How a season of record heat, drought, and marine warming is straining the nation’s food supply, just as the federal government is dismantling the food safety net!
Really insightful - I live in a rural area and am very near farms. One topic I am observing is how the use of some of these GM hybrid seeds reduces resilience as the farmers have so much invested in seeds that can fail outside of a narrow bank of conditions. I do not know how to research that hypotheses, but it seems to seems to me that this monoculture of cash crops and nutrient starved soil is a multiplier in the situation of heat and drought.
There is lots of research that shows that small multi-crop farms are more resilient and easier on the environment than the hybrid mono-crop farms.Renard & Tilman (2019) in Nature, a 5-decade analysis of 176 crops across 91 nations: nations with the lowest crop diversity experienced a severe food shortage roughly every eight years, while the most diverse experienced one about every hundred years. Notably, crop diversity had the greatest stabilizing effect of all factors they examined, ahead of irrigation, while fertilization showed no significant effect. Also, diversification enhances biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation without compromising crop yields. Better for the farmer and for the environment.
Thanks for this detailed and thoughtful rundown of the broader effects of sustained heat on critical systems (and all the species and life forces within them). As someone who is trying to pay attention to what my senses tell me about the plants, creatures, weather and water in my yard and environs, this is the second time I comment with this word this week: sobering. It’s difficult to read about the ways sustained heat and insufficient nocturnal cooling affects natural processes we count upon, and can so easily take for granted. But we need this kind of information to comprehend the complexity of the predicament we’ve created for ourselves and for all beings on the planet. 🙏🏻
Glad that you found it helpful. One of the things that I’m trying to do is focus on what climate change is doing right now. Also, trying to shine a light on the vast number of people who are being affected by climate impacting crops and food supply and increasing the number of people in hunger. It seems that the news media and people posting about the news have gone quiet on both of these issues. Hope my future article are similarly enlightening.
A very compelling, well-written article. Will the fishermen and the farmers be the voices of reason in their respective communities to make climate change the most important issue to address for the sake of food security? They know the impacts.
Really insightful - I live in a rural area and am very near farms. One topic I am observing is how the use of some of these GM hybrid seeds reduces resilience as the farmers have so much invested in seeds that can fail outside of a narrow bank of conditions. I do not know how to research that hypotheses, but it seems to seems to me that this monoculture of cash crops and nutrient starved soil is a multiplier in the situation of heat and drought.
There is lots of research that shows that small multi-crop farms are more resilient and easier on the environment than the hybrid mono-crop farms.Renard & Tilman (2019) in Nature, a 5-decade analysis of 176 crops across 91 nations: nations with the lowest crop diversity experienced a severe food shortage roughly every eight years, while the most diverse experienced one about every hundred years. Notably, crop diversity had the greatest stabilizing effect of all factors they examined, ahead of irrigation, while fertilization showed no significant effect. Also, diversification enhances biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation without compromising crop yields. Better for the farmer and for the environment.
Thanks for this detailed and thoughtful rundown of the broader effects of sustained heat on critical systems (and all the species and life forces within them). As someone who is trying to pay attention to what my senses tell me about the plants, creatures, weather and water in my yard and environs, this is the second time I comment with this word this week: sobering. It’s difficult to read about the ways sustained heat and insufficient nocturnal cooling affects natural processes we count upon, and can so easily take for granted. But we need this kind of information to comprehend the complexity of the predicament we’ve created for ourselves and for all beings on the planet. 🙏🏻
Glad that you found it helpful. One of the things that I’m trying to do is focus on what climate change is doing right now. Also, trying to shine a light on the vast number of people who are being affected by climate impacting crops and food supply and increasing the number of people in hunger. It seems that the news media and people posting about the news have gone quiet on both of these issues. Hope my future article are similarly enlightening.
A very compelling, well-written article. Will the fishermen and the farmers be the voices of reason in their respective communities to make climate change the most important issue to address for the sake of food security? They know the impacts.
We can only hope because they live in the communities we need to convince that change is necessary and possible.