Food, Wine, Climate Change

A very important issue: food!

At the start of the pandemic it became clear that our systems of food production, processing, distribution, and reliability were quite fragile. However, as we Americans lived through the pandemic nightmare, our systems actually proved to be pretty resilient! The early problems with sick workers, sudden changes in demand (from restaurants to mainly home meal preparation), panic buying, glitches in the trucking industry, and many other issues seem to have been resolved. Retail food sources and restaurants figured out how to deliver food orders to consumers without requiring dangerous in-person pickups. Farmers and food processors produced products that were useful at home rather than in restaurants, schools, or business cafeterias. Lots of other changes made it easier to cook and eat at home, and people adapted. Finally, large-scale immunization has allowed safe working and shopping. By now a lot of us have probably forgotten the details of how we made it through!

Prices have gone up as the many problems with food production and distribution have occurred; however, aggregate American food prices have risen only around 2.2% in the past year, with variation, of course, in individual products. (source). Many other problems still exist: for an in-depth look at the American food system, see the report from the organization Food and Water Watch: "Well-Fed: A Roadmap To A Sustainable Food System That Works For All."

Although the USA may be doing pretty well, the world's food supply is still fragile for many reasons. In particular, global food prices are rising due to a variety of causes, and high prices are much more harmful to the vast numbers of people living in poverty. Further, the pandemic, we must remember, is ongoing in many regions where vaccination programs have not been widespread. 

Thus, the rest of the world isn't doing as well as the USA. According to the Washington Post: "Surging global food prices put staple meals out of reach, from Nigerian jollof rice to Russian pasta and Argentine steak." This article provides a lot of statistics:

"The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its food price index, which measures the global price of select foods, had in May hit highs not seen since 2011, up 40 percent year-on-year.

"A variety of factors are to blame, including a surge in orders from China, fluctuating oil prices, a sliding U.S. dollar, and looming above all: the pandemic, and in some places, reopening."

The Food Supply and Climate Change

A new reason to worry about global food production and supply is looming before us. Climate change has quickly gone from an issue we can ignore to something that indisputably affects large numbers of people. Major heat waves have devastated large areas of western North America this summer, and many problematic weather situations have emerged in other parts of the world. For example:

"Heat can cause havoc with crop production. In Bangladesh, just two days of hot air in April this year destroyed 68,000 hectares of rice, affecting over 300,000 farmers with losses of US$39m (£28m). New heat-tolerant varieties of crops need developing and deploying. The alternative is higher food costs and food price spikes with the increased poverty and civil unrest that typically accompanies them." (Guardian, "Canada is a warning: more and more of the world will soon be too hot for humans" by Simon Lewis)

The ramifications of global climate change are already being felt in the third world. This is  a very complex problem, with complex consequences, and the solution, if any, is unclear. Where will we all live? What will we all eat? How will we all survive? Or will we?

... and Wine

As I think of all these brain-busting global problems, my mind turns to all the beautiful vineyards I have visited over the years, and I wonder how climate change will affect them. We have always enjoyed visiting these wineries and vineyards, and love to drink wines from many sources. Maybe this is frivolous, but here are some details I've found.

A vineyard we visited near Santa Barbara, California, in 2014.

"California is at the frontline when it comes to rising temperatures and natural disasters and the pressure is on to find workarounds," according to an article titled "Climate Change Threat to Wine Regions." Droughts, wildfires, and changing rain patterns are all challenging the California wine industry to adapt to new conditions, but so far, they are adapting rather well. Of course we have been horrified when reading of the vast fires that destroyed many acres of vines and winery buildings in the Napa Valley, another place we have enjoyed visiting for many years.

UPDATE: Detailed article about impact of fires on Napa Valley wines:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/18/climate/Napa-wineries-climate.html

A vineyard near Martinborough, New Zealand, in 2007.

We had a wonderful tour of the Martinborough wine country, near Wellington, while visiting New Zealand some time ago. We also could see the vineyards of the more famous Marlborough wine region from a train as we traveled through the South Island. New Zealand's climate is much affected by global climate changes:

"In Marlborough, the climate has not only got hotter but has slowly shifted from a clean, dry heat to one with more humidity, which is encouraging diseases like mildew to thrive. Due to its flat topography and proximity to the sea, another threat to the region is sea-level rise. ... 

"Martinborough is also set to change. As reported to local New Zealand news outlet, Stuff, the winemaker Clive Paton at Ata Rangi in Martinborough has long been planting grape varieties better suited to the heat and feels both Syrah and Tempranillo may become increasingly valuable players." (source) 

We also toured some wineries in Australia on a trip even longer ago -- but tragically, one of the vast and horrific fires there destroyed the area where we toured. I read this: 

"Although Australia is definitely on the frontline when it comes to climate change, it is also ahead of the curve in searching for ways to combat these issues and find solutions, whether it be experimenting with new vineyard sites or grape varieties." (source) 

Our friend Michelle's vineyard near Cotignac, France, 1994.

French vineyards have been experiencing unusual and very damaging weather fluctuations this year. In particular, the early spring was unseasonably warm, but then an extreme cold spell damaged the budding grape vines. Between 25% and 50% of the 2021 French wine crop could be lost because of these early changes. Such episodes are expected to become more common; moreover, the harvests have been coming in earlier and earlier in the past decade because of climate change. An article titled "French vineyards devastated by changing climate reportedly expect to lose up to 50% of their crops this year" summarized this difficult situation. 

Our tour guide with a map of the Washington vineyards in 2018.

A few years ago, on a trip to Seattle and the area, we toured some of the wineries near there which make wine from the grapes grown in Western Washington State. I'm particularly wondering how these growers are handling the record-setting heat wave and drought that's everywhere in the Pacific Northwest now.

The extreme heat this year fortunately came after the critical flowering stage of grape growth, and the harvests this year may be nearly unaffected. However, the future is delicate, and continued excess heat may alter the region's grape-growing capacity. An article in Time Magazine, "Pacific Northwest Wineries Are Shaking Off the Extreme Heat Wave, But Are Worried What It Means for the Industry’s Future," discussed the issues. Author Megan McCluskey interviewed Oliver May, the manager of Discover Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills. He says that while growers tend to prefer hot years, there’s a limit to what any grapevines can take:

“With the drought situations that are happening across the West right now, it’s going to get more and more difficult to manage these heat waves. Vines can adapt to drought conditions, but this is extreme,” he says. “The past few years, every year has been the hottest year. So at this point, this definitely isn’t the best place to grow grapes and it’s just going to become more and more difficult and maybe not even doable.”

Obviously, there's much more to be learned about the impact of climate change on the global food supply, the global wine industry, and indeed on the future of the world.

Blog post and all photos © 2021 and previously by mae sander 
for mae food dot blogspot dot com.