A study recently published in Nature magazine shows that in the time period from 1964 to 2007, global crop yields were reduced by up to 10 percent from drought and extreme heat. Floods and extreme cold did not appear to have a similar effect.
A surprising result from the study was that crop yields in developed countries like the United States reported greater losses than those in undeveloped countries. The scientists speculated that dependence on monocultures like corn and soybeans in the US made the crops more vulnerable to adverse climate conditions, compared to the more diverse and less specialized agriculture in less developed countries. Two articles which discuss the results are listed below.
Time: How Drought and Extreme Heat are Killing the World’s Crops
Mother Jones: America’s Food System Could Be More Vulnerable to Climate Change Than We Thought
