Across US, Farmers Deal With Collapsing Weather Patterns, Pests; These Foods At Risk (Or Benefiting)
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Chickpeas
Montana
The chickpea is enjoying an unexpected assist from extreme weather. Farmers in Montana, who grow about 60 percent of the chickpeas produced in the United States, are being encouraged to plant more as a hedge against heat and drought. The average annual temperature in Montana has increased by 2.4 degrees over the last century, but the amount of rain hasn’t changed much. Chickpeas, which need less water to grow than wheat and other cereal grains that are the mainstay of Montana agriculture, provide an antidote. They improve soil and help reduce the need for fertilizer; rotating in a spring crop of chickpeas before a wheat crop can help break disease and pest cycles, said Kevin McPhee, a professor at Montana State University. It also doesn’t hurt that hummus is so popular, opening up new markets. Still, all the new chickpea growers face tough competition globally. India, which imports huge amounts of American chickpeas, protected its own producers with stiff tariffs in 2018, and China and the European Union have responded to recent United States trade tariffs with their own.
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Peaches
Georgia and South Carolina
The symbol of Georgia and the mainstay of a Southern kitchen, peaches could be devastated by climate change. They need a certain amount of consistent cold weather — what growers call chill hours — followed by dependably warm weather. Without enough chill hours, peach buds are weak, and weak buds make poor fruit.
In addition, trees are blooming too early and then being hit by unusual frosts, which result in less sellable fruit. In 2017, a warm winter destroyed almost 85 percent of the state’s $30 million peach crop. It’s part of a pattern noted last year in the federally mandated National Climate Assessment, which predicted that it would continue. In response, researchers at places like Clemson University are trying to find new peach strains that can handle the shift, but new cultivars are still years away.
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Rice
Arkansas
About 1.2 million acres of farmland are planted with rice in Arkansas, which grows about half of the country’s supply. And that rice needs a lot of water. But changing weather patterns produce less rain during the growing season, and the underground aquifers that feed the state’s crop are drying out. “The rice industry as we’ve known it is not sustainable,” said Dr. Anna Myers McClung of the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark. Higher temperatures are another culprit. Too much heat alters the starch that the plants produce. Long-grain rice that should look translucent becomes chalky and cooks up stickier. It breaks apart more easily at the mill, causing waste. In response, some farmers are building reservoirs or experimenting with new, less water-intensive growing methods. Researchers like Dr. McClung are working with genetics to find strains of rice that are better adapted to the changing climate and more drought-tolerant. But developing a new variety, she said, could take five to 10 years.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/dining/farming-climate-change.html
