Climate change and modernization drive structural realignments in European grain production

Abstract

Charting the long-term trends in European wheat and maize yields and harvested areas and the relation of yields to climatic and economic drivers, two profound spatial processes become apparent. One consequence of the relatively late modernization of Eastern Europe has been to shift the focus of grain production from West to East. The warming trend prevailing over the past decades in the summer and winter seasons has been accompanied by a South to North shift in the harvested areas. The combination of these two processes has meant that the north-eastern sector of the European grain chessboard has emerged as the main benefciary. There, the relatively low sensitivity of cereals to climatic change plus high economic growth rates have been accompanied by the most dynamic increases in cereal yields on the continent. As a result, a modern version of the 3000-year-old grain distribution system of the Ancient World is being restored before our eyes. One noteworthy finding is that increasing January–March temperatures have had a significant positive impact on wheat yields from Northern to South-Eastern Europe, and this is, at least in part, compensating for the negative impact of summer warming.

Full text

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Climate change and modernization
drive structural realignments
in European grain production
Z. Pinke1*, B. Decsi2, A. Jámbor3, M. K. Kardos2, Z. Kern4, Z. Kozma2 & T. Ács2
Charting the long-term trends in European wheat and maize yields and harvested areas and the
relation of yields to climatic and economic drivers, two profound spatial processes become apparent.
One consequence of the relatively late modernization of Eastern Europe has been to shift the focus
of grain production from West to East. The warming trend prevailing over the past decades in the
summer and winter seasons has been accompanied by a South to North shift in the harvested areas.
The combination of these two processes has meant that the north-eastern sector of the European
grain chessboard has emerged as the main beneciary. There, the relatively low sensitivity of cereals
to climatic change plus high economic growth rates have been accompanied by the most dynamic
increases in cereal yields on the continent. As a result, a modern version of the 3000 year-old grain
distribution system of the Ancient World is being restored before our eyes. One noteworthy nding is
that increasing January–March temperatures have had a signicant positive impact on wheat yields
from Northern to South-Eastern Europe, and this is, at least in part, compensating for the negative
impact of summer warming.
Wheat (Triticum aestivum) provides almost 20% of humanity’s energy intake1,2. Providing ca. one-third of the
world’s annual wheat harvest, Europe is a centre of global wheat production, while if one considers wheat exports,
European countries accounted for 53% of global wheat exports between 2013 and 20173. Maize (Zea mays L.)
is the primary forage of livestock globally, and a staple food in certain tropical and sub-tropical areas4. As with
wheat, Europe’s share of total global maize production (ca. 11%), is far exceeded by its share of global maize
exports (30% between 2013 and 2017)3. What is more, in global terms, wheat and maize production has grown
most dynamically in Eastern Europe in recent decades5–7. Meanwhile, the wheat production of other leading
producers, e.g. Australia, China and a major part of India, and maize production in Northern China, Northern
India and Central America has stagnated3,8. As a result, Eastern European countries have taken over the leading
positions in global export rankings in recent years3.
Eastern Europe as a supplier of grain to other regions has a long story9. e fertile croplands of the Black
Sea hinterland had been integrated into the Mediterranean Greek trading system by the early 2nd millennium
BC. e steady, regular supply of grain from the Black Sea Basin was underway, and was to become by the latest
in the fourth century BC10,11 a key resource maintaining the relatively high population density in the Eastern
Mediterranean world. Subsequent developments notwithstanding, for example, hegemony over the majority
of Black Sea region by, among others, the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Russian empires, the grain of the
Eastern European steppe was an integral part of Eastern Mediterranean food security until the communist
takeover12,13. What is more, Baltic grain, from Poland, Lithuania and other Eastern entities was a key component
in Scandinavian and Western European food security from the thirteenth century till the nineteenth century
“overseas grain invasion”14,15. e biophysical basis of the high grain production potential in Eastern Europe is
that some of the richest top soils in the world (Chernozems, Mollisols in the USDA taxonomy) cover vast areas
in the region16. is outstanding natural soil fertility is not just important in and of itself, but plays a key role in
climate resilience, mitigating extremities associated with the continental climate that characterizes Central and
Eastern Europe17. However, even these relatively favorable natural conditions could not mitigate or compensate
for the extreme eects of collectivization, the liquidation of earlier elites and the disengagement from the world
economy prevalent under the communist regimes18. Due to technological disruption occasioned by this, the
OPEN
1Department of Physical Geography, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, Budapest 1117,
Hungary. 2Department of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and
Economics, Műegyetem rkp. 3, Budapest 1111, Hungary. 3Department of Agribusiness, Corvinus University of
Budapest, Fővám tér 8, Budapest 1093, Hungary. 4Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Institute for
Geological and Geochemical Research, Budaörsi út 45, Budapest 1112, Hungary. *email: pinkezsolt@gmail.com
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productivity of Eastern Europe could not evolve and acute food shortage moreover famines became common-
place in communist regimes19,20.
e dynamic growth in grain yields brought about by the Green Revolution of the mid-twentieth century had
slowed down by the 1990s, reaching a plateau, or even turning to a decrease in key agricultural regions of the
world21; this, in turn, has caused serious concerns about global food security22,23. e direct and indirect eects of
climate change24,25, the diminution of freshwater resources26,27, the simplication of crop rotation and decreasing
articial fertilizer use28 are mentioned among the main drivers of this negative process. Droughts, diminishing
freshwater supplies27,29–31, and soil degradation due to poor land management in industrialized agriculture17 are
core problems over the greater part of Europe. For these reasons, tens of millions of hectares of fertile soils have
suered catastrophic erosion across Eastern Europe17. erefore, adaptation to climate change, and specically
an enhanced ability to adapt to heatwaves, have now become top priorities for European agriculture25,32,33. Sta-
tistical and process-based model analyses suggest that a 1°C rise in global mean temperature will lead to a 4.1
to 6.4% decrease in wheat yields if the sown area remains constant and there is no fundamental improvement in
technology34,35. Furthermore, drylands such as those surrounding the Mediterranean Basin, or continental elds,
can expect a greater degree of warming than humid lands36,37, and it is precisely in these drylands, rather than
humid zones, where increasing temperature accounts for a signicantly higher degree of interannual uctuation
in cereal yields29,38. Besides these negative eects, current environmental changes may have positive impacts on
certain plant communities, including cultivated plants in several regions. Comparing plants utilizing dierent
photosynthetic pathways, the general expectation is that C3 plants, representing ca. 90% of plant species, includ-
ing wheat, have been beneciaries of the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration, while C4 plants, including
maize, are relatively unresponsive to rising CO2 levels39,40. at said, there is a broad consensus that the expected
impacts of climate change on grain production will be more positive in Northern Europe than other parts of the
continent39,41. is includes increasing precipitation counterbalancing the negative impact of warming in the
British Isles and the Atlantic coasts of Western Europe42. Beyond this, the lengthening of growing seasons due to
warming generates a shi in crop cultivation observable along the northern border of the European croplands43.
ese regional dierences in vulnerability also manifest themselves on the map of potential wheat and maize
yields44. Taken together, the importance of Europe in global food security, and the rapid change in production
structure necessitate the identication of yield trends and the main drivers behind changes in yields over longer
periods on the continent33. Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of the overall pattern of trends in the wheat and
maize yields and harvested areas of European countries over the past 25years is still lacking.
e expected agricultural development including yield increase in cropland farming may come from the
improving environmental conditions and the growth of the invested human and material resources45. e esti-
mated share of human input in wheat and maize production ranged between 91–98 and 91–100%, respectively, in
the EU countries in 200846. To assess the measure of agricultural inputs (utilized material resources) in a uniform
way, the total factor productivity (TFP), the most popular measure of agricultural productivity, was invented47.
e TFP index is dened as the ratio of output and inputs48. e calculation of inputs to the agriculturalTFP is
based on net capital stock intensity, the number of farm labourers, the extent of the land, the amount of or total
metric horse-power of farm machinery, and the sum of fertilizers and livestock47,49. Within the framework of a
science-based agriculture50 and the transformation of environmental conditions, however, the “residual” part of
the outputs that cannot be accounted for the inputs48 may increase precipitously to an extreme degree, and the
listed input factors cannot bring a profound understanding of agricultural productivity growth50,51.
Considering these points a preliminary examination of the available TFP indices was made49, and it was
found that there are no consistent data on agricultural productivity for all European countries over the long
term (Supplementary TableS8). Self and Grabowski (2007)52 suggest that the “improvements in agricultural
technology have a signicant impact on long-run economic growth”. Moreover, a strong dependence of agricul-
ture development on the macroeconomic environment53–56 and bidirectional correlations are identied between
economic growth and agricultural productivity increase in many studies, suggesting causal44,57,58 and non-causal
connections59. us, in this study, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita,as a proxy of technologicaland
institutional background of agricultural production was employed.
In an attempt to ll in the gaps mentioned above, long-term trends in the wheat and maize yields and har-
vested areas of allEuropean countries are charted for 1993–2017, andfor1961–1991, in the case of territorially
continuous European countries. Following this, the associations will be mapped between (1) precipitation and
temperature, and GDPchange, as explanatory factors, and (2) wheat and maize yields, as response variables. Due
to the fact that available time series do not dierentiate between wheat sown in autumn and spring for Europe,
and further considering that an overwhelming majority of European wheat is sown in autumn (> 95%)60, here
wheat was examined as winterwheat. A hypothesis of the research is that rising summer temperatures have
had an increasingly negative impact on cereal yields in the majority of Europe. Consequently, and conversely,
the positive impact of precipitation may be expected to increase signicantly in summer months. Finally, an
intensive yield convergence driven by economic, including agrotechnological development is also predicted for
the post-communist European states, with its beginnings datable to the mid-1990s.
Results
Global cereal production. According to World Bank calculations on the basis of data collected by the FAO,
between 1993 and 2017 global cereal production increased from an estimated 1.9 to 3.0 billion tons, a jump of
58%, while the global population rose from 5.5 to 7.5 billion, that is, a growth of 36%61. is spectacular growth
in production was based primarily on eciency gains (Δt ha−1 = 48.4%), since the area under cereal cultivation
only grew by an estimated 5.0% in this period3. As a result, global average per capita cereal production reached
an estimated 0.4 metric tonnes in 2017 (Fig.1), that is, a level 16% higher than 25years previously. e average
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year-to-year rate of increase in global cereal production per capita and global cerealyield (t ha−1) reached 1.4%
and 2.6% between 1961 and 1982, respectively; slowing down to an average 0.2% tonnes per capita increase and
1.5% yield increase in the next 20year period (1983–2002), then rising back to a 1.6% tonnes per capita increase
in production, and 1.8% yield growth between 2003 and 201761. While global cereal production almost quadru-
pled between 1961 and 2017, the cereal area harvested expanded by an estimated 12.9% in this 57year period3,61.
European wheat and maize production. e European average of wheat and maize yields increased
by an estimated 32%, and yields, with a few exceptions, increased signicantly in the majority of European
Figure1. Phases in the changing rates of increase in year-to-year world cereal production per capita (A),
global average of cereal yields (tonne per hectare) (B) and global area under cereal cultivation (C) (1961–2017).
Mha = million hectares. Data source: FAOSTAT
3 and World Bank61.
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countries over the period of 1993–2017. In the case of wheat, however, this development was not continuous,
since in accordance with global trends, the majority of the continent saw a yield stagnation or decline between
the late 1980s and the mid-2000s (Fig.2A, Supplementary Fig.S1). Although yield increase started in several
countries and regions from the 2000s, wheat yield stagnation is observable over the entire period 1993–2017
in Austria, France, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United King-
dom. Meanwhile, maize yield stagnated in Belgium, Bosnia–Herzegovina, France, Italy, Moldova and Slovakia
between 1993 and 2017 (Fig.3C, Supplementary TableS2, Fig.S2). Western Europe is one of the most ecient
cereal producing regions on earth, where wheat and maize yields grew by 52% and 60%, respectively, comparing
the periods of 1961–1991 and 1993–2017 (Table1). No data could be found for cereal production of Eastern
European countries (Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine) before 1992, making it dicult to track long-term
development there. What is certain, however, is that a noticeable transformation took place from 1993–1997 to
2013–2017: wheat production leapt up, from 55 million tonnes per year (Mt y−1) to 95 Mt y−1, implying that what
are now the four Eastern European countries (Table1) are currently responsible for almost an eighth of global
wheat production3. In this 72% increase one factor stands out, namely, yield improvement (Fig.3A,C). Even
more impressive indices may be found in the case of maize, since in Eastern Europe maize production increased
sevenfold, from 6 to 42 Mt y−1 between 1993–1997 and 2013–2017 (Fig.3C). As a result, two formerly negligible
maize producers, Ukraine and Russia, have found a place among the ten world-leaders in maize production. e
Ukrainian maize harvest (27Mt y−1) was almost double that of France (14.7Mt y−1), formerly the leading maize
producer in Europe in 2013–2017, (Supplementary TableS6).
Total wheat production almost doubled in Northern Europe, increased by about a third in Central Europe, by
a h in Western and almost stagnated in Southern Europe between 1993–1997 and 2013–2017. Interestingly,
maize appeared for the rst time in the Danish national agro-statistics in 2010, and another Northern European
country, Lithuania, showed the highest maize yield increase on the continent for the years 1993–2017 (Fig.3C,
Supplementary Fig.2). e area under wheat and maize cultivation also grew by an estimated 1.3 and 1.1 million
hectares in Western and Northern Europe, respectively, over this period. In contrast, the European part of the
Mediterranean region, which covers the countries of Southern and South-Eastern Europe, lost an estimated 5.8
million hectares of wheat and maize elds between 1993 and 2017, and the scale of the loss between 1961 and
2017 may have exceeded 12 million hectares. According to FAO statistics, in these ve decades, an estimated
area of almost 19 million hectares of arable land was abandoned in the region3. is enormous degree of land
abandonment was, however, accompanied by a modest yield increase generally, except in the Eastern Balkan
countries, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
Climatic and economic factors. e annual and summer averages of maximum (Tmax) and mean
(Tmean) air temperature increased signicantly in every country and region of Europe but Ireland between the
periods 1961–1990 and 1993–2017 (Table1). Increase in annual Tmean and Tmax varied between 0.9 and 1.1°C
on the regional scale, and 0.5–1.3°C (ΔTmean = 0.5–1.1°C, ΔTmax = 0.6–1.3°C) on the country scale comparing
1961–1990 to 1993–2017 (Table1, Supplementary TableS3). A wider range (0.3 and 2.1°C) was characteristic of
the amount of seasonal change. e largest summer temperature increase occurred in Austria, Western Europe
(ΔTmeanMay-Aug = 2.1°C and ΔTmaxJuly–August = 1.7°C), while Fennoscandian winters warmed with the greatest
intensity (ΔTmeanJan–March = 1.3–1.9°C) over the last 50 years (Supplementary TableS3). e warming trend
was signicant everywhere on the continent over the period of 1993–2017. By way of contrast, the amounts of
annual and summer precipitation (Prec) have not changed signicantly in any region of the continent over the
last half century. At a higher spatial resolution, a trend-like increase of precipitation amounts can be discerned
in most European countries, while they grew signicantly in the countries of British Isles and Scandinavia. A
non-signicant decreasing trend appeared in the Southern European countries and Hungary, Central Europe
(Supplementary TableS4). e highest annual precipitation sums were found in the Alps, and the West Balkan
countries, as well as in Ireland and Norway, while the Eastern European countries and Finland got the lowest
precipitation (Supplementary Table1).
A growing GDP per capita characterised the entire continent comparing 1993–1997 to 2013–2017. While
Southern and Northern Europe saw an estimated 73.7% and 104% per capita increase in GDP (taking the
1993–1997 mean as 100%), the Baltic and Balkan countries saw increases of 473% and a 309%, respectively
(Fig.4A). Similarly, a fourfold increase in GDP per capita was seen in the post-communist Eastern and Central
European regions between 1993–1997 and 2013–2017. Meanwhile, in Western Europe, GDP per capita only
doubled in the same period. A conspicuous East–West gradient may be observed in national growth rates of
wheat and maize yields and GDP per capita (Figs.3A,C and 4A).
The associations between GDP per capita and cereal yields. e national growth rates of GDP per
capita explained 69% of the variances in the yield growth rates of European wheat (p < 0.01; df = 31) and 26% in
the case of maize (p = 0.01; df = 31) on a continental scale between 1993 and 2017, with the exception of two out-
liers (Lithuania and Moldova). On the country scale, signicant associations between GDP per capita and cereal
yields were found in the majority of countries for this period (Fig.4B,C). e strongest GDP per capita-maize
yield relationships occurred in the Baltic countries (R2 = 0.59–0.70; p < 0.01; df = 23 and 21), Albania (R2 = 0.86;
p < 0.01; df = 23), Turkey (R2 = 0.74; p < 0.01; df = 23) and Belarus (R2 = 0.66; p < 0.01; df = 23) andstrong GDP-
yield associations appeared in the big Eastern European producers, too (R2Ukraine = 0.60; R2Russia = 0.56; p < 0.01,
df = 23 ) . As for the biggest cereal producer, GDP increase explained 37% of the variances ofwheat yield change
in Russia during 1993–2017.
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Figure2. Rank table changes of (A) wheat and (B) maize yields (t ha−1) in the 15 biggest European producers
between the periods 1993–1997 and 2013–2017. Green lines indicate the three countries with the highest yield
growth and red lines the three countries with the lowest yield growth. Supplementary Figs.S1 and S2 show the
total European yield rankings. Data sources: FAOSTAT
3.
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Temperature, precipitation and cereal yield associations. e period of 1961–2017 brought a spec-
tacular intensication in linear associations between climatic and cereal yield variances in Europe (Figs.5, 6,
7). May–July mean temperature showed a signicant relationship to wheat yields, and this was in a negative
direction in the case of 49% of European wheat elds between 1961 and 1990. en, in the period 1993–2017,
however, the area in which this signicant negative relation grew to 78% of the area under wheat cultivation
(Fig.5A,B).
e greatest degree of sensitivity of wheat yields to increasing summer temperature (Table1) was found in
Romania (R2 = 0.63; p < 0.01; df = 22), and also in the neighbouring countries, indicating the presence of a sensi-
tive zone of wheat cultivation in Central and Eastern Europe in the period of 1993–2017 (Fig.5B). Interestingly,
the signicant negative relationship between May–July temperature and wheat yield observed for the period
of 1961–1990 in France and Greece had disappeared by 1993–2017. May–July mean temperature accounted
for an estimated 22% of wheat yield variances over the period of 1993–2017 (R2weighted by harvested area = 0.25;
R2weighted by total production = 0.22; R2range = 0.14–0.63) in ten big wheat producers on the continent (Russia, Germany,
Ukraine, Turkey, Romania, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechia and Serbia), where almost two-thirds of
European and a quarter of global wheat was produced between 2013 and 2017. An increasing positive impact
of January–March Tmean on wheat yields was observed in 9.5% of European areas under wheat cultivation in
Northern and Central Europe comparing 1961–1990 to 1993–2017 (Fig.5). A signicant relationship between
January–March Tmean and wheat yield appeared in Denmark in 1961–1990 (R2 = 0.22; p = 0.01; df = 22), though
this vanished over the period of 1993–2017. Meanwhile, the negative direction observed in the association
between September–July precipitation and wheat yield switched to a positive one almost everywhere between
Figure3. Country-by-country growth rates (%) in wheat (A) and maize yields (B), and wheat (C) and maize
harvested areas (D) in Europe between 1993–1997 and 2013–2017 (1993–1997 = 100%). Data source: FAOSTAT
3, blank map source: Eurostat GISCO63, soware: QGIS 3.1064.
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1961–1990 and 1993–2017, except in countries in the wettest regions (the British Isles, Low Countries, Switzer-
land and Albania) (Fig.5e,f).
Similarly, an increase in the positive impact of May–August precipitation on maize yields was
observedinmanycountries of the continent (Fig.6C, D). e countries where a signicant positive relationship
was found between 1961 and 1990 covered an estimated 30.5% of European areas of maize cultivation, but this
positive precipitation yield relationship was found in countries covering 63.7% of European maize elds between
1993 and 2017 (Fig.6C,D). e temperature maize yield association was characterised by a more dynamic trans-
formation. e positive relationships obtaining between July–August Tmax and maize yield in the 1961–1990
period had disappeared everywhere by 1993–2017. In the meanwhile, the areal extent of the signicant negative
impact of July–August Tmax on maize yields found in 23% of European maize cultivation came to extend across
almost the entire (94%) continent (Figs.6A,B). e tendency observed is alarming, since the average of tem-
perature variables increased signicantly between the periods 1961–1990 and 1993–2017 (Table1). July–August
maximum temperature accounted for an estimated 40% of the variance in annual maize yield over the period
1993–2017 (R2weighted by harvested area = 0.43; R2weighted by total production = 0.40; R2range = 0.00–0.67) in the ten biggest maize
Table 1. Regional averages of the annual and May–August precipitation amounts, mean and maximum
temperatures, and wheat and maize harvested areas, yields and total harvests in Europe, 1961–1990 and
1993–2017. © Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland and the United
Kingdom; ‡Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine; §Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Czechia, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia (Yugoslavia
1961–1990) (Czechia and Slovakia fall under the term Czechoslovakia between 1961 and 1990); ◊ Greece, Italy,
Portugal, Spain and Turkey; # Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden (Lithuania
alone represents Northern Europe in the case of maize between 1993 and 2017, since maize was cultivated
only in this country during the entire period). Mha = million hectares, Mt = million tonnes. *Signicant
dierence from 1961–1990 to 1993–2017 (p < .05) using Welsh t test. Data sources: CRU TS 4.0462, FAOSTAT
3,
Supplementary TablesS3, S4, S5 and S6.
Period Season Europe Western
Europe©Eastern Europe‡Central Europe§Southern
Europe◊Northern
Europe#
Precipitation, mm
1961–1990 Year 641 759 560 646 601 624
May–Aug 226 259 247 278 132 248
1993–2017 Year 652 782 566 666 591 661*
May–Aug 228 273 239 279 126 270*
Mean temperature (°C)
1961–1990 Year 9.7 9.6 8.0 9.3 12.4 5.4
May–Aug 17.6 15.7 18.0 17.5 19.6 14.4
1993–2017 Year 10.7* 10.6* 9.0* 10.2* 13.2* 6.5*
May–Aug 18.7* 16.8* 19.2* 18.8* 20.8* 15.1*
Maximum temperature (°C)
1961–1990 Year 14.4 13.8 12.3 12.7 18.6 9.6
May–Aug 23.3 20.6 23.5 21.9 26.0 19.2
1993–2017 Year 15.3* 14.9* 13.3* 13.8* 19.6* 10.6*
May–Aug 24.5* 21.9* 24.8* 23.3* 27.4* 20.1*
Wheat
1961–1990
Harvested area,
Mha 8.7 9.6 17.0
Yield, t ha−1 4.6 2.9 1.8
Total harvest, Mt 40.0 27.8 30.6
1993–2017
Harvested area,
Mha 66.0 10.8* 30.3 9.0* 13.8* 2.1
Yield, t ha−1 3.4 7.2* 2.3 3.7* 2.6* 5.2
Total harvest, Mt 226.7 77.8* 68.6 33.3* 35.9* 10.9
Maize
1961–1990
Harvested area,
Mha 1.8 7.6 2.6
Yield, t ha−1 5.2 3.4 4.0
Total harvest, Mt 9.4 25.8 10.3
1993–2017
Harvested area,
Mha 16.4 2.4* 4.0 7.7 2.3* 0.0
Yield, t ha−1 5.2 8.9* 3.8 3.8* 8.5* 3.6
Total harvest, Mt 85.4 21.4* 15.2 29.3* 19.5* 0.0
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Figure4. Country-by-country growth rates (%) of GDP per capita (A), with the coecients of determination
(R2) between national growth rates of GDP per capita and wheat (B) and maize yields (C) in the European
countries in the period 1993–2017. Direction and signicance of mean temperature trends in the European
countries between 1993 and 2017. Calculations performed for 0.1° × 0.1° grid cells. N: negative direction; P:
positive direction; S: signicant; NS: non-signicant. Data source: FAOSTAT
3, World Bank61 and CRU TS 4.0462,
blank map source: Eurostat GISCO63, soware: QGIS 3.1064.
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Figure5. Coecients of determination (R2) between the rst-dierences of May–July mean temperature
and wheat yields for (A) 1961–1990 and (B) 1993–2017; between the rst-dierences of January–March
mean temperature and wheat yields for (C) 1961–1990 and (D) 1993–2017; between the rst-dierences
of September–July precipitation sums and wheat yields for (E) 1961–1990 and (F) 1993–2017 in European
croplands. Data source: FAOSTAT3 and CRU TS 4.0462, blank map source: Eurostat GISCO63, soware: QGIS
3.1064.
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producers on the continent (Ukraine, France, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Spain, Germany
and Poland), where almost 80% of European and 10% of global maize production took place.
Both the strength and the spatial validity of linear associations have increased between the combined tem-
perature/precipitation climatic factor and wheat and maize yields in Europe over the period 1961–1990. As a
result of this process, Central European wheat and maize yields was found to have the highest degree of climate
sensitivity on the continent (Fig.7). Overall, the combined temperature-precipitation predictor has proven capa-
ble of explaining between 12 and 67% of year-to-year changes in wheat yields, and this association was found to
be signicant for 90% of European areas under wheat cultivation during the period of 1993–2017. e combined
climatic factor accounted for between 24 and 81% of maize yields in 92% of the European areas under maize
cultivation. Within the combined (temperature-precipitation) climatic variable, temperature and precipitation
were identied as the principal factor in the case of 65% and 25% of the wheat growing areas, respectively, over
the period of 1993–2017 (Fig.7B). Almost the same spatial ratio was arrived at for temperature and precipita-
tion as the primary explanatory factor in the case of maize yield regressions, too. is temperature—precipita-
tion spatial ratio ranged from 43 to 53% in the case of wheat and from 6 to 31% in the case of maize during the
1961–1990 period (Fig.7A,C).
Discussion
e dynamic growth in the global average of grain production (annual 1.4% per capita) brought about by the
Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s slowed down between the 1980s and the 2000s (annual 0.6% per
capita). Now, however, the current trend towards increasing production (an annual 1.6% per capita) harks back
Figure6. Coecients of determination (R2) between the rst-dierences of July–August max temperature and
maize yields for (A) 1961–1990 and (B) 1993–2017, as well as between May–August precipitation sums and
maize yields for (C) 1961–1990 and (D) 1993–2017 in European croplands. Data source: FAOSTAT3 and CRU
TS 4.0462, blank map source: Eurostat GISCO63, soware: QGIS 3.1064.
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to the glory days of the Green Revolution, seemingly refuting the earlier gloomy predictions63 that the forecast
3 billion tonnes annual grain demand for 2050 neither could nor would be satised. e spectacular develop-
ment of global cereal production was mainly explained by dynamic eciency gains accompanied by a relatively
slow increase of harvested areas (Fig.1). is positive development in global food security strongly challenges
the validity of former bleak prospect that was raised at the end of an almost two-decade stagnation of yield and
production trends in key areas of cereal production8,21,28. e geographically varying drivers behind the trans-
formations underline the notion that global analyses would benet from and be complemented by in-depth
analyses of regional patterns.
A profound realignment of the regional arrangement has been observed in European wheat and maize pro-
duction over the period of 1993–2017. Two spatial processes have largely determined the direction of the trans-
formation: (1) while the agro-technological advancement of Eastern Europe has pulled the focus of European
cereal production from West to East, (2) a warming climate has placed pressure on growing areas. e resultant
vector of these two factors seems to indicate the north-eastern sector of the European grain chessboard, the Baltic
states as the main beneciaries of recent transformations (Figs.2, 3 and 4). Indeed, the highest growth rates in
wheat yield were observed in Latvia (92%), followed by Estonia (87%) and Lithuania (86%) from 1993–1997 to
2013–2017 (Fig.2A, Supplementary Fig.S1). e highest increases in maize yield were observed in Lithuania
(385%) and Belarus (213%) (Supplementary Fig.S2). In this region, the greatest increase in yield on the continent
Figure7. Coecients of determination (R2) between the rst-dierences of the combined explanatory factors
of the averages of May–July mean temperature and September–July precipitation sum and wheat yields for (A)
1961–1990 and (B) 1993–2017, as well as between the combined explanatory factor of the averages of July–
August max temperature and May–August precipitation sums and maize yields for (C) 1961–1990 and (D)
1993–2017 in European croplands. Data source: FAOSTAT
3 and CRU TS 4.0462, blank map source: Eurostat
GISCO63, soware: QGIS 3.1064.
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was accompanied by the greatest increases in GDP, a factor which explains an estimated 61 to 88% of the increases
in wheat and maize yields between 1993 and 2017 (Fig.4). e shi in habitat range for many plant species is a
corollary of climate change64,65. Due to the warming climate, maize has appeared in the agricultural statistics of
northern countries where it had not been previously cultivated3. Countries which had traditionally been maize
importers, like Poland and Russia, have become major exporters.
Although the “invasion of Eastern European grain” may appear to be a new phenomenon, this is only true in
the context of modern times; what is, in fact, happening is that a 3000-year-old grain production-consumption
system is being restored before our eyes. e two main elements of this system are a food surplus in the plains
surrounding the Black Sea Basin and food demand in the Mediterranean Region. is structure was discovered
and developed by the ancient Greeks and it lasted, with some interruptions, until the end of the empire of the
Russian Tsars13,66,67. With the collapse of Romanov Russia, food exports from Eastern Europe disappeared from
the market, and the Soviet regime was not able to achieve a stable and lasting self-suciency in food. e almost
complete isolation of the Soviet bloc countries from international technological development and markets, the
distorted terms of trade between communist countries, the low level of capitalization of the entire region, the
collectivisation of lands and capital goods that acted as a demotivating factor on labour increased the long-term
East–West divide of Europe. e degree of technological backwardness became extreme in certain cases before
the collapse of communist regimes. From the Eastern European regime changes of 1989 and aer, an almost
century-long interruption ended. A rapid technological transfer lurched from West to East and the “natural”
ow of food from the Black Sea Basin to the Mediterranean is being re-established. As a result, post-communist
Eastern and Central European countries have come to occupy high positions in rankings of global exporters.
e outlined food production-consumption system has emerged as a part of long-term historical structures and
worked under peace times over the last 3000 years when the life took place in “normal operation”. Wars, like the
Ottoman-Russian wars in the 18th century, Crimean War in the 1850s, the Russian invasion in Ukraine today, or
other stochastic phenomena such as the irrational communist regime in the Sovietunion can block the operation
of the production-consumption system.
e loser in the big regional transformation is the European part of the Mediterranean region, including
Southern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula. ere, the area of wheat and maize cultivation declined by an esti-
mated 12 million ha between 1961 and 2017, and the rate of shrinkage has accelerated in the rst decades of the
twenty-rst century. e abandonment of cereal elds was a part of a wider landscape transformation in the Euro-
pean part of the Mediterranean, since almost 19 million ha of arable land was abandoned here over the period
1961–20173. e extent of the deserted arable lands in this region was equivalent to an estimated two-thirds of the
arable lands in Australia (31 million ha) in 20173. For instance, the cultivated area of the two grains disappeared
almost completely in Portugal. e harvested area of wheat was reduced to half of its former extent in Italy and
Spain and decreased by a third in Greece from 1961 to 2017. e harvested area of maize also shrank to half in
Italy, to two-thirds in Greece and three-quarters in Spain in this period. e rather low wheat yields did, however,
display a modest development curve in the region. Conversely, maize yields in Southern Europe reached almost
10 t ha−1, one of the highest gures for global maize production. Turkey also belongs to this group in which maize
yields have skyrocketed (Figs.2B and 3B). e reason for this dierence in yield trends in the region is that maize
producing areas have been irrigated in a major part of these countries, too, but the importance of wheat, with its
lower yield potential and water use eciency, has diminished in Mediterranean irrigation programs68–70. is
adaptation strategy illustrates that the challenges of a warming climate and shrinking freshwater resources have
narrowed the opportunities for cropland farming in drylands, including the Mediterranean climate zone, where
farming depends more and more on irrigation. e accelerating dynamics of environmental crisis discovered
here37 as well as in model-based predictions19,21 suggest that the signicant shrinkage in the area under cereal
cultivation will continue in this region. Such a rate of cropland loss as this, in turn, highlights the European part
of the Mediterranean Region as a hotspot in terms of global food security issues.
Reviewing the climate impacts on wheat and maize yields set forth here, the positive Tmean and Tmax—yield
relationships observable in the period 1961–1990 had disappeared everywhere by 1993–2017, while on the entire
continent only negative temperature—yield relationships could be found for 1993–2017. e highest degree of
sensitivity of wheat and maize yields to increasing summer temperature was found in Eastern and Central Europe.
ese regions, however, are the centres of the development of crop production in Europe (Table1). e major
part of the European yield gap, i.e. growing potential, was also identied as being located in these regions7,44.
In line with previous research71,72, the results presented here also constitute a warning in relation to this option.
e main conict zone of the economic and climatic lines of force lay in the southern region of the continental
zone, including Moldova. Here, a remarkably large increase in GDP (354%) was observed between 1993–1997
and 2013–2017 (Fig.4A), while at the same time, the vulnerability of wheat and maize yields to climatic factors
was estimated to be the highest on the continent (Figs.5, 6 and 7), and the already low maize yields decreased
further over that time (Fig.3B, Supplementary Fig.S2). An examination of the outlier records does, however,
serve as a warning to avoid any monocausal or oversimplied explanation, indicating the requirement for a more
complex examination of the interconnected environmental and social factors behind these rapid and profound
regional transformations.
Besides negative eects, a positive impact of climate change must also be mentioned, since increasing Janu-
ary–March mean temperatures have had a signicantly positive impact on wheat yields in Central and Northern
Europe. is development is also in line with the results of recent research35 indicating that high latitude frost-
prone agricultural zones will benet from a warming climate. e novelty of this analysis, however, is that it could
be demonstrated that this positive impact of climate change has already begun and has indeed been observable in
extensive regional patterns over recent decades. Another fresh result is that this positive impact can be identied
across a wide zone from Northern Europe to the Northern Balkan Peninsula, overlapping with the Central and
Eastern European regions, where the greatest vulnerability of wheat yields to increasing May–July temperature
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was also identied (Figs.5A,B, 7A,B). e results presented here suggest that the positive impact of warming
January–March temperatures might have compensated for a certain part of the negative impact of increasing
May–July mean temperature on wheat yields in this area (Fig.5A–D).
Method
Putting the research into a broader geographical context, the long-term trends in global cereal production have
been presented. For this, World Bank annual cereal production and the harvested areas of cereals and popula-
tion data61 for the period of 1961–2017 were used. World Bank data for cereal production was based on FAO
datasets30, in which crops harvested for dry grain are classied as cereals, and fodder as well as industrial crops
are excluded73. en, monthly meteorological time series for the 1961–1990 (30-year) and 1993–2017 (25-year)
periods were extracted from the CRU TS 4.04 (land) Tmean, Tmax, Prec, minimum temperature (Tmin), the
Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)74 and the Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI1
and SPEI3)75 climatic variables using the Climate Explorer managed by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological
Institute (KNMI)62,76. National yield averages and harvested areas were obtained from the datasets of the FAO3 for
the same time periods, while the World Bank’s estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of European
countries were used for the period between 1993 and 2017. e 1993–2017 timeframe was selected since a great
number of currently important grain producing European countries attained their status as independent nations
in the early 1990s. To mitigate the power of outliers of certain years 5-year averages (1993–1997, 2003–2007 and
2013–2017) were used in the analysis and visualisation of growth rates (%) and the changes on yield rank tables
for the period 1993–2017 (Fig.2). While Turkey and Russia were included in the analysis, the smallest countries,
for which data were not available in the FAO datasets, were excluded. e regional classication of the countries
followed the FAO and USDA protocol77.
For an explicit spatial analysis, croplands were identied and delineated as 0.5° × 0.5° grid cells in which at
least 20% of the cell area is covered by croplands in the Earthstat cropland dataset (at a resolution of 5 arc min)78.
Using the selected grid cells of the climatic variables that overlap with croplands, spatial averages of monthly
Tmean, Tmax and Prec were calculated for each country and region for the two periods. Using the rst-dierences
method, the variables under examination were detrended. e detrended spatially explicit averages of climatic
variables were then correlated with national averages of wheat and maize yields using ordinary and multiple
linear regression and nonparametric bootstrap resampling methods79,80 for dierent vegetation periods. e
visualisation of yield trends was carried out using slope graphs and locally weighted regression generated by the
CGPfunctions81 and devtools packages in an R environment82. Trends were evaluated via Mann- Kendall tests
using the kendall package83.
Climatic parameters aect plant and seed development in dierent ways in each phenological growth stage of
cultivated wheat species84. But the fact that there are no separate long-term data on yields of winter and spring
wheat (Triticum aestivum), durum wheat (T. durum) or spelt (T. spel ta) does complicate the precise denition of
vegetation periods. e estimated amount of winter wheat as a percentage of all wheat sown in Europe is above
95% for the 2002–2017 period60. In Czechia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden the
share of winter wheat ranged between 75 and 93%, but the share of spring wheat is high in Finland (87%) and
Norway (40%)60. e life-cycle of winter wheat spans the period September/October–June/July, while spring
wheat spans the months between March/April and September/October. e share of durum and spelt in the
total wheat harvest is minor in every European country. September/October–March/April is the period of soil
moisture recharge, characterised by a mostly positive soil water balance (precipitation > evapotranspiration),
and marks the period when wheat is vulnerable to soil saturation (i.e. stress caused by poor soil aeration). Later,
between April and July, however, depending on the soil water balance, the direction of the relationship between
Prec and yield variances is likely to be positive27. is research therefore focuses on the statistical associations
between the September–July precipitation sums, with the May–July mean temperature, PDSI, SPEI 1 and SPEI3 as
independent variables, and annual wheat yields as dependent variables. It was also reasonable to suppose that any
winter and early spring temperature increase would have a positive eect on yields of winter wheat in northern
part of the European cropland areas26 comparing 1961–1990 to 1993–2017, and it was for this reason the linear
relationship between the variables of Jan–March Tmean, Tmin and annual wheat yields was also examined. In the
case of maize, the response of yield to the Tmean and Prec variables was examined for the entire period of active
root water uptake (May–August), but Tmax, PDSI, SPEI 1 and SPEI3 were analysed for the high summer months
(July and August). Of the climatic factors examined, those which explained the highest rate of yield variances
Tmean, Tmax and Prec were selected for the detailed analysis and interpretation in the main text. e determin-
istic coecients of the associations of Tmin-wheat yield, PDSI-wheat and maize yield and the SPEI1-wheat and
maize yield and SPEI3-wheat and maize yield may be found in the Supplementary TableS9–S15. To detect the
impact of technological development between 1993 and 2017, the association between the ratio of changing GDP
per capita as an explanatory variable and the ratio of changing wheat and maize yields as response variables was
determined with the use of linear regression tests. Here, it should be mentioned that the year-to-year complex
index of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in agriculture49 and fertiliser use in the European countries was intended
for use in the analysis of the impact of technological development on yield changes. e available USDA TFP
and FAO fertiliser data, however, was found to contain such serious inaccuracies and internal inconsistencies
(Supplementary TableS8) that these indices proved unsuitable for the intended scientic analyses.
Data availability
All country scale year-to-year data and R codes are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF; https:// doi.
org/ 10. 17605/ OSF. IO/ W6TZN). All country scale averages and test results are available in the Supplementary
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information of the online version of this article. ese data can be used to reproduce all analyses. All other
relevant data are available from the corresponding author on request.
Received: 14 December 2021; Accepted: 11 April 2022
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Acknowledgements
We thank G. L. Lövei for valuable suggestions that improved the manuscript. is research was supported by
the NRDI Fund FK 20 Grant Project no. 134547; the NRDI Fund Grant No. BME-NVA-02 (TKP2021 funding
scheme) Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Inno-
vation Fund and is a contribution to the activity of the Global Land Programme and the PAGES Landcover6k.
Author contributions
Z.P., T.A., Z.K., and Z.K., conceived the study; Z.P., T.A., M.K., Z.K, and Z.K. discussed the GIS analysis; T.A. and
M.K. performed GIS analysis; Z.P., T.A., M.K., Z.K, and Z.K. discussed the statistical analysis; Z.P. performed
statistical analysis; A.J. and Z.P. reviewed data of TFP and fertilizers; B.D. performed maps; Z. P. coordinated the
analysis and wrote the paper. All authors reviewed the paper.
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Funding
Open access funding provided by Eötvös Loránd University.
Competing interests
e authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Supplementary Information e online version contains supplementary material available at https:// doi. org/
10. 1038/ s41598- 022- 10670-6.
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to Z.P.
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