Cereal Killer: Climate Change Stunts Growth of Global Crop Yields

The people of the world get 75 percent of their sustenance--either directly, or indirectly as meat--from four crops: maize (corn), wheat, rice and soybeans. The world's rising population--now predicted by the United Nations to reach 10.1 billion by century's end --has been fed thanks to rising yields of all four of these crops during the past century. Humanity's predilection for burning fossil fuels, however, is now contributing to the slowing of such rising yields, cutting harvests of wheat 5.5 percent and maize 3.8 percent from what they could have been since 1980, according to a new analysis of yields. [More]

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