Beer and french fries shortage
What’s one of the bad effects of global warming? Crop failures. Who is having crop failures right now?
In Germany, record temperatures and no rainfall since early April have led to a drought and thousands of farms are facing bankruptcy because of crop failure.
This week, the government pledged $390 million in federal and state aid, but for many farmers, it’s not enough. Many of the country’s farmers are starting to question whether they can cope with climate change.
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According to the German Farmers Association, 10,000 farms are facing financial ruin, dairy farmers are slaughtering cows because there’s not enough feed for them and while the national average grain shortfall this year is 26 percent, in some areas arable farmers have lost up to 70 percent of their grain crops, officials announced during a recent press conference.
Crop failures end up as famines. The world doesn’t have a plan for this.
Germany’s Agriculture Minister, Julia Klöckner has promised farmers up to 340 million euros in financial aid. It’s a far cry from the billion euros demanded by the farmers’ lobby, but the minister says she has to justify it to tax payers, who could end up paying extra for food.
In an attempt to calm consumers, Klöckner told reporters last week “there’s no need for panic. Supermarket shelves are still full.”
Just so a firefighter might attempt to calm residents by telling them the fire hasn’t reached their house yet, it’s still six whole inches away.
NPR basically does the same thing by ending on a facetious note.
It’s not only French fries that are set to go up in price. Breweries are worried about a poor barley yield and have warned that the shortfall will be reflected in the price of that other German staple, beer.
Haha yes prospective famines are hilarious.
I foresee a lot of food shortages. At this time of year, the local cattle (and our own sheep) should be happily munching and gaining weight on fast-growing grass. But the grass has only just started to start growing again after our own drought. We, and the local farmers, have been keeping our animals alive with what should have been feed for the winter. Fortunately, when the suppliers ran out of sheep feed it was just as the grass started growing, so our animals are still healthy. But when farmers start culling dairy herds, it’s not just milk, butter and cheese in the supermarkets which will start disappearing – so will many of the other goods that people like to buy.
If the farmers who bring up calves and heifers to become future dairy cows have no feed, and have to kill their animals, then there’ll be a secondary slump in milk production a year and two years from now.
And that’s assuming that the drought breaks, and the remaining animals can be fed.
I fear that we might be only months away from war due to starvation.
Around here, people still insist, against all the evidence, that global warming will be good for the crops. No matter what the evidence shows, they insist that plants thrive on more CO2 (except, plants put on fewer stomata when CO2 is higher, and high CO2 can lead to other physiological changes) and that the warm weather will simply mean a longer growing season.
Never mind that reduced precipitation will be a problem. Never mind that plants are capable of experiencing heat stress. Never mind that we have had instances lately where our irrigators were struggling to get to the lowered water table to draw up groundwater. None of this matters in the face of stubborn refusal.
In Australia many farmers understand the implications of climate change, however they still vote for a conservative Coalition infested with climate change deniers.
I wonder how European countries will cope with the effects of very severe droughts, eg the UK has very little water storage capacity and the water reticulation system is notorious for massive losses due to leaks and poor maintenance.
Has anyone actually bothered looking at the crops before making those assertions? I live in mixed farming land. Beef cattle to the North, dairy cattle to the South, and crops to the East and West – and the crops this year are stunted, to put it mildly. The yield from the barley is going to be nothing like the usual tonnage, I can see that whenever we take the dogs for a walk. Some has already been harvested with disappointing results. There is going to be a shortage of grain for people and animals this winter.
tigger, if your comment is addressed to mine, then the answer is that they have an endless supply of reasons why the crop yield is dropping and the crops aren’t looking good. Normal cycles. Environmental regulations that prevent them from using enough fertilizer/pesticide/whatever (which isn’t really the case. The regulations don’t really prevent that much). God will see us through. That sort of thing. And our state legislature actually passed a law forbidding state agencies to use global warming as an explanation of any of the problems that are experienced. So there is a song and dance going on, and Nero fiddles while the Earth burns.
Good grief, iknklast, your state legislature actually passed what??? We’re doomed.
Trump set the example, by censoring talk of climate change at federal agencies.
Not in my state. He merely rode a tsunami that already existed. The laws banning global warming talk date back some time before Trump was rumbling about being president.
That’s why I said federal agencies – this was much reported in the early days of his takeover. He basically issued a gag order on scientists who were working on climate change, and wiped it off government websites.
Hm, sorry, I’m wrong, it’s federal agencies state by state as well as headquarters. I was thinking of the DC offices but that’s not what I said and it is of course in the states too.
https://www.nature.com/news/us-energy-agency-asked-scientists-to-scrub-references-to-climate-change-1.22513