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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
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href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/opinion/our-coming-food-crisis.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/opinion/our-coming-food-crisis.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>July 21, 2013<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<h1><nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:24.0pt'>Our Coming Food Crisis<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></nyt_headline></h1>
<h6><b><font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:7.5pt'><nyt_byline>By
<span itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span
itemprop=name>GARY PAUL NABHAN</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></font></b></h6>
<p itemprop=articleBody><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'></nyt_byline><nyt_text><nyt_correction_top></nyt_correction_top>TUCSON</span></font></st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">Ariz.</st1:State> — THIS summer the tiny town of <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Furnace Creek</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Calif.</st1:State></st1:place>,
may once again grace the nation’s front pages. Situated in Death Valley,
it last made news in 1913, when it set the record for the world’s hottest
recorded temperature, at 134 degrees. With the heat wave currently blanketing
the Western states, and given that the mercury there has already reached 130
degrees, the news media is awash in speculation that Furnace Creek could soon
break its own mark. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Such speculation, though, misses the real concern
posed by the heat wave, which covers an area larger than <st1:place w:st="on">New
England</st1:place>. The problem isn’t spiking temperatures, but a new
reality in which long stretches of triple-digit days are common —
threatening not only the lives of the millions of people who live there, but
also a cornerstone of the American food supply. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>People living outside the region seldom recognize its
immense contribution to American agriculture: roughly 40 percent of the net
farm income for the country normally comes from the 17 Western states; cattle
and sheep production make up a significant part of that, as do salad greens,
dry beans, onions, melons, hops, barley, wheat and citrus fruits. The current
heat wave will undeniably diminish both the quality and quantity of these
foods. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>The most vulnerable crops are those that were already
in flower and fruit when temperatures surged, from apricots and barley to wheat
and zucchini. <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Idaho</st1:place></st1:State>
farmers have documented how their potato yields have been knocked back because
their heat-stressed plants are not developing their normal number of tubers.
Across much of the region, temperatures on the surface of food and forage crops
hit 105 degrees, at least 10 degrees higher than the threshold for most
temperate-zone crops. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>What’s more, when food and forage crops, as well
as livestock, have had to endure temperatures 10 to 20 degrees higher than the
long-term averages, they require far more water than usual. The Western
drought, which has persisted for the last few years, has already diminished
both surface water and groundwater supplies and increased energy costs, because
of all the water that has to be pumped in from elsewhere. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>If these costs are passed on to consumers, we can
again expect <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/food_prices/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about food prices and supply.">food prices</a>, especially
for beef and lamb, to rise, just as they did in 2012, the hottest year in
American history. So extensive was last year’s drought that more than
1,500 counties — about half of all the counties in the country —
were declared national drought disaster areas, and 90 percent of those were hit
by heat waves as well. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>The answer so far has been to help affected farmers
with payouts from crop insurance plans. But while we can all sympathize with affected
farmers, such assistance is merely a temporary response to a long-term problem.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Fortunately, there are dozens of time-tested
strategies that our best farmers and ranchers have begun to use. The problem is
that several agribusiness advocacy organizations have done their best to block
any federal effort to promote them, including leaving them out of the current <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/farm_bill_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="More articles about the Farm Bill (U.S.).">farm bill</a>, or of <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/climate-and-energy-legislation/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="Recent and archival news about climate and energy legislation.">climate
change legislation</a> at all. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>One strategy would be to promote the use of locally
produced compost to increase the moisture-holding capacity of fields, orchards
and vineyards. In addition to locking carbon in the soil, composting buffers
crop roots from heat and drought while increasing forage and food-crop yields.
By simply increasing organic matter in their fields from 1 percent to 5
percent, farmers can increase water storage in the root zones from 33 pounds
per cubic meter to 195 pounds. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>And we have a great source of compostable waste:
cities. Since much of the green waste in this country is now simply generating
methane emissions from landfills, cities should be mandated to transition to
green-waste sorting and composting, which could then be distributed to nearby
farms. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Second, we need to reduce the bureaucratic hurdles to
using small- and medium-scale rainwater harvesting and gray water (that is,
waste water excluding toilet water) on private lands, rather than funneling all
runoff to huge, costly and vulnerable reservoirs behind downstream dams. Both
urban and rural food production can be greatly enhanced through proven
techniques of harvesting rain and biologically filtering gray water for
irrigation. However, many state and local laws restrict what farmers can do
with such water. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Moreover, the farm bill should include funds from the
Strikeforce Initiative of the Department of Agriculture to help farmers
transition to forms of perennial agriculture — initially focusing on
edible tree crops and perennial grass pastures — rather than providing
more subsidies to biofuel production from annual crops. Perennial crops not
only keep 7.5 to 9.4 times more carbon in the soil than annual crops, but their
production also reduces the amount of fossil fuels needed to till the soil
every year. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>We also need to address the looming seed crisis.
Because of recent episodes of drought, fire and floods, we are facing the
largest shortfall in the availability of native grass, forage legume, tree and
shrub seeds in American history. Yet current budget-cutting proposals threaten
to significantly reduce the number of federal plant material centers, which
promote conservation best practices. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>If our rangelands, forests and farms are to recover
from the devastating heat, drought and wildfires of the last three years, they
need to be seeded with appropriate native forage and ground-cover species to
heal from the wounds of climatic catastrophes. To that end, the farm bill
should direct more money to the underfinanced seed collection and distribution
programs. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Finally, the National Plant Germplasm System, the
Department of Agriculture’s national reserve of crop seeds, should be
charged with evaluating hundreds of thousands of seed collections for drought
and heat tolerance, as well as other climatic adaptations — and given the
financing to do so. Thousands of heirloom vegetables and heritage grains
already in federal and state collections could be rapidly screened and then
used by farmers for a fraction of what it costs a biotech firm to develop,
patent and market a single “climate-friendly” crop. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Investing in climate-change adaptation will be far
more cost-effective than doling out $11.6 billion in crop insurance payments,
as the government did last year, for farmers hit with diminished yields or
all-out crop failures. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Unfortunately, some agribusiness organizations fear
that if they admit that accelerating <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"
title="Recent and archival news about global warming.">climate change</a> is
already affecting farmers, it will shackle them with more regulations. But
those organizations are hardly serving their member farmers and ranchers if
they keep them at risk of further suffering from heat extremes and extended
drought. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>And no one can reasonably argue that the current
system offers farmers any long-term protection. Last year some farmers made
more from insurance payments than from selling their products, meaning we are
dangerously close to subsidizing farmers for not adapting to changing climate
conditions. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p itemprop=articleBody><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>It’s now up to our political and business
leaders to get their heads out of the hot sand and do something tangible to
implement climate change policy and practices before farmers, ranchers and
consumers are further affected. Climate adaptation is the game every food
producer and eater must now play. A little investment coming too late will not
help us adapt in time to this new reality. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<nyt_author_id>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><a
href="http://garynabhan.com/i/">Gary Paul Nabhan</a> is a research scientist at
the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Southwest</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Center</st1:PlaceType>
at the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Arizona</st1:PlaceName> and the author of “Growing Food in a
Hotter, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Drier</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Land</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>: Lessons From Desert Farmers in
Adapting to Climate Uncertainty.” <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Jennifer Tsang</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Marketing Director</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Pollinator Partnership</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.pollinator.org">www.pollinator.org</a> </span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on"><font size=2
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>423 Washington
St.</span></font></st1:address></st1:Street><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> 5th Fl.</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=2
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>San Francisco</span></font></st1:City><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, <st1:State
w:st="on">CA</st1:State> <st1:PostalCode w:st="on">94111</st1:PostalCode></span></font></st1:place><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>T: 415.362.1137</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>F: 415.362.3070<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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height=122 id="_x0000_i1025" src="cid:image002.jpg@01CE86F0.A68D1560"></span></font></a></span><o:p></o:p></font></p>
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