It seems like the
changes in climate are being felt quite painfully this year in the agricultural
industry.
This article just
came out in the BBC this week:
This year the
harvest of grapes was so poor in terms of quality that many wine producers are
completely unable to produce wine. In the video, Cherry Spriggs of Nyetimber
laments that even if they change the crop for next year according to the
weather conditions of this year, then "by murphy's law it'll be completely
wrong for next year".
Unforgtunately, by
murphy's law or not, it seems that global warming, for the UK at least, doesn’t
mean a 'gradual heating up' but instead weather extremes of "erratic
excursions" due to the nature of how the UK is affected by a highly
fluctuating jet streams. Tim Palmer, expert in climate physics explains this in
the article. Wow, what a worrying thought for farmers indeed! Not being able to
know if the next year's harvest would yield anything….
But this isn't
really news to experts… its just that it seems like the effects of climate
change would soon be felt by normal unassuming people like us, not only in
terms of storms and droughts but also in terms of our food choices.
Another article that came out this year:
Its not just grapes
that will be affected. Experts predict that the three most important staples-
maize, rice and wheat- would decline with weather changes- important crops like
the potatoes would not be able to survive warmer and more erratic weather. Such
erratic weather with warming includes a shift in vegetation zones, quantity and
distribution of rainfall and inundation of coasts with rising sea levels
(Rosenweig & Hillel 1998).
Don't know about
you, but to me this really does epitomize how climate change will affect our
everyday lifestyles. The thing is, there is much uncertainty and there remain
many questions to answer to ensure the food security in erratic weather. The
cause and effect of feedback effects and rate/amount/timing of global warming
are still difficult to tease out to enable us to model these changes at such a
fine scale. And it doesn't help that we
are starting to react to these changes on a not-so-good foot: a generally
homogeneous crop gene pool. With the Green Revolution, many corporations
controlled seed inputs through establishing their infrastructure and the
implementation of "Plant Breeders Rights" which encouraged companies
to produce uniform varieties (Paalberg, 2010).
Crops consumed
throughout history have fallen from 1500 species during the hunter-gatherer
age, to 30 in pre-industrial times. Today, 75% of the worlds food crops come
from just 8 types..! (Mooney 1980) This historical
perspective really does give us a better sense of the extent of genetic erosion
in the global food supply.
In response, and
fortunately perhaps, there have been people taking precautions in the form of
seed banks.
(Very interesting and worth watching video)
A case in point
would be the efforts by Fowler et al. together with the Global Crop Diversity Trust in creating a seed
bank an extremely cold and isolated hole-in-the-ground in Norway.
Traditionally, variability in crops was maintained purposely to protect against
weather, disease, mutating pests and it might be appropriate to keep some of
that, at least in the form of a seed bank.
I think these quotes
from the Ted talk sum up the importance of preserving crop diversity well:
"Crop diversity is the biological foundation of
agriculture. It's the raw material, the stuff of evolution in our agricultural
crops, not a trivial matter…
that foundation was crumbling- a mass extinction was
underway. And this mass extinction was taking place with very few people
noticing or caring…
Think of diversity as giving us options and options
are exactly what we need in the era of climate change "
Perhaps some might
recommend genetically modifying foods to be more resilient to different
weathers instead. While it is true that GMOs can indeed help us face up to
climate change, I honestly think maybe in addition to that, such seed banks are
really a small price to pay for a possibly life-saving food security
precautionary measure.
And I think this last quote from the talk sums it up
well:
"I can't look you in the eye and tell you that I
have a solution for climate change, for the water crisis… But I can look you in
the eyes and tell you that we can't solve any of those problems if we don't
have crop diversity. Because I challenge you to think of an effective,
efficient, sustainable solution if we don't have crop diversity."
Why sacrifice the wealthy resource that evolution has
provided us with? :)
(If interested,
Marci's blog (she's doing her PhD in Biology & Society at the
Arizona State Uni ) touches on the issues of Seed Banks.In short, seed banks
should ideally be set up with the interest of free-access-to-all (or at least
somewhere near that) instead of restricting access to genetic diversity through
patenting).
AND HAPPY NEW YEAR
TO ALL IN ADVANCE!
May this year be a
blessed one for you :)
See y'all next year!
Hi Joy,
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog about agriculture, an important aspect of our modern life that we take for granted!
I was just wondering, which countries do you think would be hurt most agriculturally by climate change, and which would actually benefit? Also, do you think the scale of the changes(e.g. bananas replacing potatoes) would be so large that globally, our food choices would be affected?