How can both of the following be true? (1) The world has record crop harvests this year; (2) climate change is ruining crop harvests and threatening food security. Does that make sense? Is it even really a contradiction?
We look into how climate change is affecting crop yields, whether positively or negatively, and try to answer the biggest question of all: do we actually have to hand it to climate change deniers who say “CO2 is plant food”?
The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. You can now hear the editors of Works in Progress on their own podcast, talking to interesting people from the worlds of science, policy, technology, and history. Their most recent episode, on how traffic has ruined cities, is available at podcast.worksinprogress.co.
Show notes
Hannah Ritchie’s new book, Clearing the Air
Her article on record harvests in 2025
An example of Matt Ridley making the argument that “CO2 is plant food”
Our World in Data on crop yields
Paper on the slower growth in crop yields due to climate change
Nature Plants paper on trees in the Amazon getting bigger over time
2016 paper on the effects of climate change on crops and weeds
EarthArxiv preprint on the balance of the effects of temperature and CO2 on crop yields
The World Bank on fertilizer use per hectare
And on cereal yields
China’s fertiliser use peaking in around 2015
Less good news from Sub-Saharan Africa
Our older episode on climate sensitivity
Global per capita dietary data on calories consumed per day
Emissions from different kinds of food transportation
Credits
We’re very grateful to Dr. Hannah Ritchie from the University of Oxford and Our World in Data for talking to us for this episode. Any errors are ours, not hers. The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.
