Despite the sector’s relative self-sufficiency, extreme weather events are increasingly putting pressure on the US agricultural system, particularly in terms of interstate trade, a study by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has suggested.
According to the study, Impact of extreme weather events on the US domestic supply chain of food manufacturing, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, periods of drought, heatwaves and excessive rainfall are affecting key producing states, which is having a ripple effect through the agricultural supply chain.
‘More intense and more frequent’
“With climate change, we’re going to experience more intense and more frequent extreme weather events such as drought and flooding, which impact agricultural output,” commented lead author Hyungsun Yim, a doctoral student in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at University of Illinois. “It’s important to prepare for ways to mitigate climate shocks to food manufacturing.”
As the study noted, the US produces between 80% and 85% of its food for consumption, while 57% of grains and 77% of livestock are used for domestic food manufacturing.
The authors analysed two decades of interstate trade flow, obtained from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, along with temperature, precipitation, drought, and wetness data, in compiling their results.
As they found, a 1% increase in drought in the states producing agricultural commodities – largely located in the Midwest – can result in a 0.5% to 0.7% decline in domestic exports, which in turn reduces food manufacturing output by an average of 0.04%.
“The latter figure, which indicates the size of the effect on food production, is rather small, showing the resilience of the agrifood supply chain,” commented Sandy Dall’erba, professor in ACE and founding director of the Center for Climate, Regional, Environmental and Trade Economics (CREATE), and co-author on the paper.
Climate shocks
The researchers are hopeful that the findings of the study can help states bolster their preparations to mitigate the effect of future climate shocks on food production.
“If we can project future drought intensities, we can estimate critical trade corridors that would be impacted by those events,” Yim added.
“For example, if there is a production shock in Nebraska, California might have to shift quickly to source grains from other places. That kind of planning involves multi-state coordination to manage storage facilities and transportation infrastructure such as railroads, highways, and riverways.” Read more here and here.
