The Crop-Climate Feedback Cycle and its Implications for Global Food Production

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Crop growth often creates conditions more favorable for crop production, this is known as the crop-climate feedback cycle. Research has demonstrated that in some of the world's most productive agricultural regions, crop growth may cool the local climate, reducing the impact of crop-damaging hot temperatures, thereby boosting crop yields. This project's geographical analysis demonstrates the strength and spatial variability of the crop-climate feedback, as well as the physical mechanisms driving it. By better understanding how crops interact with local climate, this project informs efforts to anticipate environmental changes that could impact future agricultural potential as well as adapting strategies to limit crop yield losses. The project's findings will be made available to the public via media outlets and presentations and will be of interest to various agricultural stakeholders and those who analyze food security. This project integrates spatial analysis, climate science, and statistical crop yield modeling to assess the extent to which crop growth affects local climate, and how this, in turn, impacts crop production. This research is guided by four questions: (1) what are the physical mechanisms driving the crop-climate feedback? (2) how does the strength and importance of the feedback vary across geographic space and across differing levels of economic development and patterns of vulnerability to natural disasters? (3) how might the crop-climate feedback affect crop yield trends in the coming decades? and (4) could the crop-climate feedback enable an adaptive strategy of agricultural consolidation to reduce crop yield losses in a warming climate? The project's findings inform researchers about the interaction between crops and the climate, which is critical for assessing the future risk of climate-driven food insecurity, the potential for economic losses in agricultural regions, and for developing adaptation strategies to increase the climate resilience of food production.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.