Written by James Taylor

Global warming alarmists and their media allies launched a new scare last week, claiming that global warming is causing crop failures and food shortages around the globe.  In one of their biggest whoppers ever, the media are claiming that global warming has displaced “millions” of farmers in India and is causing – or will soon cause – similar devastation to farmers and crops in Bangladesh, Syria, and Honduras.  Objective evidence, however, decimates the assertion and shows that crop yields continue to set annual records as growing seasons lengthen, frost events become less frequent, soil moisture improves, and more atmospheric carbon dioxide fertilizes crops and plant life.

A January 10 Google News search for “global warming” listed near the top of its search results an article titled “How soon will climate change force you to move?” by an outlet called Fast Company.  Among other sensationalist climate claims, the article makes the claims listed above about global warming, crop failures, and resulting forced migration.  Fast Company, as it turns out, is trying to pull a fast one on you.

It is true that waxing and waning food production has been one of the most powerful components in the rise and fall of civilizations.  At Katowice, Poland, during the United Nations COP24 climate meetings in November 2018, Heartland Institute senior fellow Dennis Avery powerfully showed that throughout history, periods of increased crop yields have led to rising civilizations and expanding human populations.  Conversely, periods of declining crop yields triggered the fall of civilizations and led to famine, death, and contracting human populations.

Importantly, Avery showed that periods of global warmth stimulated the increased crop yields that led to expanding human populations.  Periods of global cooling repressed crop yields and led to misery, death, and contracting human populations.  The question is, has anything changed such that our modest present warming is causing declining crop production and resulting catastrophes?

Let’s first examine the claims regarding India.  Fast Company claims that “drought in some areas has forced millions of farmers to move.” For support, the article cites a Reuters article from July 2018 that interviews a failed farmer from India’s Madhya Pradesh state claiming that global warming and poor rainfall caused his failure as a farmer and his relocation to metropolitan New Delhi.  Poor rainfall “has caused repeated and widespread crop failures,” Reuters claims.  In summary, Fast Company cites another news organization’s profile of a failed farmer to support its alarmist climate assertions.

However, crop data from India eviscerate the claim that global warming, through drought or any other mechanism, is causing rampant crop failure in India.  The Indian government reports that Indian farmers produced a record amount of food grains in 2017-2018, topping the previous record that was set in 2016-2017.  “The year 2017-18 had, in fact, witnessed record production of all major crops like Rice (112.91 MT), wheat (99.70 MT), coarse cereals (46.99 MT) and pulses (25.23 MT),” the Times of India reported, citing official government data.

Notably, favorable climate conditions – and most importantly, abundant rainfall – spurred the record crop production.  “Backed by good monsoon rainfall last year, India had produced record 284.83 million tonnes of foodgrains in 2017-18 crop year,” the Times of India observed.

The 2017-18 Indian crop year merely continued a longstanding trend of record crop production as our planet modestly warms.  The international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that Indian farmers have successively set new records almost every year this decade.

The Fast Company and Reuters articles are not outliers.  Global warming activists in the establishment media are always looking to find and interview somebody who blames his own personal shortcomings and misfortune on global warming.  But if you are a farmer in India, and you are a failure at your craft, you are the exception rather than the rule.  The objective data show, without any room for debate, that crop production continues to improve and set records nearly every year as our modest global warming continues.

Perhaps Fast Company’s discredited claims about global warming, drought, and crop failures in India are an isolated error, and the article is correct about its claims regarding other countries and regions.  Actually, no.

According to agricultural economists at the World Bank, as reported by CEIC Data, Bangladesh enjoyed record crop production in 2016, the last year for which data are available.  The 2016 record beat out the previous record year, 2014, and was preceded by the third highest production year, 2015.  Do you see a pattern here?  Crop production in Bangladesh is 33 percent higher than it was merely a decade ago.  According to a World Bank report accompanying the 2016 data, “Bangladesh’s rural economy, and specifically agriculture, have been powerful drivers of poverty reduction in Bangladesh since 2000.”

How about Honduras?  The International Food Policy Research Institute, citing official government data, documents that in 2016 – the most recent year for which there are data – Honduras achieved record production for each of its three staple food crops.  Honduran farmers produce record amounts of rice, wheat, and maize.  The 2016 record beat the previous record, set in 2015.  The next most productive crop year was 2014, followed by 2013.  Moreover, Coffee Bureau Intelligence reports that coffee-drinkers and coffee farmers also have reason to rejoice – as Honduran coffee production is believed to have set new records in 2018.  “Since 2014-2015, Honduras coffee production has increased by more than 12% per year,” Coffee Bureau Intelligence reports.

Syrian crop production also defies alarmist claims.  United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show an approximately 50-percent increase in Syrian crop production since 1995.  Moreover, the Arab Spring democracy uprisings in Syria and elsewhere, which climate alarmists blame on global warming, occurred in 2011, a year in which Syria produced its eighth highest crop yields in history.

Fast Company cites four specific nations in support of its narrative that global warming is causing rampant crop failures, which in turn is causing mass migration.  Objective data show, beyond dispute, that Fast Company’s claims are flat-out wrong.  But in today’s agenda-driven media climate, don’t expect Fast Company, other media outlets, or Google News to post any corrections to the false reporting.

This article was originally presented on americanthinker.com

SAVE THE DATE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2017

Illinois Family Institute’s
Faith, Family and Freedom Banquet

In an interview posted at the Accuracy in Media website, Lt. Colonel Allen West delivers what conservatives have come to expect from him since his arrival on the national political scene back in 2010 when he was elected to Congress from Florida.

We are thrilled to announce that Lt. Colonel Allen West (Ret.) will be giving the keynote address at IFI’s 2017 Family and Freedom Fall Banquet. As an outspoken advocate for the family and freedom, West is becoming known as one of the great conservative spokespersons of our time, and for good reason.

West firmly believes inspiring hope for this generation and those to come is critical to our nation’s future. He is an author and was a conservative leader in Congress. Currently he contributes to Fox News, works with the London Center for Policy Research, writes for various media outlets and is the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a public policy research organization.

Whether the topic is military readiness (“people sittin’ around at a desk pushin’ pencils don’t protect the nation”), or education (“the money should follow the child”), or the political swamp that is Washington, D.C. (“they chase the news cycle…sooner or later you gotta have an adult in the room that does not chase the news cycle”), Colonel West’s delivery is that of a decorated military veteran impatient with those who are “worried about political gimmicks.”

In the interview, West hit Democrats hard: “[T]he other side says they’re all about pro-choice, but not when it comes to education, not when it comes to tax policy or anything else, only when it comes to killing kids.”

Earlier this year in an op ed titled, “The Grand Delusion of the Progressive Left,” West wrote that one “case of delusion was to try and make the American people believe that Keynesian economic policy, tax and spend, was still viable.”

Obama in his eight years focused more on wealth redistribution, you know, we all do better when we “spread the wealth around.” Furthermore, Obama made the seminal statement which presented a window into the mindset of the progressive left when he stated, “if you own a business, you didn’t build that.” There could be no more disrespectful, delusional, assertion directed towards the hard working American and their indomitable entrepreneurial spirit.

Obama and his disciples of economic disaster failed to grasp the concept that economic growth emanates not from Washington DC, but rather from the policies that unleash American investment, ingenuity, and innovation…along with production and manufacturing.

Days before Donald Trump was inaugurated, West wrote about “The Future of Conservatism in America.” He emphasized the need to get capital investment into economically depressed urban areas. Also needed are policies that will strengthen the traditional two parent home, especially in the black community which has fallen from almost 77%, prior to Johnson’s policies, to now 24%”:

What policies will give parents better educational opportunities, choice, for their children, not relegating them to failing government schools? Interesting, Barack Obama canceled the DC school voucher program, yet dispatched his kids to the prestigious Sidwell Friends School. For progressive socialism, it is about do as we say, not as we do.

What policies will create a safe environment for all Americans reestablishing the rule of law and order in our communities? The travesty that is Chicago must end, and sadly it is a cancer that has metastasized all over our Nation.

Conservatism is the answer, whereby progressive socialism, totally emotional based, has only served to exacerbate these issues and make them worse. And in response to the failures, it becomes a game of seeking blame, not one of self-reflection, you know, it is the fault of Fox News and the Russians.

“I was born and raised in the historic inner city Atlanta neighborhood called the Old Fourth Ward,” West writes, and notes that his parents were registered Democrats, but that they “inculcated in me these foundational conservative values — faith, family, individual responsibility, advancement through education, and service to the Nation.”

“I was not just blessed to have two superb parents,” West writes, “but parents who were American Patriots.”

SAVE THE DATE: Friday, October 27, 2017 at The Stonegate in Hoffman Estates.

Our Private Reception begins at 6:00 PM and costs $150.00 per person; which includes hors d’oeuvres, your picture with Col. West, a signed book and the main banquet.

Dinner begins at 7:00 PM and costs $80.00 per person if purchased before Labor Day.

Reserve your tickets online today or call the IFI office (708) 781-9328 to or click HERE to make your reservations.

Program advertisements & banquet sponsorships available.

Written by Don Irvine, Accuracy in Media

Last Friday evening at the  South Carolina Democratic Party’s annual dinner, party chairman Dick Harpootlian said he hoped that gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen would send Gov. Nikki Haley “back to wherever the hell she came from,” in an obvious reference to Haley’s Indian heritage.

Harpootlian, who has a reputation for shooting his mouth off—he accused Lindsey Graham of being ”light in the loafers” in 2002—defended his remarks by saying he was referring to the country Haley came from and not her Indian heritage.

That explanation didn’t sit too well with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who said, “you don’t do that,” noting that Haley was raised in South Carolina, attended Clemson and that her parents were Sikh immigrants.

Brzezinski, before admitting that a liberal bias was protecting Harpootlian, also mentioned that this wasn’t the first time Harpootlian attacked Haley. Last year he said she was missing in action and “down in the bunker, a la Eva Braun.” Then came the acknowledgement:

Let me just say, fair enough, that if a Republican did this, we’d be covering it like crazy — so we’re covering it because it was wrong and those statements were absolutely wrong.

While Mark Halperin didn’t concede that there had been a liberal bias, both Willie Geist said Mike Barnicle agreed that if it had been the head of the South Carolina Republican Party making a similar remark about a Democrat, the reaction would have been very different, with Barnicle adding, “we would have led with it.”

For the rest of the liberal media, what Harpootlian said isn’t racist, because as we learned during the 2012 election, Democrats can’t be racist.

UPDATE: Harpootlian now says he meant Haley should return to her previous profession—she was an accountant at her parent’s clothing store.