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Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

economist.com

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Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#81

Post by uxp100 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #7
yellow_lead wrote: post #2

I couldn't read the whole article, but this has already started with crops more sensitive to climate - namely grapes for wine.

20 years ago, I don’t think you could make wine in Wisconsin. Today, Wisconsin wine is total garbage. I am morbidly curious about what it tastes like in another 20.

Wollersheim has been making garbage wine in Wisconsin since 1972, and using their own grapes since 1976, including garbage wines made entirely from bad grapes grown in Wisconsin. That Wisconsin wedding scourge, Prarie Fume uses New York grapes, however.

So uh, they been doin it a long time and uh, still not to my taste.

Also, their vineyard was originally built in the 1800s is the story, so grape cultivation was attempted back then too, I can imagine those wines were rough too.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#82

Post by masklinn »

dubcanada wrote: post #52
unearth3d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above 600 increasingly toxic to us us, and above 300 mineral and protein falls off for most plants. Some plants also become > flammable. Have peer papers if interested.

Falls off? Plants are already flammable… It’s already above 400, so most plants no longer have protein or minerals?

> Falls off? Plants are already flammable…

Things which are flammable can get a more (or less) flammable depending on composition (or environment).

For instance furniture is flammable, but if you remove the flame retardants they become a lot more flammable, either the threshold for inflaming is lower, or they burn up a lot faster and / or hotter.

> It’s already above 400, so most plants no longer have protein or minerals?

"Falls off" means they decrease not that they disappear, and the lowering nutritiousness of foodstuff is regularly spotlighted.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#83

Post by masklinn »

bobbytit wrote: post #77
unearth3d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Above 600 increasingly toxic to us us, and above 300 mineral and protein falls off for most plants. Some plants also become > flammable. Have peer papers if interested.

I would love to see those papers. I am sure that any drop off would be insignificant compared to the additional vegetation at higher co2 levels. The people in the Biosphere experiment were living in an environment with co2 over 5000 ppm but it was not good for them. Most unventilated homes are between 700 and 900 ppm. For example, Tomato growers keep co2 levels greater than 1500 ppm in their greenhouses and their tom…

> For example, Tomato growers keep co2 levels greater than 1500 ppm in their greenhouses and their tomatoes are very nutricious.

I would expect because the greenhouse environment (and scale) lets them have much better control over the plant's intake requirements (also likely better oversight). That would not be an easy thing to manage in fields.

It's like comparing a small group of professional athletes with an entire crew managing their nutrition versus a single nutritionist serving an entire city.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#85

Post by PYTHONDJANGO »

refurb wrote: post #74
PYTHONDJANGO wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these crops do not work as you think they should work. Their function in modern agricultural industry is to chain the farmer to buy more and more chemicals and patented crops. "Saving the world with gmo crops" is marketing talk by companies that make big money selling these chemicals and crops. Please check https://www.gmwatch.org/en/ to train your critical thinking.

This is a terrible take on a technology that has drastically improved human health.

Do not confuse gmo crops with genetics in medical tech, these are very different things. While there is zero evidence how gmo crops improve human health mRNA vaccines are a very interesting step in medical history.

Also be vigilant for anybody who tries to make scientific gmo crop criticism look like stupid anti-vax blabla, these are very different groups. Best practice to better understand that battlefiled and not buy into propaganda is to stay focused and set an attention monitor on generalizations.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#86

Post by thysultan »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #30
keewee7 wrote: post #25

Canada, Russia and China seem to be the big winners of climate change. It will be interesting how that changes geopolitical dynamics.

Siberia has just had the largest forest fires in recorded history anywhere on earth. Permafrost is meling causing sinkholes and collapse of building as the earth shifts. Swaths of forest are turning into swamos and releasing massive amount of CO2 in the process

Sounds like a win for Russia, new fertile area for farm land, more co2 presumably accelerates this thus providing new warm water ports across the arctic.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#87

Post by bobbytit »

masklinn wrote: post #83
bobbytit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see those papers. I am sure that any drop off would be insignificant compared to the additional vegetation at higher co2 levels. The people in the Biosphere experiment were living in an environment with co2 over 5000 ppm but it was not good for them. Most unventilated homes are between 700 and 900 ppm. For example, Tomato growers keep co2 levels greater than 1500 ppm in their greenhouses and their tom…

> For example, Tomato growers keep co2 levels greater than 1500 ppm in their greenhouses and their tomatoes are very nutricious. I would expect because the greenhouse environment (and scale) lets them have much better control over the plant's intake requirements (also likely better oversight). That would not be an easy thing to manage in fields. It's like comparing a small group of professional athletes with an entir…

A plant in the field can only take advantage of the extra co2 if there is adequate inputs but it does not do the plant harm if not. It would be like giving a city as much food as they want irrespective of individual need.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#88

Post by randomdata »

PYTHONDJANGO wrote: post #60
LatteLazy wrote: post #48

Im pushing 40 but if i were young I'd become a geneticist. There are fortunes to be made making crops drought/flood/heat/cold/salt resist.

All these crops do not work as you think they should work. Their function in modern agricultural industry is to chain the farmer to buy more and more chemicals and patented crops. "Saving the world with gmo crops" is marketing talk by companies that make big money selling these chemicals and crops. Please check https://www.gmwatch.org/en/ to train your critical thinking.

There are a quite a few farmers on HN, myself included. How are we being chained? I am quite familiar with the usual talking points you see in movies, but they are intended for a non-farmer audience and don't really mean much to those actually involved in agriculture. More technically, speaking to an actual audience of farmers, what does this mean and how does it play out in practice?

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#89

Post by chadcmulligan »

smhost wrote: post #53
Kelteseth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, there are already winners for the past 50 years when you look at all big oil companies.

Maybe. There's a non-zero chance that when younger millenials come to power, they will hunt down oil company insiders and force them to flee to Argentina.

Will they? Like when the hippies came to power it was all flowers and rainbows. Those in power are rarely the ones who started out as political radicals, at least on the conservative side.

Re: Climate change will alter where many crops are grown

#90

Post by mabbo »

keewee7 wrote: post #25

Canada, Russia and China seem to be the big winners of climate change. It will be interesting how that changes geopolitical dynamics.

Overall, perhaps, but on the local level it's causing a lot of problems.

The region I grew up in, in eastern Ontario, is an area with fairly thin soil. Fortunately, summer rains were generally frequent and mild- light rain all day a few days per week, and sunny and warm otherwise. This balanced out the thin soil, and made it work well for certain crops, corn especially.

The last 15 years have seen a huge shift to dry weather interspersed with dramatically heavy rain. Heavy rain sounds good, but it's too fast- the water doesn't seep deeply into the soil, doesn't let the crops really get a good drink. It runs off, often taking nutrients with it straight into rivers.

My parents are saying their farmer friends, staunch conservatives who used to believe climate change was a political stance, are suddenly getting more and more worried.

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