What Will the Weather Bring to the Food and Biofuel System?
EWG president Ken Cook hosted a media conference call briefing today with prominent agriculture economists and state climatologists to discuss the impact weather may have on the food and biofuel system.
The audio briefing can be downloaded by right-clicking or control-clicking HERE.
On the call was:
Keith Collins, who served for 15 years as Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Economist Bill Lapp, currently a principal with Advanced Economic Solutions and a member of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service Advisory Board. Mr. Lapp formerly served as Chief Economist for ConAgra Foods.
Al Dutcher, state climatologist for Nebraska since 1991 and is with the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL).
S. Elwynn Taylor, a professor of Agronomy and an Extension Climatologist for Iowa State University since 1970.
Comments
It would be interesting to model the incidence of extreme weather events in even a slightly warmer world. Hail, floods and droughts; the overall data might smooth out the appearance of climate change. But a 0.1F increase in temperatures equates to much more than a 0.1 increase in the instance of extreme weather events.
Apart from introducing in the USA (and Canada) a 1980s-style European Intervention Storage programme for key domestic food crops, R+D of "hardier" GMOs will be key. Plants that can tolerate temperature and moisture extremes, maybe even hail/wind damage, would solve part of the future problem.
Posted by: Phillip Huggan | June 23, 2008 3:24 PM