Science Snippets: Peak Food Production Draws Near

Draft script:

You’ve undoubtedly heard about peak oil. This idea has appeared in corporate media outlets since the mid-1950s. In 1956 M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Hubbert was initially ignored, and then scoffed at. He was correct with his prediction, which led to great interest in the ideas of peak oil and peak fossil fuels. Because the only set of living arrangements with which we are familiar depends on the discovery, extraction, refinement, and delivery of fossil fuels, any decline in fossil fuels will lead inevitably and directly to a widespread decline in this set of living arrangements. Never mind the attendant loss of privileges. Shortly after fossil fuels reach their maximum level of extraction, thirst and hunger will become common.

An article at Vox on 18 June 2025 links climate change to the forthcoming inability to grow food. Titled How climate change will worsen hunger, the subhead broadcasts a haunting warning: “Even America’s richest farmlands can’t outrun climate collapse. That’s everyone’s problem.” The lede starts with optimism that quickly turns to reality: “Globally, humanity is producing more food than ever, but that harvest is concentrated in just a handful of breadbaskets.”

The following two paragraphs link food production with all of us who eat: “More than one-third of the world’s wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia, for example. Some of these highly productive farmlands, including major crop-growing regions in the United States, are on track to see the sharpest drops in harvests due to climate change.

That’s bad news not just for farmers, but also for everyone who eats — especially as it becomes harder and more expensive to feed a more crowded, hungrier world, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.”

Bad news “for everyone who eats” means bad news for you, me, and all humans on Earth. As a result, it means bad news for all life on Earth. Need I point out, again, that we are one? As humans go, so goes all life on Earth. The rapidity of the ongoing event affects humans, caribou, wolves, and butterflies. Hunger experienced by you and me translates quickly and directly to acceleration of the ongoing Mass Extinction Event, the most rapid one in planetary history. The ongoing Mass Extinction Event—at least the ninth in planetary history—is also irreversible. The information about the rapidity and irreversibility of the ongoing Mass Extinction Event comes from the scientifically conservative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization designed-to-fail when it was created during the Ronald Reagan administration. If you’re looking for some sugar-coating in the information you receive, the IPCC is the place to go. Yet, the IPCC has correctly concluded we are amid the quickest Mass Extinction Event in planetary history, a phenomenon that is not reversible. These are not happy conclusions for life on Earth.

I will turn to the peer-reviewed paper shortly. The article in Vox continues: “Under a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, six key staple crops will see an 11.2 percent decline by the end of the century compared to a world without warming, even as farmers try to adapt. And the largest drops aren’t occurring in the poorer, more marginal farmlands, but in places that are already major food producers. These are regions like the US Midwest that have been blessed with good soil and ideal weather for raising staples like maize and soy.”

Never mind the line about declining crop production “by the end of the century.” The article in Vox continues with bad news about contemporary events: “But when that weather is less than ideal, it can drastically reduce agricultural productivity. Extreme weather has already begun to eat into harvests this year: Flooding has destroyed rice in Tajikistan, cucumbers in Spain, and bananas in Australia. Severe storms in the US this spring caused millions of dollars in damages to crops. In past years, severe heat has led to big declines in blueberries, olives, and grapes. And as the climate changes, rising average temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are poised to diminish yields, while weather events like droughts and floods reaching greater extremes could wipe out harvests more often.”

Five paragraphs later, Vox gets into the bad news: “the decrease in our food production could be devastating: For every degree Celsius of warming, global food production is likely to decline by 120 calories per person per day. That’s even taking into account how climate change can make growing seasons longer and how more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can encourage plant growth. In the moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario — leading to between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 — rising incomes and adaptations would only offset one-third of crop losses around the world.”

The peer-reviewed, open-access paper in Nature was published 18 June 2025. Created by 16 scholars, it is titled Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation. The Abstract cites many additional peer-reviewed papers: “Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 10¹⁴ kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature … rise ...”

In what is clearly new information for the writer at Vox, we have already eclipsed the 2 C Rubicon. We are not “leading to between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100.” We’re already there. The future will, of course, be worse than the present. And this “5.5 × 10¹⁴ kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature … rise” is already happening. Considering Earth is beyond the 2 C mark, we have lost at least 11 × 10¹⁴ kcal. Adaptation notwithstanding, that is a lot of food.

The Main section also includes references to abundant peer-reviewed literature. It follows the Abstract: “Disruptions of the global food system owing to climate change threaten human well-being and social stability, but researchers lack a complete understanding of the magnitude and structure of potential impacts on food systems globally. It is known that changes to the climate will alter the distribution of weather experienced across the planet and that biophysical processes in agricultural systems will respond. However, the degree to which humans around the world will effectively adapt their agricultural practices in reaction to these changes remains unknown. For this reason, existing global projections have been unable to account for the adoption rates and efficacy of producer adaptations and it remains unresolved whether the compensatory responses of producers are likely to overcome the challenges posed by climate change.”

Here’s a hint for you: It will remain “unresolved whether the compensatory responses of producers are likely to overcome the challenges posed by climate change.” The ongoing, accelerating climate change underlying the current Mass Extinction Event—again, the fastest in planetary history and also irreversible—does not bode well for life on Earth. Poorly protected species such as Homo sapiens are among the least able to adapt to abrupt, irreversible climate change. You might believe we are brilliant. If that’s the case, I encourage you to look around the next time you’re in a public space. In my experience, there’s a whole lotta stupid out there.