Record heat has hit different parts of the world destroying crops and impacting food prices. Cheddars News speaks with Daniel Sumner, Professor of Agricultural Economics, University of California, Davis who breaks down how the agriculture sector in the U.S. was impacted by the drought.


Closing Bell

Impact of Record Heat, Drought on Crops Around the World

Well over the course of the summer, we've heard of multiple heat waves striking different parts of the world, from California to europe and china. And the accompanying drought is further snarled supply chains and is driving up food cost for consumers already hit by record high inflation. Well joining me now is Daniel Sumner, professor of agricultural Economics at the University of California. Davis Daniel, thanks for coming on the show As so we hear the drought affecting southern Europe is on track to actually be the worst in 500 years, China seen a record heat wave. How bad is this year's drought when it compares to other years? It's more widespread than usual. I think that's the biggest feature globally California and other mediterranean climates are used to variable weather. So for California this is a bad drought, but we've had worse uh southern europe, it's a bad drought and they haven't had worse. And I mentioned those two together because it's what's called a mediterranean climate shared by just a few places around the world. So I do want to start here in the U. S. You talked about just how bad it is in europe, perhaps at the, certainly the people they're unprepared for something like this. I don't know if the infrastructure is unprepared as well, but at least focusing on the US momentarily. I'm reading here snowpacks in California's sierra Nevada are actually so small this year, Professor that it's impacting the country's biggest agriculture producers. What's the extent of the damage that we've seen so far. Yeah, and and let me emphasize uh in a sense California is lucky in that if you can call it that we have an infrastructure built to deal with this this year is an extreme case, but as I say, we've we've seen worse just five or seven years ago, it was even worse. And and as the other thing to recognize is if we had a good snowpack this year, we could be back to normal in a in a year or so. So it is the sort of thing that people in California are used to dealing with. Uh we but but that doesn't make it easy. I'll give you an example. We only planted half as much rice in northern California as a normal year this year. Uh It's a wonderful place to grow rice and in fact the so called japonica rice, the Kanye used in sushi or BBM but for that matter comes from California. We're not a big global rice producer but were crucial to that style of rice here in the United States and people will already be seeing price increases. So if your, if your diet is heavy in korean food, you may have already noticed higher prices. Certainly some changes. How much is this costing americans, daniel. Of course it's not the living conditions we want. Certainly not good for the climate, but I know it's impacting wallets as well. Yeah. And and let me emphasize food prices will not be much higher and the reason is not because of the Western drought and the reason is we moved the water around in a way that makes it more efficient. So for example, uh we've taken water away from rice and moved it to the fruits and vegetables and the tree nuts that people here in the United States and Canada and other places associate with California agriculture. Similarly, the cows don't have as good a pasture up in the hillsides throughout the west and in the mountains in colorado and Wyoming for example, but we've stored hay and we move hated them. So I don't think consumers will see it very much not compared to the overall food inflation that's happening already. It may have a small effect for certain commodities, but you certainly don't want to think that food inflation is caused by drought, that's not what's happening now. Do you expect daniel. Given the current state of the climate that we could see more instances like this, more severe droughts in the years ahead? That is a very good question. And I think the best and the answer is probably, it turns out it takes lots of data to see whether we know it's getting warmer. That's no question about that. Every farmer knows that. And every researcher and everybody else knows it's getting warmer. Uh, especially the wintertime lows are getting warmer, that's crucial for agriculture and for lots of things. So that, that is the middle of the night in the winter time is clearly getting a warmer quite steadily. But is it causing more drought? Perhaps not. In fact, even the models don't say less precipitation, but what that means is we get more rain and less snow and that's crucial because we, it's hard to store the rain. You have to build new dams and we're almost surely not going to do that. But the snowpack is such a beautiful way to snow store. Uh the the precipitation that falls. So for example, Lake Mead is fed by rain and snow throughout the Rocky Mountain area and and the more we get snow rather than rain the better, but it looks like climate change is moving more towards rain and away from snow. Um Well, Daniel, we got to leave it there. Really good to get your take. Thank you for coming on. That's Daniel Sumner, professor of agricultural economics at the University of California Davis.