine American Science (1). Both researchers used 23 climatic models to try to determine the medium temperature during the seasons of cultures, and their impact on agricultural production. Rather worrying.
Everybody still remembers the heat wave which hit Europe and France the summer, 2003 and probably killed 52 000 persons on the continent. This summer there, agricultural production was particularly affected. In Italy, the production of corn had fallen of 36 %, while in France the harvest of the cereal and of provender went down by 30 %, the fruit harvest of 25 % and the 21 % wheat. Farther of us, remember to few it, USSR had been hit by record summer hot season in 1972, leading to a tripling of the international courses of the wheat between 1972 and 1974 while they went down since World War II.
These two examples, Battisti and Naylor use it to support their demonstration. According to models kept by the intergovernmental Group of experts on the climate (Giec) of the UNO, the summer temperature median should be more raised from 2050 in the tropical regions than levels records raised in the XXth century. According to Battisti and Naylor, the likelihood of such event is superior to 90 % in the Asia, subtropic and tropical Africa, as well as in the Middle East and in some regions of South America, power station and of the North. In these regions, variations from year to year are weaker than in the tempered regions. The impact of warming for agriculture would be there only harder. About three thousand million persons live in these regions, among which the majority have a little more than an euro a day to survive, income coming principally from the product of agriculture.
In the tempered regions, the projections of Battisti and Naylor are not more optimistic: at the end of this century, the norm of temperature during the period of cultures would correspond to what Europe endured in 2003. It is therefore urgent to invest every way to study the best means to adapt cultures to future climatic warming. Semenciers included him. Monsanto submitted on Wednesday a petition of permission of marketing of a corn GMO resistant to dryness in the United States. The industrialist also informed that a soya transgénique with similar virtues was "almost ready".
(1) Edition of January 9th, 2009.
Picture: Field of rape © Denis Delbecq
Article read 1,142 times. Tags:agriculture, heat wave, climatic rechauffement
Comments in 
Bad news:
- the total temperature does not augment any more since 2003 (http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/rss-december-2008.png);
- after a particularly active positive cycle, effects of which were only attenuated by volcanic events CHICHON (1982) and PINATUBO (1991)
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/13/how-did-the-el-chicon-and-pinatubo-volcanic-eruptions-affect-global-temperature/) the Pacific has just gone past again in negative, it is officially admitted by NOAA in April of last year.
It would be possible to top up:
- the Western network of stations weather forecast becomes impoverished to the advantage of the urban stations;
- measures satellites, of quality, still do not give an account well of temperatures on the soil. It limits the effect of urban ilôt, but it does not take into account enough the situations of thermal inversion (in winter: when he makes altitude until-10 ° in plain and 0 ° on average). Ex: Paris and Paris region at the end of the week from 5 till 12 January 2009.
Result: measure of the total anomaly of temperatures could too much not move, situation, it, is changing.
And finally, a last for the road:
It is in December, 2008, in Siberia, that was measured the most cold temperature in the north hemisphere (-67°C).
Naturally, all that will not appear in big media.
- Working colonial of domains and of territories the ways of making and the ways of which they changed of being. It unfortunately rubbed off, Ô how much, on the way to conceive the agriculture of the natives.
Varieties were forever lost due to the introduction of capital-intensive monoculture, as well as modalities culturales were adapted to environment socio_historique and cultural.
The agriculture in arid zone needs to be seriously studied if they want to overcome the disaffection of forms of production linked to water-bearing abundance. It is not too much late.