Corn threatens Midwestern economy

Due to growing climate chaos corn, especially in the southern half of the Midwest, will have an increasingly difficult time pollinating and making seed. Corn yields, Central Minnesota Political wrote in its January 5th article, will begin to decline as summer temperatures begin to rise. 

That information comes to us from the Fourth National Climate Change Assessment, I wrote here  https://tinyurl.com/yaf6d26d

Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, assistant professor of applied economics and management at Cornell University, is out with a new study in Science Advances that puts that environmental fact in an economic context. You can read it here http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/12/eaat4343

Ortiz-Bobea, and his colleagues, found the same problem with hot temperatures and failed pollination that the authors of the Climate Assessment found. 

Ortiz-Bobea

“The study found that, in the 1960s and ’70s, a 2-degree Celsius rise in temperature during the summer resulted in an 11 percent drop in (corn) productivity. But after 1983, the same rise in temperature caused productivity to drop 29 percent,” Johnathan Knutson, who writes on agriculture for the Forum News Service, wrote in an article published in the Duluth New Tribune on January 1st of this year.

A drop of 29 percent in corn production will have a significant effect on the bottom line of farmers. But a 29 percent drop across a region that has dedicated vast acreages to growing corn will have a major economic impact throughout the region and upon its citizens.

Ortiz-Bobea points out that Midwestern farmers have become highly specialized corn producers at the expense of almost all other crops. Specializing creates efficiencies but it also creates brittleness and lack of resilience. 

“Some Midwest communities tied their local economies closely to the Detroit auto industry,”Johnathan Knutson wrote in his article. “That economic specialization was successful when the U.S. auto industry was thriving, but brought pain when the domestic auto industry declined. Crop specialization brings similar risks.”

According to Ortiz-Bobea’ study the lack of resilience and diversity in the Midwest corn based agriculture are a threat to the economy of the entire region in the face of forecasted rising temperatures. 

He suggests that while there may be technological fixes to respond to the looming problem we should look for solutions elsewhere as well.

“Results suggest that reducing vulnerability to climate change should consider the role of policies in inducing regional specialization,” he told Johnathan Knutson.

Policies that encourage continued specialization in corn production must be eliminated in favor of policis that favor diversity and resilience .

Tim

Central Minnesota Political