Climate

Now we spend a lot of time thinking about how climate will affect crops. But crops affect climate themselves and they do this in two ways. First of all, about one-quarter of the land surface is used for growing crops. Another 10-15 % are used for pasture. So a substantial amount of the land surface is used in crop and agricultural production. And how we used that climate affects our climate? If we were, for example, to deforest a substantial area and replace it with a natural crop such as soybean. Then we would alter the characteristics of the land surface, alter the way that water and heat flows from the land surface to the atmosphere and back. And ultimately change the regional climate change if there is a large enough change the land surface. So this is an absolutely fascinating topic and one that's really quite difficult to understand because of the complexity. It's difficult because it needs us as crops scientists to work even more closely with our climate scientist, colleagues. And it's difficult because we have to join our models together.