Evidence for a climate signal in trends of global crop yield variability over the past 50 years

By Tom M. Osborne, Tim Wheeler. 2013

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Low variability of crop production from year to year is desirable for many reasons, including reduced income risk and stability of supplies. Therefore, it is important to understand the nature of yield variability, whether it is changing through time, and how it varies between crops and regions. Previous studies have shown that national crop yield variability has changed in the past, with the direction and magnitude dependent on crop type and location. Whilst such studies acknowledge the importance of climate variability in determining yield variability, it has been assumed that its magnitude and its effect on crop production have not changed through time and, hence, that changes to yield variability have been due to non-climatic factors. We address this assumption by jointly examining yield and climate variability for three major crops (rice, wheat and maize) over the past 50 years. National yield time series and growing season temperature and precipitation were de-trended and related using multiple linear regression. Yield variability changed significantly in half of the crop–country combinations examined. For several crop–country combinations, changes in yield variability were related to changes in climate variability.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/daefc598078952a14672563630d4b2dd7c4a789d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. Loren H. Rieseberg
2. Katharina Waha
3. Navin Ramankutty
4. C. Kremen
5. Mario Herrero
6. N. Williams
7. D. Lowry
8. R. Winfree

In Plant Science

1. C. Kremen
2. Loren H. Rieseberg
3. Navin Ramankutty
4. N. Williams
5. S. Potts
6. R. Winfree

In Soil Science

1. Katharina Waha
2. C. Kremen
3. Mario Herrero

Citations in the corpus

• Trends in Global Agricultural Land Use: Implications for Environmental Health and Food Security. (2018, background): “11 volatile over time (78, 109), although statistically significant increases in yield variability were detected in 9-22% of maize, rice, wheat, and soy harvested areas over the 1981-2010 period (78).”