Climate change and chemicals make crops less nutritious

The climate assessment predicts more of it and worse. Ag productivity will be set back to 1980s levels unless there is some unforeseen breakthrough in seed and chemical technology. Yet genetic breakthroughs cannot mask the fact that we are losing soil 10 times faster than Earth can regenerate it because of more intensive weather and tillage. And without soil, you can’t grow much corn.

Protein content in No. 2 yellow corn is declining because of soil degradation from farming up to the riverbanks in a chemical base that packs more corn plants into an acre every year, says Iowa State agronomist Dr. Rick Cruse. He notes that wheat production in China already is declining because of warmer temperatures and poorer soil.

Takle also worries about warmer temperatures, and longer hot-dry spells, hitting right at pollination time in July. That can kill a corn crop.

“It’s a scary prospect,” Hatfield says. “Those heat waves are the fastest way to kill a crop that was destined to be profitable.”

Twenty to 30 percent of Iowa’s farmers are said to be under tremendous financial stress after six straight years of net losses on their corn-soy-ethanol culture. Trade wars shaved $2 off the price of a bushel of soybeans this year. Disaster payments won’t make them whole. Meanwhile, the cost to dry all that wet corn this year puts the farmer even farther behind.


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If simple and affordable conservation practices were adopted, productivity losses could be minimized. Eventually, they will have to be. As the report notes, the soil already is being lost at alarming rates and will not be able to sustain the existing system. The corn genome was only mapped in 2009, and therein might lie some hope for advancements in a hungry world. Ultimately, Nature will demand that we heel to it. We are feeling it now—in a dying Gulf of Mexico, in declining farm income, in rising crop insurance costs subsidized by the taxpayers, and in crop storage problems—whether the president wants to believe it or not. You don’t have to look into the future to see what’s happening now, a slow-moving catastrophe in food production, security, and global stability.

https://newfoodeconomy.org/iowa-climate-change-crop-yields-agriculture-productivity/

 

Yup. Russia, for all their flaws, primarily use smaller dacha farms to feed the majority of their people. It is viable when the government supports it, and in America, the govt only subsidizes industrial production that does very, very little for the farmers and leads to 40% wastage of food.

The majority of local farming needs to adopt permaculture to get more yield per acre and keep away pests. When soil is built and enriched over the years, crops rotated for large scale grain production, it's not a problem.

Big Agro has a grip on all production (75%+) in America, so they force the farmers needing to use their chemicals, their gmo seeds, etc. They also use the misinformation about needing it to feed a growing population, when we've already got enough food to feed everyone in the world if only 20% wastage occurred.