The Fragile Plate: Climate Change and the World's Food Supply, Part 1

In 'Running My Mouth Off About Climate Change,' host Dave tackles the complex issue of food security. Starting with his own journey to run a marathon, he draws parallels to the consistency needed in our food systems. This episode provides an overview of how climate change is affecting our food supply, examining the impact of longer growing seasons, water scarcity, and pests. Discover the challenges we face and the potential solutions being explored, from pesticides to GMOs, as we grapple with a changing world.

Website links used for this Podcast: 

https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northeast/topic/climate-warming-brings-earlier-spring

https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/warmer-fall-later-freeze

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332903875_Yield_instability_of_winter_oilseed_rape_modulated_by_early_winter_temperature 

https://www.cimmyt.org/news/pests-and-diseases-and-climate-change-is-there-a-connection/

https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/blog/bees-face-many-challenges-and-climate-change-ratcheting-pressure

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844024051594

https://www.aatf-africa.org/lessons-from-africas-largest-producer-of-gmo-maize/

https://www.farmaid.org/issues/gmos/gmos-what-eaters-need-to-know/

Transcript

Good morning, afternoon or evening, whatever it is where you are right now. Hope you’re doing amazing! 

As we begin, a little bit about me. I’m a runner, that’s my chosen form of exercise. These days, I’m not a particularly fast runner, but I still get out there 5 times a week to pound the pavement. As many miles as I’ve put on my legs though, I’ve never done a marathon. I’ve always preferred the shorter races, like the 5k and half marathon, where you can just buckle up, go fast for a while and be done. 10K’s seem kind of useless to me, but full marathons are a very different animal.

I am signed up for one on November 2nd though, my first marathon and honestly, I’m a bit terrified. The thing that’s freaking me out is not knowing how my body is going to react to hitting that dreaded wall, when your body runs out of glycogen, it’s go-to fuel, typically between miles 20 and 22, and the body just, shuts down. I don’t know what that’s going to look like for me. A lot of people run these things though, so I just gotta get it done. 

To run this thing, it’s going to take a lot of miles and, more importantly, a lot of consistency — I have to get used to running a lot of miles in a single run, and I need to be doing that consistently, this isn’t something that I can just do every now and then. 

But what does this have to do with our food supply and climate change? Hang on for a minute and I will explain. 

I’m Dave and thank you so much for joining me today on Running my Mouth off about Climate change, where we talk about some of the lesser discussed issues that surround the Climate change and, today, that topic is how climate change is impacting our food, right now.

When this topic, our food security, started swirling around in my brain, I really wanted to discuss how climate change is impacting what we eat on an individual food level, like how it’s impacting things like apples, rice and pistachios. The more I thought about it though, the more I felt that an overview, a bird’s eye perspective if you will, was needed along with those individual food items. 

And, as I began recording this, I pretty quickly went into information overload — this is a pretty info heavy topic, there’s a lot to unpack —  and if I was going into info overload, I can only imagine what it’d be like for you. 

So, we’re going to break this down into two separate podcasts as opposed to just one, into a more digestible format; the first being the overview and the second talking about the more human element, about how some of the things that we’re beginning to experience. 

And, as far as this episode is concerned, we’re going to break it down into three sections. The first talking about some of things that are beginning to put pressure on our food supply, then two ways that we’re trying to combat those pressures, one more thing that’s impacting our ability to put food on the table, and then we’ll wrap it up.

But back to running. As I mentioned, consistency is going to be huge and fortunately, that hasn’t really been one of my challenges when it comes to running. 

Typically when people start running, it’s a good idea to start off easy. You go out for, say, three days a week with a small amount of mileage, let your body adapt to that, increase mileage, adapt to that, add a day, adapt to that, and so on. 

Without that consistency, your body never gets an opportunity to adapt to the stress that you’re putting on it, consistency is one of those things that really isn’t optional if you want your body to adapt. 

The same is true with just about everything that we do, whether its a job, golf, playing a musical instrument or introducing something like a cat into your home. We need that consistency to perform better, or to simply get used to a new environment. Without consistency, that really can’t be any adaptation. 

Let’s get to the food though! 

I’ve heard, many times, that climate change is actually good for plants and that, because of the warming climate, we’ll have more than enough food to last us for a really long time. After all, warmer global temperatures mean longer growing seasons, and therefore more time for plants to produce food. And, because there’s all of this extra Co2 floating around in the atmosphere, plants will have more than enough to eat. After all, plants eat Co2, right? So it follows that  more is better.  And, because of these factors, farmers will have plenty of opportunity to cash in as the bumper crops keep coming year after year while the planet warms. 

But the best part is, when addressing the fact that things aren’t growing as well as they used to in places that they’re grown: they’ll adapt. 

Ok, that is certainly one perspective. Let’s see if that opinion holds up. 

As the climate warms, growing seasons in many geographies are lengthening. That’s totally true. In some areas, like the Northeaster United States, Spring is showing up as much as two weeks earlier than is typical. Fall is also happening about two weeks later. For example, on average, in Reno, Nevada, the first freeze of the season is happening 41 days later than it did in 1970 and, again on average, back to the Northeastern US, those first freezers delayed by about 28 days. So, yes, in many of the places that we grow food, the growing season has become longer, in some places by about a month. 

Selfishly, as a runner, I’m in love with the idea of warmer winters, I absolutely hate running in the cold, call me a wimp, I won’t disagree. As someone who eats food though? 

Again, on the surface, it’s understandable to think that longer growing seasons are a good thing, and I can totally understand that opinion. Turns out though, that this is definitely not the case. 

Firstly, when winters are shorter and warmer, winter crop productivity drops. Remember that things don’t only grow in Spring and Summer, a longer growing season for some things, means a shorter growing season for other things.

Winter wheat is a good example of this, there’s also things like Kale, broccoli, garlic, etc…

Now, there isn’t a whole lot of evidence yet, about the changes that are happening with winter crops, this is still a very new issue that we’re facing so the data is still rolling in. There are some studies that look at how Winter Wheat and Rapeseed oil is being negatively impacted in the UK, but we are still very much in a data collection mode at this point. 

Moving on….

Secondly, the earlier springs and later starts to winter mess with the internal mechanisms that define how plants wake up in spring and go dormant in winter, and this is where the consistency starts to become an issue for plants. Trees, for example, aren’t quite as sure as they used to be when it comes to when to go dormant and when to wake up. 

There are two main things that tell a tree when to go sleep for the Winter and when to wake up in the Spring, and those are the duration of daylight hours and, more importantly, the nighttime temperatures. As the days shorten and the temperature drops at night, trees know that they should start going to sleep for the winter. And, when the opposite happens, they wake up. What we’re seeing now is that they days are shortening as they always do, but those cooler nighttime temperatures aren’t as reliably getting cooler in the fall. And, in the spring, nighttime temps are rising earlier than they normally do. So trees are getting confused about what to do and when. 

So trees no longer have that predicability in their schedules, they don’t have that consistency and therefore, don’t really know what to do or how to act. 

What we’re seeing now is that trees are budding earlier, which wouldn’t be a horrible thing if winter was actually over when those buds appear. But some of the time, winter still has a few tricks up its sleeve and often times, there are some freezes that happen, which kill the buds and reduce crops. We’re actually watching this happen in California’s central valley right now. 

A personal observation of this? I h ave two maple trees on my property, and they look absolutely amazing in the fall, fall colors are awesome. Last year however, for the first time that I can ever remember, we didn’t really have a fall, the leaves never turned that golden red color. They pretty much just went from green, to falling off of the tree. And, as I sit here in late February, they’re already putting out their seed pods, can’t say that I’ve ever seen that happen this early in the year. 

So again, because trees aren’t getting that environmental consistency, they’re not anywhere near as predictable in how they act. Some have said that, “well, they’ll just adapt.” Adapt to what? The only thing that we know about how climate change is impacting our seasons, is that we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen from year to year. And, when that’s the case, how in the world can plants and trees adapt, when the signals that they’re receiving changes every year? And, as we’re constantly changing the molecular composition of the atmosphere that dictates that weather, I’m not really understanding how adaptation on any level can realistically happen. 

Another issue is that, as we’re seeing longer growing seasons, i.e., a longer period of time that crops are exposed to warmth, water starts to become more of a major issue. There’s a lot to be said about water security but, in the interest of time, I’m going to keep it short here and pick it up again next week. 

 Simply put, inconsistent rainfall that climate change has given us, has stressed water reserves in many areas. And, ocean levels are rising, 9-10” since 1880 and about 4 of those inches have come since 1993. Because the oceans are rising, water tables that are in areas next to the ocean, are starting to become more salty, the ocean water is leaching into those tables, which pretty much makes them useless for irrigating crops or drinking. 

Living in California, I’ve seen my share of droughts, but what we face is way, way less severe than what’s seen in other parts of the world. We deal with our lawns turning brown and, “if it’s yellow, keep it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down,” when using our toilets. 

Water is an especially huge issue in most of the underdeveloped world, like parts of Africa, Pakistan and India, where people rely on agriculture, not only for to make a living, but also for survival. And by the way, about 75% of the world’s population lives in underdeveloped countries. 

And most of the places in the world don’t have sophisticated water delivery systems like we have here in the developed world. They’re reliant on things like rivers and wells.  Suffice to say that longer growing seasons and a warmer climate means that more irrigation, more water, is required. I’ll leave it right there for now again, I’ll cycle back to water next week.

Pests are also becoming a more intense issue. As local climates change, pests and fungi (fungi sounds kinda weird, but I can’t really say “funguses”, can I? Eh, I’m just gonna say that, funguses..) Anyway, they’re spreading and are beginning to wreak quite a bit of havoc on crops. Interestingly, one of the ways that pests are spreading is, increased weather events, i.e., storms, can actually carry pests from one place to the next. And, once they’re there, they set up shop do what they do best, which is eat and spread disease. 

Like winter crops, this is thing where the data is very much still rolling in. When we look at studies, we read a lot of “ climate change can’s cause” and “climate change will cause” type phrases at this point   but, again, we’ll see a lot more evidence as time goes on and we’re able to collect more data. 

One example, in the UK again, a disease called Wheat Rust is showing up for the first time in over 60 years, and that’s largely because the climate is warming. BTW, Wheat Rust is caused by a fungus that I’m not even going to try to pronounce, but it makes the stems of crops like wheat and barley to rot, to liquify. Once it’s established, it can absolutely devastate entire fields and farms of wheat.

That’s just one example, we’re seeing a lot of other critters like moths and beetles, taking up residence in places that haven’t seen them before. And it’s predicted that this is just the beginning, and I honestly don’t see how this isn’t going to happen. 

So, I’ve mentioned a few things that are impacting our food supply, what can we do about it though. First let’s stay with the pests. 

Our first line of defense against these are pesticides, one thing that we’re seeing though is that the warming climate is allowing these little guys to build up a pretty effective immunity against the things that we’ve been typically using. So, we need to get smarter with pesticides and create more of them, or do something else that we’ll talk about in a minute. 

Pesticides are far from a perfect solution, for a lot of reasons. And I’ll try to keep this quick. Here in the US, we’re pretty tightly regulated when we use pesticides, that’s not the case in much of the world. 

I’ll hit you with a quote, it’s from a study that was done recently by a whole bunch of scientists, mainly from Saudi Arabia and India: Check this out: 

“Pesticides are frequently applied without precision, which leads to a number of adverse effects on human health, from acute intoxication to chronic diseases that include various types of cancer (brain cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and colon cancer), Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, neurotoxicity, infertility, leukemia and diabetes.” Aside from that, sounds like they’re pretty safe!

Pesticides have a nasty habit of spreading into places that you don’t want them to be, one of which is into our water. It gets into rivers, lakes, and eventually to the ocean and, according to another report, kills aquatic creatures at all stages of development. 

Here’s a quote from that same study: 

“Pesticide contamination in water poses the greatest threat to aquatic bodies, mostly through diminishing dissolved oxygen levels. They have an impact on aquatic animals at all stages of the trophic chain, from algae to fish.”

So, pretty much everything in the water gets impacted by this stuff when it’s applied. 

Pesticides  also has a nasty habit of staying in the ground once it’s applied — it doesn’t just stay on the plant and then magically go away after things that are supposed to die, die. If I got into this much longer I’ll wind up hitting you with a lot more quotes so I’ll just say this: It stays in the ground after application, for a number of years, and plants eat what’s in the ground. I’ll just leave that one right there.

The other thing that we’re doing in order to combat pests is ramping up production of GMO’s that have built in defenses against pests and disease.

By the way, GMO, if you’re not familiar with the term, stands for genetically modified organism, and it’s basically a plant or seed that’s had at least one of its genetic characteristics changed in a lab. 

GMO’s are an interesting topic, and I’d love to spend a lot of time on them in another episode but, in short, there are quite a few concerns about them. I’ll just quickly mention three perceived problems, and I say perceived because I’m really not sure if all of these are realistic concerns? 

I pretty much operate with an evidence based mindset, if I don’t know something to be true, I generally won’t say it. And if I do mention it, I’ll phrase it as mere opinion or go overboard in saying that I’m not sure if this is true or not, this is me saying that I’m not entirely sure about the negative impacts on GMO’s, or even if the concerns are valid.

First, there’s the concern that it sets up a playing field that’s far from level when it comes to farms have and don’t have the ability to purchase what’s needed to grow GMO’s. Larger, corporate farms, can typically afford to use the latest and greatest, while smaller farmers, and this is especially true when you look at small share farms in places like Southeast Asia, can’t afford to invest in things that are designed to grow well in these areas. 

And I’m just going to leave that one right there because, if I don’t, a very long winded rant will show up. 

Second, there’s a concern that there are potential health risks to consumers. When you change something in a plant on a genetic level, what guarantee do we have that there aren’t going to be unintended negative consequences when we eat what comes from these plants?  

Well, one of the oldest GMO’s is corn that was altered to withstand heat in Africa. Currently, 85% of the corn that’s raised in South Africa, has been genetically modified. And it’s been reported that 80% of the food that we buy in the grocery store have at least one GMO included in it. And 95% of cattle feed, includes GMO’s. 

So we’re getting to a point at which they seem safe, so far? But here’s what the World Health Organization has to say about GMO’s: 

Different [GMOs] include different genes inserted in different ways. This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.

Ok, that’s some pretty solid guidance right there. 

Interestingly, the FDA in the US doesn’t require human or animal testing from companies who produce GMO’s. And it also doesn’t do any independent research on them either. Instead, they rely on the research from the companies who manufacture the products. Isn’t that what the FAA did that with Boeing and their 737 Max8 program…again, I’ll stop right there. 

And third, there are other questions about how these modified organisms will impact the local biodiversities. For example, if a plant has a built in pesticide that makes it resistant to one insect, how can we be sure that bees or other species won’t be impacted? And what happens to the area surrounding these farms when these GMO’s start to spread outside of the farm’s boundaries? How is this going to impact all of the other things that live there? 

Whether these, and other, concerns are valid or not remains to be seen, but GMO’s, at this point at least, are being viewed as one potentially highly effective way to keep food growing as the climate changes.

So, in attempt to combat some of the pressures that are being put on the agricultural industry by climate change, like it or not, GMO’s and pesticides look to be the go-to strategy for the time being. 

And of course, and I mentioned bees. This has been pretty well documented, but Bees are starting to have a pretty tough go of it. In some areas, the bees are literally starving to death because of  higher temperatures and drier climates. If you’re a bee and are fortunate enough to live in a colony that’s managed by humans though, your diet can be supplemented with sugar water and pollen, but if you’re out there on your own, you may be in trouble. 

One more thing that I’ll just touch on now and dig into a bit more next week are weather events like drought, excessive rain, monsoons, typhoons, etc… Like Bees, this has been pretty well documented, and we’ve had our share of extreme weather events in the US that seem to be happening with increasing frequently. 

Let’s say you’re a rice farmer in Southeast Asia and you get hit with several years of monsoons or drought? Rice is a pretty finicky crop, it’s highly sensitive to just about everything around it, and it’s incredibly labor intensive. Any one of these extreme weather events will make your job nearly impossible. Add another one into the mix, and people in your area are going to have to cut back on eating rice for a few years. 

I work with a few factories in Indonesia and go there a few times a year. I’ve seen what happens to rice paddies both when a lot of rain comes, or no rain comes. It’s not so much the total amount of rain that comes throughout the year that determines a farmer’s success, it’s more when the rains come. A bunch of rain that comes all at once is very bad, it needs to be spread out over the year, and quite a few other crops throughout the world rely on this as well. Suffice to say, that the changes in weather itself, especially when it gets extreme, are causing quite a few disruptions in our efforts to produce food. 

So, consistency. We don’t have it, and we need to figure out a way to navigate through it. Personally, I think that we’ll get to a point at which we can stabilize things like atmospheric Co2 and Methane through technologies, and there are a lot of interesting ideas on the table that I won’t go into now, but there are some pretty confident people who have a lot of letters after their names who feel they can do this. Until we can turn that into reality, these struggles will continue and likely get a log worse. Nice, uplifting message, eh? 

I think I’m going to stop right here for now, I’ll pick it up again next week and talk more about some specific foods and areas that are being impacted. 

Man, I did not realize what a downer this topic would be when I decided to do it. I typically like to end on an up note, something positive. Having a hard time seeing that now though.

There is though, one more thing that some companies are trying, and that’s growing food in climate controlled shipping containers, in fact Elon Musk’s brother, Kimball, heads one of these companies. He hasn’t been all that effective yet, I read a few days ago that he shut down most of his operations and layed off a lot of his employees on a zoom call, but he’s rebooting and trying to come back bigger and better. 

Sounds like an intriguing idea, and I can see it for crops that are smaller in size, like herbs and strawberries, but how do you grow a banana tree inside a shipping container? GMO it to make it a really short banana tree? I don’t know. 

This also doesn’t seem to be a practical solution for all of these small share farmers in developing countries, how can the afford to purchase these things, let alone provide the power to keep them climate controlled? 

So, for them, is the answer creating things like GMO’d rice that will grow better in, say, Bangladesh, and then donate them to these farmers? 

Shipping containers are an intriguing idea though. 

I think I’m going to stop right here and pick up next week with the human element of all of this. 

Again, thank you so much for joining me on Running my Mouth off about Climate Change, I’m Dave and I hope you have an amazing week.