Drought slashes cereal production by 10%

DROUGHTS and extreme heat had cut national cereal production by 9 percent to 10 percent on average around the world in the last half-century, and the impact had worsened since the mid-1980s, researchers said.

Cereal production losses averaged 13.7 percent in drought years from 1985, compared with 6.7 percent during earlier droughts, a new study published in the journal Nature found.

It examined the effects of about 2 800 weather disasters on 16 cereals in 177 countries from 1964 to 2007.

The trend could be due to any combination of rising drought severity – although whether droughts had got worse was still under debate – increasing vulnerability and exposure to drought, and greater reporting of drought events, the researchers said.

The study highlighted the urgency for the global cereal production system to adapt to extremes in a changing climate, they added.

“Our findings may help guide agricultural priorities and adaptation efforts, to better protect farming systems and the populations that depend on them,” said senior author Navin Ramankutty, the professor of global food security and sustainability at the University of British Columbia.

The analysis did not identify any impact on crop production from floods and extreme cold in national data, they noted.

While the damage to cereal production from droughts and extreme heat was considerable, the effect was short term, as agricultural output rebounded and continued to grow after the disasters, the study said.

Droughts – which could last for several years – appeared to be more harmful, reducing cereal yield and causing complete crop failure in some areas, whereas extreme heat only affected yield, it added.

The study highlighted the urgency for the global cereal production systems to adapt to extremes.

The study showed that production took a bigger hit from extreme weather in technically advanced agricultural systems in North America, Europe and Australasia than in developing countries.

In wealthy nations, production dropped by nearly 20 percent due to droughts, double the global average.

In comparison, the average production deficit was about 12 percent in Asia and just more than 9 percent in Africa, while extreme weather had no significant effect in Latin America and the Caribbean, the study said.

The authors said this could be explained by the differing approaches of large- and smallscale farming.

“Across the bread baskets of North America, for example, the crops and methods of farming are very uniform across huge areas, so if a drought hits in a way that is damaging to those crops, they will all suffer,” said Corey Lesk, a recent graduate of McGill University.

“By contrast, in much of the developing world, the cropping systems are a patchwork of small fields with diverse crops. If a drought hits, some of those crops may be damaged, but others may survive.”

As farmers in wealthier countries rarely depended on harvests for food and could usually insure crops against bad weather, the best strategy for them might be to maximise yields rather than minimise the risk of weather-related crop damage, as subsistence farmers would seek to do, the researchers said. – Reuters The 2015 wage increase raised the minimum salary for mineworkers in Zimbabwe to $242 (R3 880) a month.

The Associated Mineworkers Union of Zimbabwe (Amwuz) had said it was pushing for a 10 percent pay hike while the National Mineworkers Union of Zimbabwe said it was not happy with the 3 percent increase.

Amwuz president Tinago Ruzive was not available for comment but he said last month: “We agreed that we need a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage that will be awarded for next year.”

President of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions George Nkiwane also said that prospects for any wage increases were bleak in a currently depressed economy.

However, he demanded that the government fix the economy and address policies such as indigenisation, which he said continued to be a major worry for investors.

“It’s difficult for workers to get any salary increases in the current economic environment. Right now, workers are battling to retain their current jobs, but we would want to see the government doing more to ensure that the environment is conducive for investments,” Nkiwane said.

Sources in the mining labour union said they would push for a salary increase as workers were helping mining companies to raise production.

The union said they would down tools should employers fail to award a salary increase, although some mining executives insisted that suppressed metal prices were negating the production increases, especially from gold producers.

Alex Mhembere, the chief executive of Zimbabwe Platinum, said last year mining firms “appreciate the need to pay employees well, but there is that big challenge in terms of doing it on a sustainable basis”, especially at a time when firms are facing challenges with imported raw materials.