Farmers sound the alarm for our global food supply as staple crop becomes increasingly difficult to grow: ‘The crop is sensitive’

11 comments

1. From the article,

   Potatoes need cool nights in order to grow, and during much of the year in Pennsylvania, those nights are becoming few and far between.

   “The crop is sensitive to weather conditions,” Bob Leiby, an agronomist with the Pennsylvania Co-Operative Potato Growers, explained. He estimated that in the 1980s, there were 35 nights per year that were too hot for the potato crops. Now, it’s closer to 50 nights per year.

2. This is gonna make my meat and potatoes diet a meat diet.

3. Yahoo news … Really?

4. I live in North Florida and am able to grow potatoes. I plant them in February and certain types do better here (red lasoda, red Pontiac, Yukon gold, and white kinnebec). I listened to a webinar earlier this year about blueberry farmers using models of future climate projections to choose blueberry varieties that will do well in future climate conditions for their area since they take a while to grow and will produce for years. These farmers need to plan and adapt.

   Of course changing the growing season and varieties won’t help with floods and drought, but it’s a start at trying to survive this climate crisis.

5. According to the article I link in this comment, just 15 crops provide 90% of caloric intake worldwide. The OP article is about potatoes, which is one of the “big four”

   20 years ago, people writing about the impact of climate change were looking in their crystal balls, and noting that if one of the crops had a bad year, the other crops could plug the gap. But looking ahead, a big worry is that there will be simultaneous failures among these primary staples.

   https://www.farmers-and-innovations.org/beyond-the-big-four-staple-crops-around-the-world/

6. Tomorrow’s Harvest

7. Shouldn’t we already have some mass scale vertical hydro farms? We know crops are going to become increasingly expensive to produce, more volatile, lower yield…. So why aren’t governments or startups building these?

8. Climate scientists have been warning about the coming agriculture crisis for at least 25 years. How about we do something about it?

9. You know what doesn’t care about the weather, or the soil? Sunchokes, amaranth, and a bunch of tree crops. We just need to plant different things.

10. Maybe not make so much potato chips so you don’t need so much crop to meet demand? Less of the crop means less energy used in harvesting? And, less potato chip production must also have be if it’s in less energy consumption and artificial heat production.

11. “We used to look up and wonder about our place in the stars… now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”

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