Despite important agricultural advancements to feed the world in the last 60 years, a new study shows that global farming productivity is 21% lower than it could have been without climate change. This is the equivalent of losing about seven years of farm productivity increases since the 1960s.

The future potential impacts of climate change on global crop production has been quantified in many scientific reports, but the historic influence of anthropogenic climate change on the agricultural sector had yet to be modeled. Now, a new study published April 1 in Nature Climate Change provides these insights. 

David Lobell, professor of earth system science at Stanford University and coauthor of the study, said that the results show clearly that adaption efforts must look at the whole supply chain, including labor and livestock. “They also show that even as agriculture becomes more mechanized and sophisticated, the sensitivity to weather does not go away,” he said. “This is counter-intuitive for most people, and we need a deeper understanding of why.”

“We find that climate change has basically wiped out about seven years of improvements in agricultural productivity over the past 60 years,” said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and lead author of the study. “It is equivalent to pressing the pause button on productivity growth back in 2013 and experiencing no improvements since then. Anthropogenic climate change is already slowing us down.”

The scientists and economists developed an all-encompassing econometric model linking year-to-year changes in weather and productivity measures with output from the latest climate models over six decades to quantify the effect of recent human-caused climate change on what economists call “total factor productivity,” a measure capturing overall productivity of the agricultural sector.

Ortiz-Bobea said they considered more than 200 systematic variations of the econometric model, and the results remained largely consistent. “When we zoom into different parts of the world, we find that the historical impacts of climate change have been larger in areas already warmer, including parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia,” he said.

Humans have already altered the climate system, Ortiz-Bobea said, as climate science indicates the globe is about 1 degree Celsius warmer than without atmospheric greenhouse gases.

“Most people perceive climate change as a distant problem,” Ortiz-Bobea said. “But this is something that is already having an effect. We have to address climate change now so that we can avoid further damage for future generations.”

Ortiz-Bobea and Robert G. Chambers, professor of production economics at the University of Maryland, have been pioneering new productivity calculations in agriculture to include weather data that has not been addressed historically, aiming to bring new accuracy to climate models.

“Productivity is essentially a calculation of your inputs compared to your outputs, and in most industries, the only way to get growth is with new inputs,” Chambers said. “Agricultural productivity measurement hasn’t historically incorporated weather data, but we want to see the trends for these inputs that are out of the farmer’s control.” 

“My sense is that we are just getting better at eliminating all the non-weather constraints on production, but we need to scrutinize various possible explanations,” said Lobell, who examines the impact of climate change on crop production and food security. “This study is a big leap beyond the traditional focus on a few major grain crops,” he said. “By looking at the whole system – the animals, the workers, the specialty crops – we can see that the entire agricultural economy is quite sensitive to weather. It seems that in agriculture, practically everything gets harder when it’s hotter.”

In addition to Ortiz-Bobea, Chambers and Lobell, the co-authors are Toby R. Ault, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and Carlos M. Carrillo, research associate in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science. 

Funding was provided by USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.

Media Contacts: 

Blaine Friedlander, bpf2@cornell.edu, 607-254-8093

Devon Ryan, devonr@stanford.edu, 650-497-0444

In January, the French historian Benjamin Stora filed a report commissioned by the French President Emmanuel Macron aimed at “reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria,” which France ruled as the jewel of its colonial empire for more than 130 years.

Read the rest at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Q. Why is this work important?

A lot of tech is produced in China so it’s important to understand their policies. And in Washington, D.C., you hear a lot of people say, “Well, you can’t know what China’s doing on tech policy. It’s all a secret.” But while China’s political system is often opaque, if you happen to read Chinese, there’s a lot that’s publicly available and can explain what the Chinese government is thinking and planning.

With our network of experts, DigiChina works at the intersection of two policy challenges. One is how do we deal with high technology, and the questions around economic competitiveness, personal autonomy and the security risks that our dependence on tech creates.

The other challenge is, from a US government, business or values perspective, what needs to be done about the increased prominence and power of the Chinese government and its economic, technological and military capabilities.

These questions cut across tech sectors from IT infrastructure to data-driven automation, and cutting-edge developments in quantum technology, biotech, and other fields of research.

Q: How was DigiChina started?

A number of us were working at different organizations, think tanks, consultancies and universities and we all had an interest in explaining the laws and the bureaucratic language to others who aren’t Chinese policy specialists or don’t have the language skills.  

We started working informally at first and then reached out to New America, which is an innovative type of think tank combining research, innovation, and policy thinking on challenges arising during this time of rapid technological and social change. Under the New America umbrella, and through partnerships with the Leiden Asia Centre, a leading European research center based at the University of Leiden, and the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative at Harvard and MIT, we were able to build out the program and increase the number of experts in our network.

Q: Who is involved in DigiChina and what types of expertise do you and others bring to the project?

More than 40 people have contributed to DigiChina publications so far, and it’s a pretty diverse group. There are professors and think tank scholars, students and early-career professionals, and experienced government and industry analysts. Everyone has a different part of the picture they can contribute, and we reach out to other experts both in China and around the world when we need more context.

As for me, I was working at Yale Law School’s China Center when I was roped into what would become DigiChina and had spent several years in Beijing and New Haven working more generally on US-China relations and Track 2 dialogues, where experts and former officials from the two countries meet to take on tough problems. As a journalist and graduate student, I had long studied technology and politics in China, and I took on a coordinating role with DigiChina as I turned back to that pursuit full time.

Q. Are there other organizations involved as well?

We have a strong tie to the Leiden Asia Centre at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where one of DigiChina’s cofounders, Rogier Creemers, is a professor, and where staff and student researchers have contributed to existing and forthcoming work. We coordinate with a number of other groups on translations, and the project benefits greatly from the time and knowledge contributed by employees of various institutions. I hope that network will increasingly be a resource for contributors and their colleagues.

The project is currently supported by the Ford Foundation, which works to strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement around the world. A generous grant from Ford will keep the lights on for two years, giving us the ability to build our open-access resource and, with further fundraising, the potential to bring on more in-house editorial and research staff.

On September 29, the APARC China Program hosted Thomas Fingar and Stephen Stedman for the program “Rebuilding International Institutions.” The program, which was moderated by China Program Director Jean Oi, examined the future of international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and World Health Organization (WHO) in our evolving global political landscape. While Fingar and Stedman acknowledged that such institutions facilitated attainment of unprecedented peace and prosperity after WWII, they also asked difficult questions: Are these institutions still adequate? And if not, how will we change them?

Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar kicked off the session by asking whether or not US-China tensions would impede cooperation on major global challenges, or if those challenges were so serious as to render such rivalries immaterial. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a crisis is the current COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts to curb the virus’ spread not only by individual countries, but also by international organizations like the WHO, have proven largely inadequate. According to Fingar, our existing institutions need to be reformed or supplemented to deal with these types of threats. However, such an overhaul of our international systems will be difficult, he says.

How, then, will we go about such a massive project? Stephen Stedman, Deputy Director at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), responded by explaining that the current failure of international cooperation makes such undertakings tough. Globalization has been a double-edged sword: On one hand, more contact, perhaps inherently, leads to increased tension. The resurgence of traditional notions of sovereignty in 2010, kickstarted by the opposition of countries like Russia and China to what was seen as UN overreaching, has led to a reduction of international cooperation overall. On the other hand, Fingar posits that our interconnectedness may force us toward cooperation despite rivalries as we face more and more transnational threats. International institutions create rules to organize and manage our many interconnected relationships so that we can deal with our problems effectively and reduce friction.

Stedman also pointed to the upcoming US elections and the major impact their outcome will have on how these problems are addressed—or not. In the last four year, the United States has pulled back significantly from international institutions and agreements, leaving a gap that China has started to fill. Furthermore, despite the US’s retreat from international responsibility, the country still remains a critical actor in global initiatives. China’s embrace of a global leadership role is not inherently negative, but its future relationship with the US will need to be “managed in a way that you get greater cooperation and not just paralysis.” Stedman says that it is likely that progress will need to be made on a bilateral front in order to have productive conversations about international issues with China.

Concluding on an optimistic note, Fingar voiced his hope that the current tensions and negative perceptions between rivals might ultimately “be mitigated by success in dealing with a common problem,” because “experience does shape perceptions.”

A video recording of this program is available upon request. Please contact Callista Wells, China Program Coordinator at cvwells@stanford.edu with any inquiries.