Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 25/07/2012
Event: Climate change and drought - "what needs to be done"
People:
Justin Webb: It's been decades since Indiana has seen anything like it - drought, dustbowl conditions in America's agricultural heartland. In a moment, we're going to hear about the impact of this weather event, and others like it, on food prices, both now and in the future, but first just a word from Joe Kelsay of the Indiana Department of Agriculture, who's been telling me what it's like there at the moment.
Joe Kelsay: We've just had an extended period of not only limited rainfall but also extreme temperatures. We've had temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for so many days in a row that it becomes quite commonplace, and with much more of an arid feel. Typically, Indiana will experience high temperatures for several days, but it'll also have, along with it, high humidity and that leads to pop-up thunderstorms and kind of extreme weather. But really an arid feel, much more like Arizona or the High Plains, if you will.
Justin Webb: Mm. And the effect on crops?
Joe Kelsay: Oh, mercy. As you look around, drive around this state, and actually several other states - I've had the opportunity to travel into Illinois, into Missouri and into Wisconsin, in the last several weeks - as you walk the fields, as - we have a farm here, where I live - and we've done some yield checks there, and what even is surprising is as you grab a hold of corn, for example, grab a hold of an ear of corn and strip back the husks, you'll see a cob that has very few kernels on it, in a lot of cases.
Justin Webb: Mm. And it's not just the crops, is it. That then has a knock-on effect on the rest of farming.
Joe Kelsay: You know, it does. We are suffering in areas of pasture, of hay, of other small grains and crops that all have their way defined [?] effects in the farm community. Particularly in the world [?] of livestock, we've got some folks that are really struggling to - typically, they'll be counting on pasture, for this time of the year, for many of their livestock, and they're already feeding hay - stored hay - and that's been happening for a month or two, in some cases maybe longer.
Justin Webb: And you can provide help for farmers, but what you can't do is change these facts, I suppose.
Joe Kelsay: Well, that's exactly right, and I think that's a very important point, and the fact that in some cases crop insurance might be available, there might be some government low-interest loans that might be available. That might help the financial situation, but in a lot of cases, farmers count on having that physical commodity, particularly, again, for those that are in the livestock business, that have to feed their animals until a new crop, which is many, many months away.
Justin Webb: Do farmers you've talked to link it with climate change?
Joe Kelsay: You know, we haven't gone into that conversation, all that much. And I must admit I'm a bit of an agnostic on understanding what major global trends there might be. In some of our meetings, we've got a climatologist that comes and speaks, and he, basically, is taking the road of comparing it to other droughts, comparing it to other weather patterns that are similar. And he identifies years like 1934, 1936, 1988, 1954 - several years when the Midwest suffered droughts. But as far as the big picture affects, as it comes to climate change, we haven't talked about that.
Justin Webb: That was Joe Kelsay from the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. Dr. Alice Bows, a senior lecturer in Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester - good morning.
Dr. Alice Bows: Good morning.
Justin Webb: Quite interesting, he doesn't make the connection - he says other farmers aren't making the connection with climate change. You're saying we ought to be.
Dr. Alice Bows: Yes, I mean, although we can't link individual extreme events, necessarily, to climate change directly, what we can say is those sorts of extreme events are likely to happen more frequently, and there are much more - a lot more studies now that can actually look at the probability of these extreme weather events - so, extreme storms, droughts and so on - that they're going to rise in terms of their probability, and that's going to be linked to climate change.
Justin Webb: Yeah, and the point about that is that it then links into an approach to food and the risk of higher food prices - unaffordably higher food prices for some - into the future, unless we act.
Dr. Alice Bows: Well yes, I mean, one of the issues is that we have a choice about what kind of future we have in front of us, due to the amount we want to cut our emissions by. Currently we're on track for more like a sort of four degree of warming which - above pre-industrial temperatures - is way above the level that people consider to be dangerous. If we're going to have temperatures at that sort of level, then that's going to have a severe impact on agriculture around the world.
Justin Webb: Presumably, in some areas it makes agriculture more possible.
Dr. Alice Bows: In - for a short period of time, as we go towards warming of four degrees, then places like the UK, for example, might be better for producing wheat. But once you go beyond a two degree of warming, which is actually the level we consider dangerous, and the level we want to avoid, it actually gets more tricky.
Justin Webb: Does it also have an impact - I mean, I didn't have time to talk to him there about it in Indiana, but an awful lot of their crop goes on biofuel, doesn't it. Have we got to re-think that?
Dr. Alice Bows: I think we have to think about the full system. At the Sustainable Consumption Institute, we're trying to look at the energy system and the food system in the context of reducing emissions and climate impacts. And obviously we need to find ways in which we can supply low-carbon energy, but if that puts additional pressure on land to produce food, then that's a big problem, so we have to look at all of these things in the same picture.
Justin Webb: And the point is, of course the global demand for food is going to go up. We know that, and we all know also, I suppose, that we can match it. We've just got to think about how we do it.
Dr. Alice Bows: Well, one of the tricky things is that, you know, there's a very inequitable system, at the moment, where there's a lot of food produced but people have not got access to it. But if we do have to produce more food, then those places that are going to be less carbon-intensive to produce it - like the UK, as temperatures rise a little bit - then we might need to produce more in those countries to help meet this growing demand. But that will push UK emissions up, at the same time.
Justin Webb. Hm. Dr. Alice Bows, thank you very much.