Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / August 2006

Climate change happens - Can PEOPLE change quickly enough ?

As everyone is aware, there's yet another significant heat wave
in both the USA and europe. Is this 'global warming' at work or
merely a long-term trend towards more heat, just as the "little
ice age" of the 1600s was a 300 year trend toward colder temps ?
Hard to say - and it hardly matters either because it's HAPPENING
and we have to COPE with it.

While the news concentrates on dehydrated old people and big-
breasted joggers passed-out on the streets, the REAL threat is
not to people directly - but to AGRICULTURE. With about seven
billion people to feed, temperature and rainfall deviations
threaten the agricultural base which sustains them.

July has not only been unusually hot, but unusually DRY. European
crop choices and farming practices generally assume a somewhat
cool and damp climate. What they're growing cannot thrive, perhaps
not even survive, hot dry summers. Additionally there's the issue
of irrigation water and an adequate delivery infrastructure. If
dampness is presumed, a nation might not invest in a network of
large irrigation canals, reservoirs, and similar kinds of water
control/management infrastructure. This takes materials, effort,
money and a PLAN. If the warming/drying trend continues it may
already be too late for europe and parts of the USA.

Moist areas may become dry, cool areas become hot - and vice-versa.
Serious deviations from the norm may appear and disappear on as
little as a ten or twenty year scale. Agriculture must be ready to
deal with this fluctuating future - and so must entire nations and
the world as a whole.

The picture-postcard view in the USA has always been the family
farm. "Great-grandad raised corn, grandpaw raised corn, dad raised
corn and durn tootin' I'M gonna raise corn here too !". Tradition,
history, family-values - and mal-adaptation to a changing climate.
You can't raise corn without a LOT of water - and water supplies
will fluctuate along with the climate. The day of the fixed family
farm - or fixed mega-corporate farm - may be drawing to a close.

As the climate changes, opportunities for growing specific kinds
of crops will move around geographically. Perhaps it's time to
consider a new view of the farmer - more of a 'gypsy' who travels
to emerging areas of opportunity and brings his EXPERTISE with
him. If southern siberia suddenly becomes a good place to grow
corn then those with generations of corn-growing experience
should move there to exploit the opportunity. If the common
strains of wheat grown in Ukraine will suddenly do a lot
better in China then those farmers should bring their expertise
THERE.

The IDEA is to grow the maximum yeild of edible food each year
with the entire world as the consumer. Farmers become a class
of food-growing experts instead of someone who owns a specific
500 acres in Nebraska. As oil-workers move around to where
the oil is, farmers will have to move around to where the
best growing conditions are found.

This is somewhere a globally-minded entity like the UN might
actually do something useful. Farming expertise must be
portable across borders with a bare minimum of red tape
involved. If a new zone looks like it will have a promising
climate for turnips, nations want to get all the turnip-
growing expertise and equipment they can get as FAST as
they can get it. Dither around for ten years and the
climate may shift again, wasting the opportunity.

Getting world POLITICS adjusted for a rapidly-changing
agricultural picture is going to be one of the hardest
problems to cope with. The time to get a plan together
is NOW. Nations must be taught to look for new ag
opportunities, they must agree on a system for bringing
in foreign expertise and appropriate hardware and
setting up any needed infrastructure.

Local farmers who can no longer grow their traditional
crops ... what becomes of them ? Train them to grow corn,
or send them somewhere they CAN grow their favored crops ?
Some won't WANT to move - they'd rather starve or live
on 'welfare' than abandon the family farm. Do we entice
them, force them, turn land-owners into mere into field
hands, let them die - what ?

Then there are areas of the world like northern africa
where marginal land gets damaged beyond repair by ancient
and ineffecient farming methods and grazing practices.
Each year the sahara moves further south - and the
local farmers HELP it do so. Remember, food has become
a GLOBAL concern ... so do we force them to change their
methods, displace them, shoot them - what ?

These questions are why it is imperative to get moving NOW
on the globalization of farming. These details have to be
worked-out ahead of time instead of waiting for a huge
crisis. Then there's the MONEY issue - how do expenses
and profits get divided ?

Research into genetic modification of food crops is also
imperative. The two most important goals will be to let
most crops fix their own nitrogen and to be more tolerant
to salty conditions. The former greatly reduces the need
for fertilizers, the latter greatly expands the number
of locations something can be grown. Adding genes that
fortify the food with certain vitamins wouldn't be a
bad idea either - more goodness per mouthfull means
you need fewer mouthfulls to survive.

In any event it appears that serious climatic changes
are going to coincide with an unprecedented world
population. The old way of looking at agriculture
just isn't gonna cut it anymore. A global outlook,
an opportunistic stragety - Necessary.

And Billy-Bob the corn farmer, well, he may have to
switch to peanuts or sell the farm to a housing
developer. Life doesn't always give you the choices
you'd like.