Even Pat Robertson has seen the light on global warming now.¹ We’ve long known that global climate change would have a massive effect on the fragile agricultural system we’re so utterly dependent on: our crops are fickle, catastrophe-adapted cereal grains, after all. The droughts and heat waves caused by global warming would lay waste to our grain stores. It seems that is exactly what’s happening now. Global food production was at its highest point in 2004.² In 2005, bad weather brought stocks down; in 2006, it looks even worse.

Drought and hot temperatures across the state [of Texas]—it was the warmest first six months on record—continue to wreak havoc. As much as 58 percent of cotton, corn, sorghum and soybeans are in poor to very poor condition, the latter meaning any harvest is unlikely, Anderson said.

Corn production is forecast to be down 26 percent, and production of peanuts and sorghum were expected to be down 40 percent. Pecan growers also expect to see a smaller harvest.³

Heretic Fig tells us that much the same is going on in California:

Our own California ground is straining to put out what it used to. The San Juaquin Valley, the agricultural holocaust that produces nearly half of America’s fruits and vegetables, is buckling under the recent heat. 30,000 alreadymiserable cows and a quarter of a million chickens died.⁴

ABC also published a story, four pages long, on the San Juaquin Valley and the effects of global warming earlier this month.⁵ In Europe, the effects are even more dire.

Farmers predict a sharp fall in crops and face losses of billions of euros. In Italy, the Agricultural Confederation, a farmers’ association, says production of beets, maize, rice and animal fodder will approach record lows, while the grape harvest is expected to be the lowest in two decades. Italy’s farmers calculate losses so far this year at €500m ($644m, £337m). Ermete Realacci, head of a parliamentary environment committee, said the agricultural emergency was “verging on a natural disaster”.⁶

These are hardly unexpected consequences of global warming. Earlier this week, Heretic Fig pointed⁷ to a study on the effects of higher temperatures on seed yields:

“Each crop was found to have its own optimal mean daily temperature (OMDT) for seed yield. As temperatures rose, yields decreased, dropping to zero at about 18˚F above each crop’s specific OMDT.” Seed productivity generally decreased by about 6 percent for every 1˚F (0.55 °C) above a given plant’s OMDT. Current summer temperatures in the southern United States are 2-4˚F (1.1-2.2 °C) higher than optimum for most grain crops.⁸

Last month, Michael Pilarski published his case for “peak food.” Between global warming (a major, systemic, global stressor) and peak oil (a systemic loss of agriculture’s capacity to respond to stressors), Pilarski builds a case that food production, like oil production, will peak. He points out that after bad weather in 2005, 2004 remains the historic high point of global food production; the global heat waves and droughts of 2006 make it unlikely that we will beat 2004’s record this year, either.⁹

Of course, as we already know, human population is a function of food supply,¹⁰ so what we face here is a classic case of overshoot.¹¹

So, is this really the time that we want to have significant portions of our dwindling food supply diverted to ethanol, even to the point where farmers are giving up one of the few nods to sustainability left in modern, industrialized agriculture—basic crop rotation?

He’s not alone. All across Indiana, farmers are planning to increase their corn crops, lured by higher profits from selling to 12 corn-hungry ethanol plants that are planned or under construction around the state. The new plants will join one open one, creating fresh appetite for Indiana’s top crop. If only 10 of the new plants end up being built, they would consume about 25 percent of Indiana’s annual corn production of 1 billion bushels. …

Farmers weaned on the virtues of crop rotation—planting corn one year and soybeans the next to stem the build-up of disease and insect damage in their fields—are considering planting programs that include two or more years of continuous corn.¹²

Cost is set by supply and demand. A lack of food—a famine—is simply a case of very small supply (demand for food is relatively inelastic: we all need a certain amount of food everyday). So, usually, famine can be noticed economically simply by a rising cost of food. People starve not for lack of food, but because food is too expensive to buy—and, of course, because of the cultural construction of “food” as something to be bought in the first place.