Weather Dilemma for African Maize
Nature Climate Change -
"crop trials indicates that Africa's maize crop could be at risk of significant yield losses."
Article by Maximilian Auffhammer in Nature Climate Change on the Letter by Lobell et al.
Agriculture: Weather dilemma for African maize
- Published online
- 13 March 2011
The impact of climate change on food production remains uncertain, particularly in the tropics. Research that exploits the results of historical crop trials indicates that Africa's maize crop could be at risk of significant yield losses...The growing global demand for calories — caused by an expanding population and a rise in average wealth — is one reason for the current peak in food prices. Coupled to this have been decreases in food supply caused by extreme weather events, such as last year's Russian heatwave. Regardless of where extreme weather occurs, the effects on food availability and price are disproportionately felt by the world's poor. Moreover, crop failures due to extreme weather not only affect those buying and selling in the global marketplace, but also have a direct impact on subsistence farmers. Understanding how such extreme weather events — which are predicted to become more frequent under climate change — affect both yields and total production of the world's staple food crops is thus an issue of both scientific and societal importance. Writing in Nature Climate Change, David Lobell and colleagues1 present results that further our understanding of how maize yields — a crop on which millions depend for food and their livelihoods — respond to hotter days under both drought and non-drought conditions.
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