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Rising CO2 levels aren't likely to change that trendLast updated 11 hours ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.his year, global coffee production is expected to set yet another record — more than double the world's output of 50 years ago. Photo by Michelle Berg / Saskatoon StarPhoenixThese days no morning ritual is safe from climate alarm. The journal Nature has just declared that coffee is “critically threatened by climate change” and describes scientists racing to save your espresso from “extinction.” The New York Times blames sky-high coffee prices on climate-driven supply crunches in Brazil and Vietnam. And your olive oil? CNN and Bloomberg wail about a seemingly permanent “crisis,” with Mediterranean droughts foretelling a future in which this everyday staple vanishes for good.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorThe message is clear: Global warming is coming for your family’s dinner table, and only sweeping climate policy can save it. The message is also wrong. Cut through the hype, and not only is food more plentiful than ever but its inflation-adjusted cost is near historic lows relative to any time since 1900.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againStart with coffee, supposedly on its deathbed. This year, global coffee production is expected to set yet another record — more than double the world’s output of 50 years ago. Crops on the brink of extinction typically don’t deliver record harvests. And despite recent price bumps, the real price of coffee has trended downward since 1960. Adjust for inflation and, on average this century, coffee has cost half what it did last.How do outlets like The New York Times get it so wrong? By inexcusably ignoring inflation — comparing coffee prices from the 1970s, expressed in the dollars of that day, with prices expressed in today’s dollars. By that standard, everything is at a record high, always.Even Nature‘s own reporting on coffee undercuts its ominous headline about “how scientists are fighting to save it from extinction.” Ethiopia keeps more than 12,000 arabica plants in living gene banks for breeding heat- and drought-tolerant varieties. “I believe we have enough gene pool to fight climate change,” the Ethiopian plant geneticist leading the effort says. Farmers in hotter regions are already switching to hardier coffee species that professional tasters can’t distinguish from fine arabica. That isn’t extinction. It is what agriculture has always involved: adaptation and improvement.The supposed olive-oil crisis collapses under the same scrutiny. According to United Nations’ food statistics, global production has tripled since 1961 and doubled since 1990. Last year, this year and the exceptional 2018 harvest mark all-time records for production of olive oil. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted prices have not increased and have even declined slightly since 1990. Again, better farming and expanded cultivation outweigh any climate effect.Food scare stories follow a formula: Take an isolated weather event, attribute it to global warming, skip inflation adjustment and ignore the long-term data. Natural year-to-year swings driven by economics, trade policy and subsidies get repackaged as apocalyptic trends. What’s rarely mentioned about current price pressures is that they come mainly from fertilizer and transport costs — inflated, ironically, by climate policies that raise fossil fuel energy bills for the essentials of farming.Nor is mention ever made of the ways climate change helps crops. Carbon dioxide is plant food, which is why commercial growers pump extra CO2 into greenhouses to produce more tomatoes. NASA satellites show that the planet has been greening for four decades, meaning the world has added leaves over an area equivalent to that of at least twice the Amazon rainforest.On balance, climate change will hurt agriculture. But its negative impact is dwarfed by rising productivity. One highly cited study in Nature finds that without any climate change, global food-calorie production will increase 51 per cent between 2010 and 2050. But with extreme, unrealistic warming, it still increases by 49 per cent. Across all models and scenarios, the difference in calories available per person amounts to one-tenth of one per cent.The explanation for this persistent increase in food-calorie production is that humanity keeps getting better at growing food. Cereal production has more than quintupled over the past century while real food prices have more than halved. The Green Revolution of the 1960s turned famine-prone nations into exporters via widespread adoption of high-yield crop varieties, expanded use of chemical fertilizers and improved irrigation. India, once written off as a basket case dependent on food aid, quadrupled its rice production between 1961 and 2023 and is today the world’s largest rice exporter. Global daily calorie availability per person climbed from less than 2,200 in 1961 to more than 2,900 now. Global undernourishment has plummeted from roughly one in four people in the developing world in the early 1990s to fewer than one in 10 today.The task now is to finish the job. Innovation should extend to under-researched crops like sorghum, cassava and millet — staples for two billion people in the developing world that have been largely ignored by commercial breeders. Investment in biotech, precision agriculture and drought-resistant crop varieties will do far more for the world’s poor — and for your grocery bill — than any emissions target.We can keep feeding more people and do it better by doubling-down on what actually works: innovation.Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of “False Alarm” and “Best Things First.” Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.