Climate Change and Your Food
Have you ever listened to people rail against global warming, as if it’s a communist plot? I remember that, at first, you’d hear people say that “it’s all a hoax”. “There’s no such thing”. And, every time there was a chilly day, it would be used as proof-positive evidence that global warming is a mythical creature of political agenda.
Crops most likely to succumb to warmer winters include apples, cherries and pears, which have a very high reliance on winter chill, and the area suitable for growing these crops had already declined to just four percent of the Central Valley – which produces most of the state’s fruit and nuts – by 2000. The findings suggest that none of the Central Valley’s area will be suitable for growing apples, cherries or pears by mid-century. Many nuts and stone fruits are also at risk.
“Our projections showed that for many tree crops that now cover large areas within the Central Valley, climatic conditions will become less suitable and in many cases potentially prohibitive for production,” the authors wrote. “Areas where safe winter chill exists for growing walnuts, pistachios, peaches, apricots, plums and cherries…are likely to almost completely disappear by the end of the 21st century.”
The situation could be particularly severe for the walnut and pistachio industries that rely on male and female flowering at the same time to allow for cross-pollination.
Now that we’ve all accepted that someone has turned the thermostat up, regardless of the causes, it will certainly end up having an impact on our food supply. In this uncharted territory, however, it’s only now becoming clear what that will end up looking like.
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