I realize I’ve already written two newsletters in the last month about the heat we’re experiencing here and how it is and isn’t affecting our crops and our work. I am also painfully aware that for many of our CSA subscribers, it has been cool and foggy most days and the headlines about extreme heat seem abstract at best. But at this point, everything we do here every day is organized around the simple fact that this is not just the hottest summer period we’ve had in 30 years on the farm but the hottest summer in recent human history.
And if climate scientists are right, this won’t be be the Hottest Summer Ever for very long. It will be the “new normal”, or possibly even a “cool” summer 10 or 20 years from now. At the risk of understatement, that is going to be a very big problem for food production. Simple put: the crops humanity’s farms are currently growing are no longer adapted to our new climate.
Extreme heat is only part of climate change that is increasingly impacting agriculture: flooding and drought are also reducing the world’s ability to feed itself. But heat is the one factor that we might be able to mitigate — if we made a huge collective effort to do so.
Fifty years ago, governments around the world were working to develop crops that produced higher yields in more places — the so-called “Green Revolution”. But for at least thirty years, plant breeding has been left almost entirely in the hands of the private sector. Not surprisingly, they have focused primarily on developing varieties that are profitable…for seed companies and their owners, which are now usually large agribusiness companies. While they have also contributing to increasing yields of crops, the cost of seed as a percentage of farmers’ expenses has never been higher.
It is true that these companies are focused on breeding climate resilient crops. But it is also true that any success they have will be accompanied by higher prices for the heat-tolerant varieties. That is already happening.
Another problem is that seed production itself is being impacted by extreme weather. It may seem counterintuitive, but just because a crop variety tolerates extreme weather does not mean it will produce viable seed. Seedless watermelons, which I wrote about a few weeks back, are a great example. High temperatures might make for tasty watermelon fruit but cause problems with the seeds.
Extreme heat causes the seeds of many plants to become sterile, weak, or fewer in number. It can also lead to total abortion of the flowers that make the seed, called “blanking”. This is an existential problem for humanity that very few people know is happening. But in a capitalist paradigm, it causes a shortage of supply that leads to higher prices and higher profits for the seed companies. With this inherent conflict of interest, they simply can’t be trusted to spearhead the effort to develop climate-resilient crops but we have abdicated that responsibility to them.
In my opinion, Climate Change activists have focused far too much on trying to slow or stop climate change and far too little on adaptation to it. The seed industry in particular has had little or no government oversight despite its incredible importance to our future survival as a species. As far as I know, there are no policymakers even talking about this issue, much less taking action to address it.
The first step would be to re-establish funding for public universities to expand their plant breeding programs, which have been reduced or even eliminated in many states and nations. And those plant breeding programs should focus exclusively on the staple crops that feed humanity but do not create big enough profits for seed companies to invest heavily in.
Honestly, this effort should have started a decade ago or longer, and it could have been accomplished much more realistically and arguably with less controversy than the lofty goal of reducing the world’s fossil fuel emissions.
But first we have to start talking about it. Humanity needs new seeds for our new climate.
Thanks,
Pablito