Agriculture News

U.S. corn yields set to plummet

Everything was humming along in the U.S. Corn Belt in middle July 2011 up until the 3rd week of July when a major heat-wave and dry spell hit much of the Eastern half of the U.S. and the U.S. Corn Belt. Let's compare 2016 with 2011. First, let's compare meteorological Summer 1 June - 13 July here in 2016 compared to the same period in 2011. Eerily similar only this Summer has been hotter/drier than 2011 so far, except in Texas. Actually the extreme June temperatures in the Western and Southern Corn Belt in June this year were much worse in 2016 than they were in 2011. The chart below shows the 25 year temperature and rainfall trends for the Corn Belt as a whole. 2016 was very near 2012 in terms of temperatures and much drier than 2011. This has taken the top line yields out of the equation for 2016 as many crops in S-W Iowa, Missouri and S. Illinois rolled for 3-4 weeks during the hot/dry June.

Adaptation, Climate Change, Agriculture, and Water

Critics of water markets and efficient allocations in general claim that this flexibility is dangerous because high-income households and profitable firms could enjoy all the water they want, leaving low-income households to die of thirst. Would this happen if water was allocated by a market?  Drinking is one of the highest valued uses of water in the entire market. A market for water is going to place a very high priority on getting people drinking water precisely because it is a high-valued use. In the absence of markets for water in many developing countries, poor people currently pay the highest price for water in the country (WUP, 2003). Rich households and firms enjoy low cost water from their utility connections, but poor households must pay much higher prices for water from tankers.  Markets for water would even out these price differences and likely reduce the price of drinking water for the poor. Higher prices may be a burden for the poor and they may cause the poor to use less water.  But it is not inevitable that markets would prevent people from having access to drinking water.      A more serious concern with reallocating water is that there are often incidental beneficiaries of water withdrawals.  When a farmer exercises his right to withdraw water, a great deal of that water flows off the farmer’s land into neighbors lands either over the surface or in shallow aquifers. The neighbors get access to water from the primary farmer’s withdrawal. If the primary farmer sells the right to withdraw his water to a distant user, the neighbors will no longer get this incidental benefit. The neighbors therefore have a stake in preventing the primary farmer from selling. The water market would benefit from effective ways to grant part of the proceeds from a water sale to the neighboring users of existing withdrawals.

Water Scarcity, Food Production, and Environmental Sustainability—Can Policy Make Sense?

Confusion exists about water scarcity, but much more confusion and disagreement prevails about policies and the means to address water scarcity.  In an article published at the beginning of the millennium, Glieck (2003) compares 20th century water policies and those needed for the 21st century. Policies developed in the previous century were based on development of physical means, such as pipes and reservoirs. But the fact that many unsolved water problems, including in particular scarcity, remain or even worsened calls for a paradigm shift.  Glieck’s term “soft path” calls for development and adoption of policies with non-structural means to allow for complementing of physical infrastructure with lower cost management systems, decentralized and transparent decision-making, use of pricing and water markets for water allocation, development and use of technological means, and incorporation of incentives for environmental protection considerations.  While the list of possible routes for a policy reform that addresses water scarcity and its implications is quite long, there have been attempts to follow it, some with more success and some with less success. The five articles in this special theme issue of Choices represent a subset of the issues at stake:

• The role of economy-wide policies, policies that consider all types of water, and investment in technological vs. behavioral research;
• Adaptation of the agricultural and water sectors to climate change;
• Incorporation of environmental consideration in cost-effective conservation policies;
• Challenges of agricultural water productivity for coping with scarcity; and
• Role of water institutions.

Maple Leaf Foods plant gets $90K boost

Maple Leaf Foods has received $90,380 in federal and provincial government grants to bolster employee training at the company’s Hamilton, Ontario, processing plant.