The Hill published an article claiming climate change is threatening apple production in the United States. Data refutes this claim with apple yields increasing dramatically amid the recent modest warming. Apple production rises and falls from year to year, as other crops do, dependent upon a variety of factors, among them, weather, labor, economic, and often political conditions. Also like most other crops, the evidence suggests that apples have benefitted from rising carbon dioxide and generally better growing conditions.
A climate staff writer for The Hill, Sharon Udasin, wrote an article, titled “Climate change is hampering US apple quality and output: Study,” citing a single study as her evidence for asserting claim climate change has harmed apple production.
The problem for Udasin’s claim is the climate has hardly changed in the regions she discusses. There are modestly warmer temperatures, with no notable increase in worsening weather. As discussed in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves, heatwaves lasting four days or more have not increased in recent decades, but rather are much less frequent now that 95 years ago, in the 1930s. (See the figure below).
In fact, as the Earth has modestly warmed, winter nighttime temperatures have moderated and orchards suffer from fewer late-season, unexpected, fruit and nut killing frosts.
The most robust evidence that climate change is not harming apple production comes from the production data itself, captured by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The study Udasin cites examined apple production from 1979 to 2022. Data from the FAO show that over the same time period, even as the acreage devoted to apple production declined by approximately 26 percent, apple production increased by about 23 percent, and yield, the best measure of crop productivity, grew by approximately 66 percent. (See the graph below)
So, by no measure has apple production been harmed during the recent period of modest climate change.
Any talk about what might happen in the future is pure speculation. Any such speculation on Udasin’s part should reflect the fact that, as explored in this Climate Realism post, in its 6th Assessment Report, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not estimate that droughts or frost trends will worsen in the foreseeable future.
In addition, the authors of the study honestly admitted that any impacts from climate change on apple orchards can likely be mitigated or prevented through “adaptive measures.”
In the end, The Hill published an article implying that climate change was harming apple production, when, in fact, apple production and yields are increasing. The Hill’s readers would be better served if, going forward in this age of highly politicized science, its writers sought out real world data on any crop being discussed, before referencing a single new report as proof of harm to a crop and quoting only its authors as if they were the sole arbiters of truth on the topic.
