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Climate change will alter where many crops are grown
- yellow_lead 5y agoI couldn't read the whole article, but this has already started with crops more sensitive to climate - namely grapes for wine.
- SCUSKU 5y agoFound about this plugin on HN a few days ago that can bypass paywalls, highly recommend! Should be able to read it with it installed. https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean/-/blob/master/README.md https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
- yellow_lead 5y agoWill give it a try. Thanks :)
- frereubu 5y agoI'm a subscriber, but you can also read occasional articles on The Economist if you turn off JavaScript.
- LurkingPenguin 5y agoYes. People have laughed but my vineyard in Sitka, Alaska will soon be producing world-class Cabs.
- arthurcolle 5y agoHow much was the parcel if you don't mind sharing? I've had similar thoughts regarding Miami near-floodplain real estate - buying land that might hypothetically become the "new coast" based on projections for sea levels over the next 20, 30 years. Obviously a long shot in terms of ROI but I mean the apparent recent increase in hurricanes in those coastal areas in terms of both intensity and frequency is palpable...
- nradov 5y agoThe trouble with South Florida is that it's so flat. Any significant sea level rise will mean extensive flooding inland every time there's a major storm because the rainwater won't have anywhere to drain away.
- qqqwerty 5y agoI would avoid coastal communities. Wealthy beachfront owners will likely find a way to socialize their losses, either by getting taxpayers to fund coastal armoring or via direct bailouts. Alternatively there is the risk that property in those areas becomes uninsurable and by proxy unbankable. Hard to predict which way it goes, probably will depend on the individual community. Probably better to buy cheap arable land somewhere in the north that is projected to get warmer and has access to lots of water.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> Wealthy beachfront owners will likely find a way to socialize their losses, either by getting taxpayers to fund coastal armoring or via direct bailouts. Alternatively there is the risk that property in those areas becomes uninsurable and by proxy unbankable. This is not hard to predict because it has already happened for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Flood_Insurance_Progr... It is not just about wealth though, Florida is (or was) a swing state with a ton of votes for the president, and has only increased in political influence. Politically, it is going to near impossible to stop federal taxpayer funded bailouts for them.
- null_object 5y ago> People have laughed but my vineyard in Sitka, Alaska will soon be producing world-class Cabs I had this discussion with a previous CEO at a company I worked for here in Sweden a few years ago: he (being a type-A personality, and also loving fast sports cars) was very upbeat about global warming, and saw it as an opportunity to take over the Mediterranean role of growing grapes, olives and other foods that needed a warmer climate. I couldn’t convince him that what will probably happen instead, would be a less predictable climate, with all sorts of micro-effects (such as more rain or extreme weather) making grapes rot on the vine or olives whither in the sudden freezes. Thinking that the micro-climate of a certain area - affected by land-masses and nearby seas and other specific circumstances - will simply move north and southwards, strikes me as very naive.
- angelzen 5y agoStockholm at 59.33°N is about .5 degree North of Churchill in Northern Manitoba. Without the Gulf Stream your friend may be in for a rude surprise: polar bears rather than grapes and olives. > Churchill is a town in northern Manitoba, Canada, [...] most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World" that has helped its growing tourism industry. Thanks to climate change, by 2050 it will be blessed by 14 summer days, up from 8 in 2021. Not sure that's enough to scare the bears away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill,_Manitoba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill,_Manitoba https://climateatlas.ca/map/canada/25C_2030_85#z=6&lat=55.65&lng=-95&city=481 https://climateatlas.ca/map/canada/25C_2030_85#z=6&lat=55.65...
- fragbait65 5y agoI agree, Siberian cold due to changed flows of different currents seems more likely as the end result due to climate change for the Nordics rather than increased temperatures. Increasing temperatures now does not equal increased temperatures later, when the system has stabilized again. I'm not saying it will happen, just that it seems more likely with what the current data seems to imply, my current information is from some pop culture article though, so I'm the first one to agree that that information might be wrong.
- grecy 5y agoI wouldn't laugh too much. In 2016 Juneau, the capital city of Alaska, recorded zero measurable snowfall for the entire winter for the first time in recorded history [1]. Climate change impacts are already severe in the North. Here's what it used to look like in a "proper Alaska" winter. We walked across the lake near town to the Glacier. That lake doesn't freeze anymore [2] [1] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/where-oh-where-has-alaska%E2%80%99s-winter-gone https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/where-oh... [2] http://theroadchoseme.com/mendenhall-glacier-juneau-alaska http://theroadchoseme.com/mendenhall-glacier-juneau-alaska
- aaronbrethorst 5y ago20 years ago, I don’t think you could make wine in Wisconsin. Today, Wisconsin wine is total garbage. I am morbidly curious about what it tastes like in another 20.
- jraph 5y agoLike "Winesconsin", the most reputed wine in the US at the time. Exported everywhere around the world. Very expensive. Cheaper restaurants will serve French wines instead. French wines will have, by the way, suffered from drastic climate change by then.
- uxp100 5y agoWollersheim has been making garbage wine in Wisconsin since 1972, and using their own grapes since 1976, including garbage wines made entirely from bad grapes grown in Wisconsin. That Wisconsin wedding scourge, Prarie Fume uses New York grapes, however. So uh, they been doin it a long time and uh, still not to my taste. Also, their vineyard was originally built in the 1800s is the story, so grape cultivation was attempted back then too, I can imagine those wines were rough too.
- maxerickson 5y agoMy parents experimented with making wine from grapes grown in the UP in the 80s. That's different than commercial viability of course, but the vines thrived even then.
- grecy 5y ago15 years ago a friend in Canada planted many fruit trees that were known not to be able to handle the winters in that part of the country. Now he enjoys a ton of fruit you "can't grow" in that part of Canada.
- option 5y agowe should adapt to climate change and use it to our advantage. This does not conflict with trying to slow it.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> This does not conflict with trying to slow it. It can, though, so we need to be super careful. It's basic human social dynamics: once someone starts making money from mitigating a problem, they become invested in perpetuating (or even worsening) the problem. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But when your lemonade stand starts raking in serious cash, you suddenly want to make sure everyone is being given lemons, so you can buy them up and sell even more lemonade.
- option 5y agothis can be said about pretty much everything
- meheleventyone 5y agoYes but perverse incentives like this are very often neglected in peoples happy path analysis.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoYes. Doesn't make it any less true. On the contrary, realizing this lets one understand many peculiarities of the civilization we live in.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- newbamboo 5y agoExplains the decline in Lodi’s wine tourism.
- leipert 5y agoThis year German farmers grew watermelon for the first time (outside of a greenhouse)
- 88840-8855 5y agoWe are growing watermelons for years in our garden in Germany. And how does this fit to the fact that Germany has the coldest year for a long time? edit: wtf are you downvoting? Dumb af, look up the figures.
- _ph_ 5y agoIt isn't cold. The weather just is miserable. But the average temperatures are still pretty high and way higher than in a bad summer in the 80ies. While I didn't especially appreciate the weather here this year, my plants have been growing like hell, they like the wet and not too cold.
- 88840-8855 5y agoIt IS cold compared to the last 20 years AND to other regions in Europe. Can you please stop spreading lies with "it is not cold". Get your facts straight before you post anecdotes that your plants are growing "like hell". https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/german-2021-wheat-crop-to-fall-3.6-after-adverse-weather-ministry-2021-08-25 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/german-2021-wheat-crop-to-fa...
- jounker 5y agoThe articles doesn’t say the weather is cold. It says that the weather has been highly variable.
- morsch 5y agoCompared to 1961-1990, June and July were pretty warm. The harvest has been bad due to the rain, a few weeks ago they were expecting an above average harvest. https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/20210629_deutschlandwetter_juni2021_news.html https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/2021... https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/20210730_deutschlandwetter_juli2021_news.html https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/2021...
- malka 5y agoFrench wine has more and more ethanol in it, due to grapes being more sugary, due to climate change.
- alkonaut 5y agoI read that French winemakers are hedging their bets by buying land further north in places like Britain and Scandinavia, but not sure if that's an isolated occurence or a trend.
- prawn 5y agoMy wife's wine-growing family are hedging bets in Australia by buying/planting vineyards in a different state with a cooler climate. There have been cases where large swathes of a region have lost a vintage to smoke taint from bushfires also, so having a backup option is useful.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/t6GUl https://archive.is/t6GUl
- thepangolino 5y agoCan we try altering the crops instead of the climate please?
- unearth3d 5y agoIt's already happening but to get a new crop cultivar to market, like a new wheat or a new apple, takes >20 years. Several aspects re climate change will neccessitate making plants grow better (nutritious, pest resistant etc) despite the high CO2 - CO2 was only beneficial to humans when it was below 300ppm.
- bobbytit 5y agoThe article admitted that there has been a worldwide greening effect from increased co2 levels. The vast majority of plants grow bigger and faster when co2 is between 600 and 1500 ppm.
- unearth3d 5y agoAbove 600 increasingly toxic to us us, and above 300 mineral and protein falls off for most plants. Some plants also become > flammable. Have peer papers if interested.
- dubcanada 5y agoFalls off? Plants are already flammable… It’s already above 400, so most plants no longer have protein or minerals?
- martinpw 5y ago> Plants are already flammable… Admittedly not the most readable construct, but the ">" in the OP's sentence is saying that the plants become more flammable. To the OP, I had not heard that before, would be interested to see those peer reviewed papers if you can share. > It’s already above 400, so most plants no longer have protein or minerals? OP said it falls off, not that it goes away completely.
- yosito 5y agoAnyone who knows anything about history knows that which crops are grown where changes over time. It has never been static.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoSnyone who knows antthing about history knows that cities burn every now and then. Its natural, therefore good for you
- pjc50 5y agoIs this snark about the Columbian exchange or climate change denial?
- PYTHONDJANGO 5y agoThis is like saying "Water was always wet" while people are talking about how to navigate the oceans. Please ask yourself which value it brings to this discussion.
- aaron695 5y ago>Anyone who knows anything about history Society is so mentally ill they don't even understand how current farming works. So it's a lost cause. These cults come in and fill that space. The idea raised in the article that Siberia will warm and become frontier land but we'll just let the infrastructure fail is a special kind of stupid. I do like the way they used 2099, Not 2100. They don't even have to pretend anymore it's about zapping people's brains just like ad companies.
- nicoffeine 5y agoWhat scientists, economists, and historians are concerned about is that the last 10,000 years of climate stability is what has enabled our current civilization. "In southern Iraq, farmers work much the same land as the Sumerians, the civilization that pioneered irrigated agriculture in about 6000 BCE, and still abide by much of the ancient planting timetable. But as summers become longer and hotter and other seasons shift, many farmers have been left bewildered, angry, and scared. “The old people have the same mindset as in the past. They feel there’s a continuity because there’s been no development and we have the same tools and same ways of agriculture,” said Jaafar Jotheri, a geoarchaeologist at Iraq’s Al-Qadisiyah University whose father and brother still farm to the south of Baghdad. “Now they’re seeing the climate change, though, and some of the older people don’t know what and when to grow.” Southern Iraqi farming is rich with millennia-old idioms that no longer hold true. ‘August is for reducing the grapes and producing the dates,’ goes one, but the grapes and dates have started to come at irregular times in recent years. ‘September is the month of moving the buffalo from the water,’ goes another, but Septembers are so hot that water buffalo must be grazed in the marshlands of southern Iraq until later in the year for fear of overheating them." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/climate-change-killing-thousands-of-years-indigenous-wisdom https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/climate-c...
- keewee7 5y agoCanada, Russia and China seem to be the big winners of climate change. It will be interesting how that changes geopolitical dynamics.
- perfunctory 5y agoThere will be no winners of climate change.
- Kelteseth 5y agoOh, there are already winners for the past 50 years when you look at all big oil companies.
- smhost 5y agoMaybe. There's a non-zero chance that when younger millenials come to power, they will hunt down oil company insiders and force them to flee to Argentina.
- chadcmulligan 5y agoWill they? Like when the hippies came to power it was all flowers and rainbows. Those in power are rarely the ones who started out as political radicals, at least on the conservative side.
- smhost 5y agoHippies were never a thing. They might even have been a psy op along the lines of MKUltra. And conservatives are losing their ability to control and discipline their younger generations even more so than the liberal side, and many of them hate corporations as vehemently as anybody.
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- jamesrom 5y agoAlternate title: climate dictates where crops are grown
- LatteLazy 5y agoIm pushing 40 but if i were young I'd become a geneticist. There are fortunes to be made making crops drought/flood/heat/cold/salt resist.
- PYTHONDJANGO 5y agoAll these crops do not work as you think they should work. Their function in modern agricultural industry is to chain the farmer to buy more and more chemicals and patented crops. "Saving the world with gmo crops" is marketing talk by companies that make big money selling these chemicals and crops. Please check https://www.gmwatch.org/en/ https://www.gmwatch.org/en/ to train your critical thinking.
- refurb 5y agoThis is a terrible take on a technology that has drastically improved human health.
- PYTHONDJANGO 5y agoDo not confuse gmo crops with genetics in medical tech, these are very different things. While there is zero evidence how gmo crops improve human health mRNA vaccines are a very interesting step in medical history. Also be vigilant for anybody who tries to make scientific gmo crop criticism look like stupid anti-vax blabla, these are very different groups. Best practice to better understand that battlefiled and not buy into propaganda is to stay focused and set an attention monitor on generalizations.
- randomdata 5y agoThere are a quite a few farmers on HN, myself included. How are we being chained? I am quite familiar with the usual talking points you see in movies, but they are intended for a non-farmer audience and don't really mean much to those actually involved in agriculture. More technically, speaking to an actual audience of farmers, what does this mean and how does it play out in practice?
- gonzo41 5y agoI have to remind myself that Life will survive climate change. Humans may not but Life will. I really find it so crushingly bleak at times. I know that nature is cruel and indifferent. And that's sort of attaching intent rather than it being more just what it is, a product of physics. There's going to be some rough years ahead.
- stavros 5y agoWell, you know, if someone gives you a nice toy and you break it, maybe you don't deserve it.
- yabatopia 5y agoBut in this case, his parents broke the toy, not him.
- sennight 5y agoWho is this "someone" you're talking about, Mother Gaia? Reframing justice from a humancentric perspective to one more in line with the natural state is something that would immediately yield very entertaining results, as the people most likely to propose it would most deeply regret having gotten their way.
- stavros 5y agoIt doesn't matter to the point at all who the someone is. Change it to "if you randomly found a nice toy" and the point remains exactly the same.
- spython 5y agoLandscapes are migrating faster than ever in times of the Anthropocene. They have never been static, but instead moving, mutating and transforming. Only now their migration is greatly accelerated by climate change and other anthropogenic factors. To complicate things even more, we currently lack a good concept of migration that could be used to describe the migration of landscapes. Even in great old stories of migration and climate catastrophe like that of Noah's Ark, only the animals were ever collected and saved, as if their bodies with the clear physical boundaries were the only thing needed in order for them to survive. As if the landscapes they inhabited would magically reappear after a climate catastrophe. Nobody ever built a Noah's Ark for landscapes.
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- yosito 5y ago> Only now their migration is greatly accelerated Just curious, do you have data that backs up this claim?
- spython 5y agoHow do you imagine such data to be formatted? Landscape and ecological niches are hard to quantify, as they are so permeable and often lack clear borders. Not easy to put them into an excel spreadsheet. I find this article on the topic really helpful: https://placesjournal.org/article/landscape-migration/ https://placesjournal.org/article/landscape-migration/ And the project by the same author quite inspiring: http://www.resilientbayarea.org/unlock-alameda-creek http://www.resilientbayarea.org/unlock-alameda-creek
- ThomPete 5y agoThats great news. co2 is plant fodder. Its a way better trend than things getting colder. Not something we cant deal with.
- nikkinana 5y agoNot really, they'll still be grown in the ground. The only difference is Bill Gates owns all the ground.
- politician 5y agoWould someone confirm my understanding that rice fails to germinate above 34C, and that most rice is grown in equatorial regions hovering around 32C? Given the +1.5C in the IPCC report, the loss of suitable land for a food crop as important as rice seems like something we should be actively talking about.
- mark_l_watson 5y agoThanks for mentioning that, never heard this discussed before. Sorry for making this political, but if just a small percentage of what is spent on unending wars for profit was spent instead on new food and water preserving tech, then I think we could fix this.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoThere can't possibly be a hard cutoff like that, because day-to-day temperature variations far exceed 1.5 degrees. Of course, even an incremental difference can tip farms over the line from sustainable to unsustainable, especially in subsistence farming regions where people are barely clinging on in the first place. But that has much different implications than a scenario where the world as a whole can't grow enough food.
- MAGZine 5y agoRice is important but western agriculture (Wheat) is becoming increasingly precarious, too. Wheat likes long growing seasons sure, but you know what it doesn't like? Too much or too little rain. Extreme climate (hail+wind can basically shear off wheat). Early frost, or late frost. As the weather warms we experience more variable weather. This could mean more crops that get damaged or destroyed by random freezing events that start to happen in August or late snow/freezing that happens in May/June, after the seed is in the ground. We'll still be able to farm wheat for sure, just like asian/equatorial countries will be able to farm rice, even as the temperature rises. The ability to produce will certainly decline as weather ravages crops before harvest. Places that have traditionally been in the goldilocks zone for production are leaving it.
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- echopurity 5y agoStage 5 climate denialism: "It's too Late!" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Isn't HN an "ideology free" zone? Why do they allow nonstop ideology from The Economist? Not to mention the paywall.
- Hendrikto 5y agoI have a friend who always uses this argument, and I hate it. It‘s like realizing you are not going to be able to break in time, then deciding to step on the accelerator instead, because: "We are going to hit the wall anyway.“… so stupid
- hack-news 5y agoOnly dumb ideologies are allowed here.
- mark_l_watson 5y agoSorry for being off topic here: I get pushback on this opinion from my friends, so I expect this to be an unpopular opinion here also: the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment. I enjoy a steak once or twice a month, so I am not talking from a vegan-purity perspective. I think that there should be a tax on meat that directly supported research and infrastructure for water and energy efficient farming, lower cost desalinization, etc. Also, some types of legumes, vegetables, etc. are much more water efficient than others. In some ways I think that “meat hurting the environment deniers” are even a little worse than climate change deniers because industrial meat production hits chaotic climate change and water resources.
- junon 5y agoCan your friends justify their opposition? Because it makes sense to me, not that politicians will ever do anything about it.
- mark_l_watson 5y agoOne friend in particular eats met every day and doesn’t want to pay more for it.
- Hendrikto 5y agoWhat people don‘t realize is that they ARE paying the price either way, just indirectly.
- bobbytit 5y agoWhat some people on hn do not realise is that meat is too expensive already for most. The cost of living in the West is already too high for young people to have families of their own. This is what Bill Gates and his mates want. They will never go without cars, planes, houses, meat etc. That is why some have you have been brainwashed by billionaires into wanting the further impoverishment of your fellow 99% brethren.
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- Managor 5y agoMonocropping is bad for the environment anyways. The most environmentally friendly method would be grasslands with lots of ruminants.
- djohnston 5y agoShould I be buying land in the Dakotas?
- dirtyid 5y agoI know orienting map around North pole makes sense, but man that is hard to read.