“Food insecurity is an existential threat for Africa (a continent facing rapid population growth and dire climate impacts) and addressing it a global imperative. Over 30% of caloric intake comes from maize, but crop yields are low partly because high costs make synthetic fertilizers uneconomical. A field experiment with Kenyan smallholder farmers explores the promise of genetically modified (microbial) biofertilizers to deliver nitrogen and increase yields at affordable costs. We see significant increases in yields (up to 110% for some farmers) and lower environmental impact than synthetic products. This suggests that biofertilizers could dramatically improve food security and child nutrition in Africa.”

From NBER.

Summary: Olive oil prices spiked in 2023 amid heat and drought in Spain, prompting widespread claims that climate change was driving the industry into crisis. Production has since rebounded and prices have fallen sharply, undercutting the hysteria, but no corrections have been issued. The episode illustrates how short-term agricultural disruptions are sometimes unreasonably framed as evidence of long-term climate catastrophe.

It’s the follow-up story that never gets written. An agricultural commodity experiences a period of below-average yields and rising prices, and it is reported as a climate change–induced crisis. Then, after another year or two, the trend reverses, but there are few, if any, attempts to correct the record.

Olive oil prices are a recent example. Spain, the world’s largest producer of olives for oil, experienced severe heat and drought in the summers of 2022 and 2023, contributing to much lower yields and major price spikes in 2023 and into 2024.

There were several news accounts at the time warning about a new reality in which human-induced warming would decimate olive yields. An August 2023 CNN story entitled “Olive Oil is in Trouble as Extreme Heat and Drought Push the Industry Into Crisis” was typical. Citing scientists and industry experts, the article told us that the episode “would have been virtually impossible without climate change.”

The story, and others like it, painted a bleak future for those making their living from olives and a new normal of higher olive oil prices for consumers. Beyond olives, CNN informed readers that “Experts warn of worse to come for food production, as the human-caused climate crisis increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather.”

However, toward the end of 2024, olive oil prices began falling sharply and remain well below their peak, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The two most recent crops in Spain and other olive-growing nations have yielded enough to increase olive oil production substantially. Overall, the olive oil industry appears to be most of the way back to normal—hardly a crisis.

That should have surprised no one, especially the self-described experts relied upon in the gloomy coverage. Yields for olives, as with virtually every other agricultural commodity, have experienced year-to-year fluctuations throughout recorded history. While climate change’s influence on olives is entirely possible, an off year or two proves nothing. Over the longer term, overall yields for food crops have increased severalfold, especially in recent decades, when climate change was supposedly a headwind. Improved agricultural methods—which depend on fossil fuels for energy and fertilizer—have swamped any adverse climate impacts, if such impacts exist.

It is also worth noting the substantial scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide, blamed for contributing to climate change, has benefits for plant growth and may well be a net positive for agriculture. This may also help explain why agricultural bad news rarely has staying power while long-term trends remain positive.

In any event, the media outlets that raised the olive oil alarms ought to publish follow-up stories reporting the good news and conceding that the climate change link is not nearly as clear-cut as the original coverage suggested. None have done so.

Maybe it’s because they are too busy writing about the chocolate crisis.

“It’s been a little over hundred years since residents or fishermen were able to catch shellfish safe to eat in the Boston Harbor…

Now, the state has declared that shellfish from parts of Boston Harbor can be safely caught and eaten again…

Harvesting in the harbor was banned almost entirely in 1925 after contaminated oysters led to a national typhoid epidemic. In the decades since, Boston Harbor has undergone a multi-billion dollar clean-up…

Up until now, only licensed commercial harvesters have been able to fish in certain areas of the harbor. Their catches went through a purification process before being sold and eaten.

Earlier this month, state officials updated the classification for parts of the outer harbor near Hingham, Hull and Winthrop to ‘conditionally approved’ — meaning residents and commercial harvesters alike will soon be able to collect shellfish from those areas.”

From WBUR.

“Chinese researchers have developed a revolutionary form of hybrid rice that can replicate itself through seeds that are clones, faithfully preserving high-yield traits generation after generation…

The price of hybrid seeds can reach 200 yuan (US$28) per kilogram in China, and even higher in other countries – up to 100 times more than that of regular rice seeds.

Moreover, the offspring of these high-priced seeds lose their hybrid vigour – superior traits from crossbreeding – forcing farmers to buy seeds again every year.

A research team led by Wang Kejian at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ China National Rice Research Institute has developed hybrid rice capable of near-perfect clonal reproduction through apomixis – a process in which seeds develop without fertilisation.

The team’s work, which is pending peer review, was published on the preprint server bioRxiv on October 17 under the title ‘Fixing Hybrid Rice: >99% Efficient Apomixis with Near-Normal Seed Set.’

Its new Fix8 series achieves more than 99.7 per cent cloning efficiency with seed-setting rates rivalling conventional hybrids, effectively creating self-replicating super rice.”

From South China Morning Post.