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Impacts of rising temperatures and farm management practices on global yields of 18 crops
- Paolo Agnolucci ORCID:orcid.org/0000-0002-5133-67061,
- Chrysanthi Rapti1,
- Peter Alexander2,
- Vincenzo De Lipsis1,
- Robert A. Holland3,4,
- Felix Eigenbrod4 &
- …
- Paul Ekins1
Nature Foodvolume 1, pages562–571 (2020)Cite this article
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Abstract
Understanding the impact of changes in temperature and precipitation on crop yields is a vital step in developing policy and management options to feed the world. As most existing studies are limited to a few staple crops, we implemented global statistical models to examine the influence of weather and management practices on the yields of 18 crops, accounting for 70% of crop production by area and 65% by calorific intake. Focusing on the impact of temperature, we found considerable heterogeneity in the responses of yields across crops and countries. Irrigation was found to alleviate negative implications from temperature increases. Countries where increasing temperature causes the most negative impacts are typically the most food insecure, with the lowest calorific food supply and average crop yield. International action must be coordinated to raise yields in these countries through improvement and modernization of agricultural practices to counteract future adverse impacts of climate change.
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Data availability
The data used in this study are available through the repositoryhttps://doi.org/10.5522/04/12768425.
Code availability
The scripts used in the estimation of the models and the production of the figures displayed in the main body of the paper are available through the repositoryhttps://doi.org/10.5522/04/12768425.
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Acknowledgements
The authors of this work have been supported as follows—P. Agnolucci, C.R., V.D.L. and P.E.: the Grantham Foundation, the UK Energy Research Centre through its Resource and Vectors theme (award EP/L024756/1) and the Addressing the Value of Nature and Energy Together (ADVENT) programme (Award NE/M019799/1); P. Alexander: the Resilience of the UK food system to Global Shocks (RUGS, BB/N020707/1); F.E. and R.H.: the UK Energy Research Centre through its Resource and Vectors theme (Award EP/L024756/1), the Addressing the Value of Nature and Energy Together (ADVENT) programme (Award NE/M019713/1) and the ERC grant SCALEFORES (grant agreement ID: 680176).
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Authors and Affiliations
Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London, London, UK
Paolo Agnolucci, Chrysanthi Rapti, Vincenzo De Lipsis & Paul Ekins
School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Peter Alexander
School of Biological Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Robert A. Holland
School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
Robert A. Holland & Felix Eigenbrod
- Paolo Agnolucci
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- Chrysanthi Rapti
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- Peter Alexander
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- Vincenzo De Lipsis
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- Robert A. Holland
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- Felix Eigenbrod
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- Paul Ekins
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Contributions
All authors developed the research methodology. P. Agnolucci, V.D.L. and C.R. collected the data and computed the variables used in the estimation. P. Agnolucci and C.R. implemented the estimation. All authors contributed to writing up results.
Corresponding author
Correspondence toPaolo Agnolucci.
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Supplementary Information
Discussion on the historic variation in yields and model performance, discussion on the effect of weather, irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers on crop yields, Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Table 1.
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Agnolucci, P., Rapti, C., Alexander, P.et al. Impacts of rising temperatures and farm management practices on global yields of 18 crops.Nat Food1, 562–571 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-00148-x
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