Climate change spells doom for farms and food?

tech.hindustantimes.com:

The world's leading climate scientists have issued six assessments of the state of climate change knowledge since 1990. The first five were influential, driving efforts to build global climate agreements. The sixth report, issued four days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has been largely overlooked.

That's unfortunate. The new report of the International Panel on Climate Change sketches out the present and future of a changing globe. Among the most profound effect of global warming will be the impact on food production. According to the IPCC, climate change has reduced agricultural productivity by 12.5% since 1961. North America, long one of the world's most productive agricultural regions, already feels the pain. The agony of Ukraine, another key grain producer, just hurts more.

Jeffrey Dukes is an ecologist who directs the Purdue Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University. In recent years, he's led the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment. He contributed to sections of the sixth IPCC report related to North America and its agricultural products. I recently reached him by phone at his office in West Lafayette, Indiana. Here is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Adam Minter: The new IPCC report predicts with “high confidence” that climate change will shift the ranges of North American agricultural production. Is it as simple as, corn moves north to Canada?

Jeffrey Dukes: It's more complex than that. We can expect that corn will be grown further north. Crops will be in Canada, and they'll be growing more and different crops than they do currently. It also means that in a given location a crop will become more or less productive. In a given place, you may see the yield of some