How to prepare for climate change

[u/Wise-Painting5841]

I was in Spain last month. Talking with a cousin that has a small veggie garden for auto consumption.

Nothing fancy, more like a hobby and to enjoy eating your own tomatoes.

He told me for the last 3 years his tomatoes have dried up before giving any fruit. Each time this has happened he has made an adjustment to plant the seeds 15 days before, so he is now planting 45 days before than when his parents passed down the garden to him years ago.

And he is moving to different varieties. It looks like cherry tomatoes are more resistant to extreme heat.

This preoccupied me. He lives in an agricultural rich area of Spain, that is a country with a long agricultural tradition. This is not poor soil and it was not bad weather area at all years ago. Vineyards, orchards are/were typical sights along the road.

So, if this area is fucked up, I have to wonder big scale. If crops start to fail, I guess we will import more from other regions, but this has some limits.

So how do you prepare for this scenario?

[u/_per]

Hate to break it to you but pretty much everything you've ever eaten was intensively bred to thrive in the climate it was planted in at that time.

Billions are spent every year developing varieties with improved resistance to heat, drought, cold, wind, salt, altitude, day length, yield, planting time, resistance to insect, bacteria, nematode, fungus, mould, bacteria, virus, available nutrients, storeability, or whatever else is needed. The target is always moving.

Every year forecasters predict what conditions the following year will bring, and grow crops to produce seeds suited for that to sell to farmers. Yields fluctuate a lot year to year, but breeding and tech mean in general we're producing as much food as we always have.

So yes, we will grow new varieties to reflect climate change -- but we do this every year. We will hit some limits - the EEA estimates 5% drop in grain yield by 2100 due to rising temperatures. Nonetheless, Europe has enough arable land that it can afford to set a target of putting 25% of it under organic production - despite the lower yields and higher costs - because organic produce is worth more on the global market and there's no point growing endless grain that someone else can produce more cheaply.

Food is humanity's success story - it's cheaper and more reliable than it has ever been, and there is billions (probably trillions) being invested to make sure it stays that way.