Stanford University

Agriculture

Calculating the risk of slowing crop yields

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

According to a new study co-authored by Stanford professor David Lobell, the chance of a worldwide slowdown in agricultural yield growth in the next two decades is significantly higher due to global warming.

Lobell and co-author Claudia Tebaldi, a senior researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, set out to estimate the odds of a steep drop in global wheat and corn yield progress under several climate scenarios. The study, “Getting caught with our plants down: the risks of a global crop yield slowdown from climate trends in the next two decades” appeared in Environmental Research Letters.

Lobell said he was motivated to pursue the study based on questions posed by stakeholders and decision makers in governments and the private sector.

“I’m often asked whether climate change will threaten food supply, as if it’s a simple yes or no answer,” Lobell said. “The truth is that over a 10 or 20 year period, it depends largely on how fast the Earth warms, and we can’t predict that very precisely. So the best we can do is try to determine the odds.”

Lobell and Tebaldi calculated the chance of a 10 percent global yield loss from climate change over the next 20 years, which would represent a severe impact on food supply, enough to roughly halve the rate of yield growth.

The short time frame of the study was deliberate, Lobell said. “Many studies have looked at climate and agriculture trends over the coming 50 or 100 years. But the next two decades are when most of the global population growth, and dietary shifts driven by a growing middle class, will occur. The growth rate of food demand will be higher during this time than at any other time in the next century.”

Without human-induced global warming – in other words, in a world with only natural climate variability – the likelihood of a yield drop that large is only 1 in 200. But when the team accounted for global warming, they saw the odds jump to 1 in 10 for corn and 1 in 20 for wheat. “In this study, we did not try to estimate the most likely impacts of climate change on crops,” Lobell said. “Rather, we estimated the likelihood of a really major impact, not because we want to scare people, but because there are many people who want to be prepared for all contingencies.”

“The point of the paper is to move from hand-waving about scenarios of what could go wrong, to specific and transparent estimates of the actual odds,” Lobell said. “The odds are not very high, but they are significant and a lot bigger than they used to be. The people asking these questions are accustomed to planning for scenarios with much less than a 10 percent chance of happening, so it will be interesting to see whether this study has any effect on how they operate.”

Lobell adds that organizations working toward global food security, and related issues such as conflict prevention, are most interested in the next 20 years because their decisions rarely consider the more distant future.  “As scientists, we might prefer to work on time scales in which the answers are clearer, but we also want to be responsive to the actual concerns and questions that decision makers have.”

Lobell is associate professor of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford and associate director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Contact:

David Lobell: dlobell@stanford.edu

Laura Seaman, Communications and External Relations Manager, Center on Food Security and the Environment: lseaman@stanford.edu

Hero Image
All News button
1

Climate change adaptation in crop production: Beware of illusions

Paragraphs

• Adaptation should be defined strictly as actions that reduce climate change impacts.

• Many studies that claim to show adaptation benefits do not satisfy this definition.
• Three main causes of “adaptation illusions” are discussed.

A primary goal of studying climate change adaptation is to estimate the net impacts of climate change. Many potential changes in agricultural management and technology, including shifts in crop phenology and improved drought and heat tolerance, would help to improve crop productivity but do not necessarily represent true adaptations. Here the importance of retaining a strict definition of adaptation – as an action that reduces negative or enhances positive impacts of climate change – is discussed, as are common ways in which studies misinterpret the adaptation benefits of various changes. These “adaptation illusions” arise from a combination of faulty logic, model errors, and management assumptions that ignore the tendency for farmers to maximize profits for a given technology. More consistent treatment of adaptation is needed to better inform synthetic assessments of climate change impacts, and to more easily identify innovations in agriculture that are truly more effective in future climates than in current or past ones. Of course, some of the best innovations in agriculture in coming decades may have no adaptation benefits, and that makes them no less worthy of attention.

 

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Global Food Security
Authors
David Lobell
External URL

FSE Director is keynote speaker at Food Systems Summit

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

 

Rosamond Naylor, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, delivered the keynote address to The University of Vermont's Food Systems Summit in Burlington, VT on June 17-18, 2014. Naylor is the editor of The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), the first book of its kind to engage thought leaders from across Stanford’s campus to explore the causes and symptoms of complex topic like global hunger. She will discuss the book's insights on the ways that food security is tied to security of many other kinds: energy, water, health, climate, the environment, and national security. 

The Evolving Sphere of Food Security is available for pre-order from Oxford University Press.

Hero Image
All News button
1

Adaptation potential of European agriculture in response to climate change

Paragraphs

Projecting the impacts of climate change on agriculture requires knowing or assuming how farmers will adapt. But empirical estimates of the effectiveness of this private adaptation are scarce and the sensitivity of impact assessments to adaptation assumptions is not well understood. Here we assess the potential effectiveness of private farmer adaptation in Europe by jointly estimating both short-run and long-run response functions using time-series and cross-sectional variation in subnational yield and profit data. The difference between the impacts of climate change projected using the short-run (limited adaptation) and long-run (substantial adaptation) response curves can be interpreted as the private adaptation potential. We find high adaptation potential for maize to future warming but large negative effects and only limited adaptation potential for wheat and barley. Overall, agricultural profits could increase slightly under climate change if farmers adapt but could decrease in many areas if there is no adaptation. Decomposing the variance in 2040 projected yields and farm profits using an ensemble of 13 climate model-runs, we find that the rate at which farmers will adapt to rising temperatures is an important source of uncertainty. 

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Nature Climate Change
Authors
Fran Moore
David Lobell
External URL

Diary of a Banished Prince

-

Abstract:

Moulay Hicham’s newly published memoir, Journal d’un prince banni, retells his personal life within the context of devastating political critique against the Moroccan political system, its authoritarian monarchy, and the “deep state” within that resists democratic change, the Makhzen.  Written during Moulay Hicham's time as a fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford University, the volume is neither a settlement of accounts nor a gossipy narrative of frivolous stories.  It instead uniquely ensconces vivid personal recollections within the context of authoritarian politics.  The prince witnessed the rise of the system under King Hassan II, the long-lasting ruler who eliminated all opposition, centralized power, and linked a loyal community of courtiers, elites, and cronies to his will—the Makhzen.  The memoir reveals how Moulay Hicham’s aspirations towards autonomy and independence were constantly blocked by this system, often by either the King himself or his coercive apparatus, comprising the intelligence services and military.  At the same time, the nearly half-century reign of King Hassan exposes critical insight into the development of Moroccan politics and identity, from his acumen regarding the Western Sahara problem to his ability to make the kingdom a focal point of Arab politics after the demise of Nasserism. 

Those personal observations on governance continue with the royal ascent of Hassan’s son, Mohamed VI, who assumed the throne in 1999 and is Moulay Hicham’s cousin.  Replacing Hassan’s powerfully intent personality was this more humane yet political disengaged new king.  His inability to curb the Makhzen and enact meaningful democratic reforms shows the system’s very success.  Whereas the pressures of conforming to the system crushed many of those personalities who grew up in the court, Moulay Hicham managed to elude this destructive side through his self-imposed exile to the United States and his intellectual decision to criticize an authoritarian machine to which he was meant to belong.  As the memoir concludes, such resistance to change implicates the monarchy’s future.  Decades of political exclusion, false promises, and rising inequality have alienated much of the Moroccan public.  As the Arab Spring showed, such discontentment portends to future social and political conflict that could well discredit the monarchy, resulting in its overthrow after 350 years of continuous reign.

Journal d’un prince banni has become a literary and political phenomenon in Morocco and the Moroccan diaspora worldwide.  Its release ignited tumultuous debates within the press, social media, and civil society.  Dubbed an “exceptional document” by Le Nouvel Observateur, the memoir has become one of the best-selling non-fiction works in France.  Though print versions are currently unavailable in Morocco, electronic versions have been downloaded and disseminated on an exponential scale.  Arabic, English, and other language-editions are scheduled for release in the near future.

 

Speaker Bio:

Hicham Ben Abdallah received his B.A. in Politics in 1985 from Princeton University, and his M.A. in Political Science from Stanford in 1997. His interest is in the politics of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

He has lectured in numerous universities and think tanks in North America and Europe. His work for the advancement of peace and conflict resolution has brought him to Kosovo as a special Assistant to Bernard Kouchner, and to Nigeria and Palestine as an election observer with the Carter Center. He has published in journals such Le Monde,  Le Monde Diplomatique,Pouvoirs, Le Debat, The Journal of Democracy, The New York Times, El Pais, and El Quds.

In 2010 he has founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation which conducts social science research on the MENA region. He is also an entrepreneur with interests in agriculture, real estate, and renewable energies. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, has a number of clean energy projects in Asia and Europe. 

 

Oksenberg Conference Room

Hicham Ben Abdallah

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

0
Consulting Professor
Ben_Abdallah.jpg
MA

Hicham Ben Abdallah received his B.A. in Politics in 1985 from Princeton University, and his M.A. in Political Science from Stanford in 1997. His interest is in the politics of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

He has lectured in numerous universities and think tanks in North America and Europe. His work for the advancement of peace and conflict resolution has brought him to Kosovo as a special Assistant to Bernard Kouchner, and to Nigeria and Palestine as an election observer with the Carter Center. He has published in journals such Le Monde,  Le Monde Diplomatique,Pouvoirs, Le Debat, The Journal of Democracy, The New York Times, El Pais, and El Quds.

In 2010 he has founded the Moulay Hicham Foundation which conducts social science research on the MENA region. He is also an entrepreneur with interests in agriculture, real estate, and renewable energies. His company, Al Tayyar Energy, has a number of clean energy projects in Asia and Europe. 

Hicham Ben Abdallah Consulting Professor Speaker Stanford University
Conferences

Contemporary Challenges in Global Public Health: A Discussion on How Health is an Integral Aspect of the Overall Development and Sustainability Landscape

-

For nearly 70 years, CARE has been serving individuals and families in the world's poorest communities. Today, they work in 84 countries around the world, with projects addressing issues from education and healthcare to agriculture and climate change to education and women's empowerment. Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA, will discuss her work with CARE and her experiences in the field of international development. Dr. Gayle will discuss how access to global health is integral to CARE's effort in addressing the underlying causes of extreme global poverty.

Dr. Michele Barry, director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health, will moderate a conversation between CARE President and CEO, Dr. Helene Gayle and former Prime Minister of Norway and United Nations Special Envoy, Dr. Gro Brundtland. 

This event is sponsoredy by CARE USA, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Haas Center for Public Service.

A reception will follow the event. 

Dr. Gro Brundtland Bio:

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland is the former prime minister of Norway and the current deputy chair of The Elders, a group of world leaders convened by Nelson Mandela and others to tackle the world’s toughest issues. She was recently appointed as the Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor for spring 2014 at the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University. Dr. Brundtland has dedicated over 40 years to public service as a doctor, policymaker and international leader. She was the first woman and youngest person to serve as Norway’s prime minister, and has also served as the former director-general of the World Health Organization and a UN special envoy on climate change.

Her special interest is in promoting health as a basic human right, and her background as a stateswoman as well as a physician and scientist gives her a unique perspective on the impact of economic development, global interdependence, environmental issues and medicine on public health.

 Dr. Helene Gayle Bio:

Helene D. Gayle joined CARE USA as president and CEO in 2006. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, she received her B.A. from Barnard College of Columbia University, her M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University. After completing her residency in pediatric medicine at the Children's Hospital National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., she entered the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, followed by a residency in preventive medicine, and then remained at CDC as a staff epidemiologist.

At CDC, she studied problems of malnutrition in children in the United States and abroad, evaluating and implementing child survival programs in Africa and working on HIV/AIDS research, programs and policy. Dr. Gayle also served as the AIDS coordinator and chief of the HIV/AIDS division for the U.S. Agency for International Development; director for the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, CDC; director of CDC's Washington office; and health consultant to international agencies including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and UNAIDS. Prior to her current position, she was the director of the HIV, TB and reproductive health program for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Hewlett 201
Hewlett Teaching Center
370 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Dr. Gro Brundtland Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor Panelist Haas Center for Public Service, Stanford University
Dr. Helene Gayle President and CEO Panelist CARE USA
Michele Barry Director Moderator Center for Innovation in Global Health
Conferences

Earth Matters: Feeding the World in the 21st Century

-

Meeting the world’s need for food in the 21st century presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The global population is expected to grow toward 9 billion by 2050, and more families will live in middle-income countries and urban areas with expanding per capita consumption. At the same time, climate change and resource constraints will likely reduce crop and animal production in many locations, potentially creating greater disparities in incomes, food access, and nutrition around the world. Roz Naylor, a thought leader in global food security, will discuss the world’s future food dilemma and present a range of solutions focused on the diversification of food systems, improved input efficiencies, renewable energy use, new crop technologies, and policy adjustments. Her talk will demonstrate how food security, in its broadest form, is tied to security of many other kinds: energy, water, climate, health, the environment, and national security.

FSE director Roz Naylor’s research focuses on economic and biophysical dimensions of food security and environmental impacts of crop and animal production. Her extensive field research and published work span issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the world food economy, humanenvironment interactions, and sustainable agriculture.

Naylor's new book The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Oxford University Press, September) brings together 19 Stanford scholars from across campus to explore the many faces and facets of global food security. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

The annual Earth Matters lecture series is jointly sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies and the Stanford School of Earth Sciences.

Cubberley Auditorium

Rosamond L. Naylor

The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-5697 (650) 725-1992
0
Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Roz_low_res_9_11_cropped.jpg
PhD

Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security. 

CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Rosamond Naylor Speaker
Lectures

A meta-analysis of crop yield under climate change and adaptation

Paragraphs

Feeding a growing global population in a changing climate presents a significant challenge to society. The projected yields of crops under a range of agricultural and climatic scenarios are needed to assess food security prospects. Previous meta-analyses have summarized climate change impacts and adaptive potential as a function of temperature, but have not examined uncertainty, the timing of impacts, or the quantitative effectiveness of adaptation. Here we develop a new data set of more than 1,700 published simulations to evaluate yield impacts of climate change and adaptation. Without adaptation, losses in aggregate production are expected for wheat, rice and maize in both temperate and tropical regions by 2 degrees Celsius of local warming. Crop-level adaptations increase simulated yields by an average of 7-15%, with adaptations more effective for wheat and rice than maize. Yield losses are greater in magnitude for the second half of the century than for the first. Consensus on yield decreases in the second half of the century is stronger in tropical than temperate regions, yet even moderate warming may reduce temperate crop yields in many locations. Although less is known about interannual variability than mean yields, the available data indicate that increases in yield variability are likely.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Nature Climate Change
Authors
David Lobell
External URL

The Global Economy, Innovation, and Interconnections

-

Due to venue capacity,

RSVP's for this event have been closed. 

See the livestream here

 

 

 

This event is co-sponsored with

The Stanford Institute

for Economic Policy Research

 

Doors open at 11:30a.m.

Complimentary valet parking available

 


For security reasons:
   ~No backpacks or oversized purses will be allowed
   ~All persons subject to search
   ~No food or beverages allowed inside the room

   ~RSVPs for this event are required and will be strictly enforced at check-in

 

Born in Paris in 1956, Christine Lagarde completed high school in Le Havre and attended Holton Arms School in Bethesda (Maryland, USA). She then graduated from law school at University Paris X, and obtained a Master’s degree from the Political Science Institute in Aix en Provence.

After being admitted as a lawyer to the Paris Bar, Christine Lagarde joined the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie as an associate, specializing in Labor, Anti-trust, and Mergers & Acquisitions. A member of the Executive Committee of the Firm in 1995, Christine Lagarde became the Chairman of the Global Executive Committee of Baker & McKenzie in 1999, and subsequently Chairman of the Global Strategic Committee in 2004.

Christine Lagarde joined the French government in June 2005 as Minister for Foreign Trade. After a brief stint as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, in June 2007 she became the first woman to hold the post of Finance and Economy Minister of a G-7 country. From July to December 2008, she also chaired the ECOFIN Council, which brings together Economics and Finance Ministers of the European Union.

As a member of the G-20, Christine Lagarde was involved in the Group's management of the financial crisis, helping to foster international policies related to financial supervision and regulation and to strengthen global economic governance. As Chairman of the G-20 when France took over its presidency for the year 2011, she launched a wide-ranging work agenda on the reform of the international monetary system.

In July 2011, Christine Lagarde became the eleventh Managing Director of the IMF, and the first woman to hold that position.

Christine Lagarde was named Officier in the Légion d'honneur in April 2012. A former member of the French national team for synchronized swimming, Christine Lagarde is the mother of two sons.

Bechtel Conference Center

Christine Lagarde Managing Director Speaker International Monetary Fund
Seminars
Subscribe to Agriculture