A historic drought has already wilted U.S. corn crops, and the damage has only begun
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That's not the case in developing nations, where hundreds of millions live on plain tortillas or bread and the cost of commodities really is the cost of food. A reduction in the American harvest translates to higher prices overseas. Global food prices have slowly but steadily increased since 2004, with sharp spikes in 2007 and 2010. It's likely not a coincidence that social unrest in places like Latin America and the Middle East followed those spikes. Global stocks of corn and soybeans were tight even before the drought. "We're on the verge of another crisis, the third one in five years, and likely to be the worst yet," says Yaneer Bar-Yam, a researcher at the New England Complex Systems Institute and the co-author of a new paper on the 2012 drought.
Much depends on whether the drought of 2012 really is just a flash. Though some much needed rain fell on the Midwest toward the end of July, forecasters are predicting that the drought will last until at least October, if not longer. And then there are the years beyond. While climate change has had an uncertain effect on this year's drought--blame La Nia, the periodic ocean cooling that can wreak havoc with weather--there's general agreement that dry conditions will become ever more common in the Midwest as the world warms. The creeping disaster could be here to stay.