The impact of global warming on agriculture
2023. February 6.Climate change, together with global warming, affects almost all our lives.
The latter is increasingly affecting agriculture, as weather is closely linked to crop and livestock production.
In this article we report on the extent to which global warming is affecting this industry.
What is the cause of global warming?
The world’s population has already reached 8 billion, rising to 9 billion by 2050 and up to 12.3 billion by 2100.
With water and ecosystem supplies dwindling rapidly, overuse is already causing huge problems.
Agricultural production is declining as climate change has a major impact on crops.
Due to the severe drought, many crops are being destroyed prematurely as topsoil does not receive sufficient rainfall.
Long summers make the situation even worse.
In a study, US researchers looked at the period 1980-2002.
During this period, global average temperatures rose by 0.7 degrees Celsius.
The result was that for every 0.5 degree increase, yields fell by 3-5%.
Although we’re only talking about a few percent, when you compare that to the fact that the area under cultivation is decreasing, you start to look at that 3-5% differently.
What damage has been done to each country?
In some areas, the damage has been much worse than in other countries.
Climate change is not having the same impact everywhere.
There is a self-exciting property of warming, whereby land that appears to be favoured is also losing out.
In Japan, for example, climate change is causing around €30 billion a year in damage.
This was described in a study by the Japanese Ministry of Environment.
By contrast, Canada’s agricultural yields will increase by 27%, Russia’s by 25% and China’s by 17% in the coming period. 
The losers include the USA, Uruguay, Egypt and Brazil.
The latter is expecting a 32% loss, much of it due to the destruction of rainforests.
But the activity itself has a global impact.
What is happening in Hungary?
Let’s talk a little about our country.
A 1 degree rise in average temperatures pushes the limits of some cereal crops roughly 300 km further north.
This includes wheat, corn, soybeans and sunflowers.
Summers are getting drier, and last year the Great Plain suffered a rainfall deficit that affected supplies across the country.
There was an unexpected loss of production in the domestic maize crop, but wheat and, of course, sunflowers also suffered from this weather.
Agriculture also has an impact on global warming
We should not believe that crop and livestock farming have no impact on the climate of our planet.
After all, before the food is put on our plates, it is processed, stored, transported and served, all of which affect global warming.
Every stage of food processing releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Agriculture, for example, is particularly responsible for methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
This means that industry is responsible for at least 10% of EU emissions.
The situation has changed significantly between 1990 and 2012.
Livestock and fertiliser use fell, reducing EU emissions from agriculture by 24%.
But this does not mean that the situation is similar in the rest of the world.
In fact, the opposite is happening in most countries.
So it is important to create a sustainable agriculture.
But we have a lot of work to do, not only in Europe, but also worldwide.