Your favorite foods are at risk from a rapidly warming planet !
Even in the best growing conditions—with moderate weather,
predictable rainfall, and rounded seasons—growing food is hard. Add in
climate volatility, erratic floods, and frequent drought, and the entire
food system becomes an equation of anxiety, hope, and in some regions,
dread. “We have a climate change threat to our food system and not many
strategies to deal with it,” says Michael Puma of Columbia University’s
Earth Institute.
What will that mean for our plates? Global commodities such as corn and
wheat are susceptible to dramatic shifts in growing regions and crop
output.
"We have a climate change threat to our food system and not many
strategies to deal with it"
Image source : Thinkstock
Innovation will be part of foods’ evolution, in the field and in the
lab. Seed breeding and gene editing are helping some fruits and vegetables
grow faster and bigger to outrun a season’s heightened probability of
flood or drought. Other technologies help food last longer to be shipped
farther, in some cases not requiring refrigeration at all.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that the
planet won’t lose much arable land before 2050 and that few foods will
disappear completely.
Coffee : Almost three-quarters of coffee comes
from small farms. Warmer weather and plant diseases may drive up the
price.
Avocados : This fruit’s trees don’t like high
heat. If growers shift to kinder environs, it could lengthen shipping
distances.
Shrimp : Ocean acidification affects
crustaceans’ health—and taste. Future shrimp may be less palatable,
one study says.
Salmon : Warming water threatens this and
other cold water fish. Less wild breeding may spur more farming to
maintain supply.
Wine : The beverage will endure, but changes
in terroirs will force vintners to find ways to maintain wines’
signature tastes.
Olives : Early frosts, heavy rain, and wind
halved Italy’s production last year. Such extremes could limit crops
in many places.
Bananas : So far, warming has expanded the
tropical fruit’s growing area—and raised the risk of fungi that
devastate plants.
Wine, which is among the most sensitive and nuanced of agricultural
products, demonstrates how climate change is transforming traditions and
practices that may be centuries old.
Around the wine-growing world, smart producers have
contemplated and experimented with adaptations,
Image source : JF Bau
Image source : JF Bau
not only to hotter summers, but also to warmer winters, droughts and
the sort of unexpected, sometimes violent events that stem from
climate change...
Farmers have been on the front line, and grape
growers especially have been noting profound changes in weather patterns
since the 1990s. In the short term, some of these changes have actually
benefited certain regions. Places, like England, that were historically
unsuited for producing fine wine have been given the opportunity to join
the global wine world, transforming local economies in the process. In
areas like Burgundy, Barolo, Champagne and the Mosel and Rhine Valleys
of Germany, where great vintages were once rare, warmer growing seasons
have made it far easier to produce consistently exceptional wines. This
run of prosperity has sent land values (and wine prices) soaring, and it
has turned farmers and winemakers into global superstars.
Image source : La bouteille dorée
"Even with such success, the character of these wines has evolved
in part because of the changing climate — in some cases subtly, in
others deeply."
As the climate has warmed, regions that were once considered
too cold are now demonstrating that they, too, can produce fine wine, as
long as the other elements are in order. In pursuit of the best sites,
wine producers are moving north in the Northern Hemisphere, and south in
the Southern.
Producers are now planting vineyards at altitudes once considered
inhospitable to growing wine grapes.No hard-and-fast rules limit the
altitude at which grapes can be planted. It depends on a region’s climate,
the quality of the light, access to water and the nature of the grapes.
But clearly, as the earth has warmed, vineyards are moving higher. In
response to climate change, Familia Torres, a global wine producer based
in the Catalonia region of Spain, has planted vineyards at altitudes of
3,000 to 4,000 feet in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
“Twenty-five years ago, it would have been impossible,” Miguel Torres
Maczassek, the general manager, told me in May.""
Coronavirus has shown us a solution to the food climate crisis
Before coronavirus, UN agencies were already predicting
global food insecurity because of conflicts in Yemen, Central Africa
and the Middle East. In April, beneath the coronavirus headlines,
environmental reporters were covering a second wave of desert locusts
sweeping across East Africa in north and central Kenya, Ethiopia and
Somalia, eating everything green. In Latin American and the Caribbean,
socio-political crises and weather extremes have led to high food
prices. In Southern Africa, poor rains, volatile food prices and
unresolved political and economic instability are expected to make
existing food supply problems even worse. And the UN has called for
cuts to the carbon emissions from the food industry, which have
ballooned to a quarter of all global emissions as farming practices
have become more intensive and supply chains have grown longer.
But it took the shock of coronavirus for many developed
countries to notice the fragility of their own systems. Overnight,
thousands of restaurants, school cafeterias and workplace canteens
stopped buying produce from wholesalers. At the same time as shoppers
were confronted with rationing and bare shelves at major supermarkets,
farmers from Wisconsin to Wales were faced with an oversupply of milk,
forcing some to dump gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure
pits. Chicken farmers smashed eggs and culled animals when faced with
the sudden decline of workers and demand. At British fruit farms,
fears that a bumper crop of strawberries could be left to rot in the
fields because of labour shortages prompted Prince Charles to launch a
scheme called “Pick for Britain”. When that failed, Eastern European
farm workers had to be flown back into the country, months after the
UK’s official exit from the EU at the end of January, to pick crops.
Food and Climat
Image source : JF Bau
Image source : JF Bau
Image source : La bouteille dorée
