After predictions for a small UK wheat harvest this year, UK officials blamed climate change, the BBC reported. Of course any bad news than can be blamed on "climate change" ... will be blamed on climate change. Even UK weather in one year, even though climate change refers to a global AVERAGE climate over a 30 year period. If there was a record wheat harvest predicted, I suppose the BBC would not consider that news.
UK farmers say bad weather over the past year is likely to mean low wheat yields, down by up to 40%. Main reason: Bad fall 2019 weather conditions caused UK farmers to plant fewer wheat acres than at any time since the 1970s. To compensate, UK farmers planted more acres of barley than usual in spring 2020. The large barley crop should mean UK supplies of beer and whiskey will flourish?
The BBC didn't report that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/farming-statistics-provisional-arable-crop-areas-as-at-1-june-2020-england
UK "climate bureaucrats" immediately predicted more of the same bad weather in the future, as if they had any ability to predict the local weather more than a week in advance. The UK Meteorology Office told BBC News that extremes of wet and hot conditions are likely to become more common as the global climate changes, as if they had any ability to predict the future climate.
Of course a UK wheat harvest prediction is not an actual UK wheat harvest. Concerning predictions: Climate alarmists have been predicting a climate crisis for 50 years ... and I expect climate alarmists will be predicting a climate crisis for the next 50 years! In fact, predicted UK wheat yields this year are being compared to some EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH yields in the past few years (that happened without planting an unusually large number of acres of wheat).
DETAILS:
Unusually heavy rain in fall 2019 meant many UK farmers could not plant as much wheat as usual. They planted the fewest acres of wheat since the 1970s. And what they did plant didn't grow so well in the waterlogged soil. Then February was unusually wet, with storms Ciara and Dennis hitting the UK, causing widespread flooding. They were followed by Storm Jorge at the end of the month. The storms were followed by a hot and dry spring, which caused droughts in many areas, making it hard for wheat to take up nutrients from the soil. Then heavy rain in August caused many farmers to delay harvesting their crops.
LLarge year-over-year declines in UK wheat production have happened before, usually for similar reasons as in 2020. The reduced wheat harvest will be mainly due to a switch in crops, and not a fall in wheat yields per acre. Last years UK cereal yields were near a record highs.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/met-offices-extreme-weather-year-brings-record-cereal-yields/
Wheat is a global commodity, whose price is determined by supply and demand. Year on year variations in weather far outweigh any long-term climate trends, if they exist. Farmers work with the weather. The basic rule of farming is you plant what will grow. It has been said that farmers are always complaining about the weather, which is never "perfect" -- sometimes they want wet and dry on adjoining fields! Wheat markets will continue to react to global supply and demand. Meanwhile, the price of bread does not change much, except from inflation.
Two UK farmers who wished to remain anonymous, commented online:
(1)
“I, like many other farmers, only opted to drill Spring Barley because we were unable to drill a full complement of Winter Wheat as a result of the wet weather, this happens about one a decade or so. It was not the total of rain that was the main problem, although it was high, but that fact that it rained so regularly that the land did not dry sufficiently between rains to drill Wheat, so we only achieved 40% of planned area; however that 40% yielded very well, harvested in glorious weather."
(2)
"I am a wheat farmer in Hampshire, and no way did I, or any of my neighbours, ‘opt’ not to grow wheat. We planned to sow it, but were forced to change our plans. The rain started here on 21st Sept, and continued, almost continuously until 21st March – a spooky equinox to equinox. I managed to get about 70 acres of milling wheat in instead of the planned 300 acres or so, and the rest of the seed is still in the back of the barn.Yes, we all switched much of the acreage to spring barley – hence the glut of it this year – but it was certainly a weather-induced decision."
From the charts below:
Last fall and winter were wet in the UK, but nowhere near the wettest on record. And this spring was not the driest on record. The UK wheat harvest in 2019 was good. According to the BBC this year's predicted poor wheat harvest is caused by climate change. So what about last year's good harvest? The weather in Fall 2019 was not good for planting wheat. That happens in some years, and is NOT proof of a long term GLOBAL climate trend.
Note:
he greatest warming since 1979 has been in the Arctic. Arctic warming has reduced the temperature differential between the tropics and the Arctic. Physics tells us the difference between the hottest and coldest temperatures on our planet is where the energy for storms comes from.
The reduced Arctic-tropics temperature differential should cause milder weather conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. And it has.
More CO2 in the atmosphere has improved global plant growth, significantly 'greening' the planet, as observed from NASA satellites.
Those two global benefits, from Arctic warming and more CO2 in the atmosphere, do not mean the UK will never have a bad weather wheat growing season once in a while.
Charts on global wheat supply, demand, stocks, showing a record supply:
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/wheat-reports.html
Global farm yields have been in a rising trend for decades. Global crop yields have more than kept pace with population growth as the climate was changing. Of course the climate is always changing!
https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
Justin Rowlatt, an Oxford PPE graduate, got the "Green Religion" a few years ago. He is the BBC’s Chief Environment Correspondent, creating scary climate change propaganda for the BBC. All climate predictions are bad news. All climate predictions never happen. Rowlatt knows nothing about climate science, or farming. He is one of the reasons the BBC has lost almost one third of itsaudience in the past six years.
