Living near green spaces reduces your risk of stroke by 16%.

One of my hopes for the future involves a more urban humanity, but with cities that have plants growing wherever possible. Instead of towers covered in glass, we can have them covered in ivy, or with tiered gardens. Instead of streets, we can free underground mass transit (or elevated railways), designed for accessibility. Also maybe bicycle taxis and the like. The streets themselves can be repurposed for gardening or leisure, or even just some version of “forest”. I want cities that look like strange forested landscapes from a distance, until it gets dark, and you can see lights twinkling through the leaves. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which I’ve talked about before, but a big one is its affect on the overall health of the population, primarily by mitigating some of the air pollution associated with traffic and industry. We should be clear; air pollution is also a problem in rural areas. That’s why simply adding more vegetation to our current cities – while that’s a decent start – isn’t enough. We also need to change how and why cities are designed, and what the options are for getting around. Regardless, even in cities as they exist today, more green space seems to mean less risk of having a stroke, even controlling for factors like air pollution, smoking, and so on:

The results indicate a direct relationship between increased levels of NO2 in the atmosphere and the risk of ischaemic stroke. For every increase of 10 micrograms (µg) per cubic metre, this risk increases by 4%. The same happens when PM2.5 levels increase by 5 µg/m3. In the case of soot particles, the risk increases by 5% for every 1 µg/m3 increase in the atmosphere. These figures are the same for the entire population, irrespective of other socio-economic factors, age or smoking habits.

“It should be borne in mind that, unlike other air pollutants, which have various sources, NO2 is mainly caused by road traffic. Therefore, if we really want to reduce the multiple risks that this pollutant poses to people’s health, we need to implement bold measures to reduce car use”, says Cathryn Tonne, a researcher at ISGlobal.

“The study demonstrates the importance of environmental determinants in stroke risk. Given that it is predicted that the incidence, mortality and disability attributed to the disease will increase in the coming years, it is important to understand all the risk factors involved”, explains Dr. Carla Avellaneda, a researcher in the Neurovascular Research Group at IMIM-Hospital del Mar and one of the main authors of the study. Previous studies by the same group had already provided evidence on the relationship between factors such as soot or noise levels and the risk of suffering a stroke and its severity. All these factors act as stroke triggers.

In contrast, having an abundance of green spaces within the same radius from the home directly reduces the risk of suffering a stroke. Specifically, up to 16%. In this sense, “People who are surrounded by greater levels of greenery at their place of residence are protected against the onset of stroke”, says Dr. Avellaneda. Exposure to green spaces is generally considered to have beneficial effects through a variety of mechanisms, such as stress reduction, increased physical activity and social contact, and even exposure to an enriched microbiome.

Societies tend to be guided based on the goals of those governing them. Currently, the goal is ever-increasing wealth and power for those at the top. That’s not how things have always been, and it’s not how things have to be in the future. We can have a society aimed at giving everyone the time and resources to really seek meaning and happiness for themselves, and research like this can go a long way to showing us what that society should look like, at least in general terms. We should want things like a more verdant kind of city for the same reason we should want universal healthcare – it makes people’s lives better, and gives them longer, healthier lives.

The image shows concept art for China's Liuzhou Forest City. It shows buildings that are tiered almost like step pyramids, or some forms of mountainside farming. Each tier has trees growing on it, with the walls of the building showing white amid the greenery. Closer to the foreground is a sleek-looking railway station, and in front of that is a multi-lane highway. The overall effect is similar to that of overgrown ruins.

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Tegan Tuesday: War threatens food supplies, drives up prices

In 2020, world production of wheat was 731 million tons (1.7 trillion pounds), making it the second most produced cereal after maize. Since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has tripled and is expected to grow further through the middle of the 21st century. Global demand for wheat is increasing due to the unique viscoelastic and adhesive properties of gluten proteins, which facilitate the production of processed foods, whose consumption is increasing as a result of the worldwide industrialization process and the westernization of the diet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat

Many people who are more informed, more educated, more aware of global politics than I, have discussed what’s going on with the Ukraine-Russian war. I’d like to pull the conversation back from the — equally valid! — discussions on nuclear or fossil fuel power, or NATO involvement, and talk about food. Specifically, wheat. The Ukrainian flag is a light blue band over a yellow band, and represents a blue sky over a ripe wheat field. Ukraine has been called the bread basket of Europe, and Ukraine is one of the five largest producers of wheat around the world. Unsurprisingly, wheat is a major part of Ukrainian culture, as well. One of the traditional plants for the Ukrainian flower crown (vinok) is wheat, worn during a harvest festival by an engaged woman, as good luck and honor, among other uses of wheat as a cultural icon. Ukraine and Russia together make up one-third of all wheat production and export globally. Because of the war, Ukraine is not harvesting winter wheat right now, nor planting any new crops (sunflowers and corn for oil are also supposed to be planted now).

Because of the war, Ukraine has no one to spare to transport or sell the wheat already harvested. Because of the war, Russia is banned from selling their wheat due to economic sanctions and countries making political stances against the Russian aggression and empire-building. Because of the war, people around the globe will be starving:

Grain prices were already rising before Russia invaded Ukraine, and recent days have seen unprecedented further gains as two of the world’s biggest producer are at war.

Wheat closed in Chicago at the highest price ever on Monday. Benchmark corn and soybean futures have each surged by 26% this year. Those kinds of increases in food-staple commodities have been associated with social unrest throughout history.

“Remember, bread riots are what started the Arab Spring, bread riots are what started the French Revolution,” said Sal Gilbertie, CEO of Teucrium, the largest U.S. exchange-traded fund issuer focused solely on agriculture funds. “It is a biblical event when you run low on wheat stocks. You won’t see a global food shortage. Unfortunately, what you’re going to see globally is that billions of people might not be able to afford to buy the food.”

Gilbertie doesn’t think the world will run out of wheat — but prices could continue to rise, and that will be most problematic for vulnerable global populations. “Ukraine dominates what they call the sun-seed market,” he said. “Sunflower oil is a major component of cooking oil and food, and you see palm oil rising, and soybean oil rising. That is a big deal, especially for the poorest of the poor, where cooking is a big part of the daily budget.”

Global food prices rose to a record high in February, led by vegetable oil and dairy products, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Wheat traded in Chicago, the international benchmark, has jumped more than 50 per cent since Russia invaded Ukraine. Prices rose to as high as $13.40 a bushel on Friday, while European milling wheat in Paris hit a record of €406 per tonne.

North American wheat harvests were curtailed by drought this past year, as were South American soybeans and corn. Severe weather all around the globe has impacted global food commodities, and food insecurity was already on the rise in many areas. The countries most reliant on Slavic wheat imports are in Africa or the middle east. Some particular countries are Egypt, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen — all of these whom have a fair amount of unrest even with full access to foodstuffs. Sudan in particular has already been suffering from wheat shortages due to the closing of ports during protests. But countries like Lebanon are buying 96% of its wheat consumption from either Ukraine or Russia, Egypt buying 85%, Turkey buying 78%, and the others listed above with similarly high amounts of annual consumption supported from Slavic wheatfields. Some countries, like Egypt, have attempted to buy imports from countries like France, but France has not been able to keep up the demand. Lebanon doesn’t have their expected stockpiles, as the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 destroyed its only large grain silo. Turkey, in particular, needs wheat not just for it’s populace, but for it’s own exports: Turkey is a major producer and exporter of pasta, flour, biscuits, and semolina. Without the raw materials to make such items, Turkey’s economy will also suffer, along with everyone else in the region.

The price of bread has been a politically explosive issue in Egypt as on several occasions in the past 50 years it triggered angry protests, to which the Police usually responded by firing shots over the heads of demonstrators. Particularly strong protests were staged in March 2017 in Alexandria, Giza and many other areas after the government cut the supply of subsidized bread amid an economic crisis.

Also during the so-called “Bread Intifada” in January 1977 violent protests broke out and the Egyptian security forces killed 70 people and wounded more than 550 protesters, but in the end the government was forced to re-institute the subsidies.

Bread subsidies are considered a red line among Egyptians and people in other countries in the Middle East, as they are a staple for every family in the region. Bread is sold at very low prices, for example, a subsidized flat loaf costs 0.05 Egyptian pounds, less than one US cent, which covers only a small part of the real cost of producing it and the government coffers cover the rest.

It’s not just the general populace that is worried here either. The bakers who rely on the imported flour are the face of the government-subsidized bread for most families, and they are equally worried about what the future holds.

Tunisia’s government remains tightlipped on the flour shortages, even though the evidence is already apparent. Across the country, bakeries are shutting early, or rationing supplies, with anger growing among owners.

“There’s been a problem building for months,” said Hazem Bouanani, a baker. “Normally, we buy flour from mills and the government will reimburse us. For 10 months, we haven’t seen any payment.”

And that’s just wheat. Russia and Belarus also provide a significant amount of the world’s fertilizers, and the corn and soybeans grown in Ukraine feed livestock. People are going to starve. With a third year of a global pandemic, many industries failing or businesses failed, extreme weather patterns (flooding in Australia as we speak!); most people don’t have the funds to weather an additional hardship like severe food shortages.

This century is likely to be one instance of food insecurity after the next. I know that I will be working hard to have a large enough pantry to cushion any sudden surprises, considering how to eat more locally, and I think that I should look into how to support my local food banks. For those who wish to support those relieving the food insecurity of Ukrainian refugees, and many other global catastrophes, World Central Kitchen is usually one of the first organizations on the scene, and they provide hot food for all who can come.

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We need to downsize the fish.

Going vegetarian or vegan has long been a big part of the environmental movement in general, and the climate movement in particular. The reason is pretty simple – producing a pound of meat generally requires around ten times as much resources as a pound of whatever food that livestock eats. Animals have to eat, and only a fraction of what we consume is turned into muscle.

We generally think about this in terms of land animals – cows, chickens, sheep, etc., but this also applies to fish. Raising something like a salmon is going to require more energy than raising the smaller fish that salmon eat. That means that if we want to continue using fish as a source of protein, it would probably be a good idea to farm those fish that are cheapest to raise, and as much as I love salmon, farming it is not a good use of our resources.

Increased demand for seafood has driven an expansion in aquaculture. However, 90 percent of commercial fish feed is made from food-grade fish such as sardines and anchovies that are edible to humans. To analyze the efficiency of aquaculture in terms of net nutrient production, researchers first quantified the volume of micronutrients and wild fish retained by fish-fed farmed salmon using 2014 data on Scotland’s farmed salmon production. They calculated the volume of micronutrients used as aquaculture inputs and compared it to salmon aquaculture nutrient outputs. Using these data, the researchers modeled several seafood production scenarios to assess potential sustainability benefits of alternative seafood systems.

The researchers found that in 2014, 460,000 tonnes of wild-caught fish were used to produce 179,000 tonnes of Scottish salmon. 76 percent of the wild-caught fish were edible for human consumption. The data also suggest that multiple alternative seafood production models would be more efficient in terms of net nutrient production, so could significantly reduce wild fish capture while increasing global seafood supply. However, these data were limited to only one year (2014). Future studies are needed to better understand how to operationalize a global shift away from farmed fish toward sustainable fisheries.
According to the authors, “Feed production now accounts for 90% of the environmental footprint of salmonid production. Allowing salmonid production to expand further via its current approach will place exceptional stress on global fish stocks already at their limit. Our results suggest that limiting the volume of wild-caught fish used to produce farmed salmon feed may relieve pressure on wild fish stocks while increasing supply of nutritious wild fish for human consumption.”

The authors add: “Nutritious fish stocks are being squandered by salmon farming. Scientists reveal that eating the wild-caught fish destined for salmon farms would allow nearly 4 million tons of fish to be left in the sea while providing an extra 6 million tons of seafood.”

I spent a semester in Tanzania, back in 2006, and one thing I noticed there was that many markets would have a bin or even just a pile of tiny dried fish that you could buy in bulk. It was basically an easy way to add protein to a meal, by just tossing a handful of dried minnows into whatever you’re making. They did not taste as good as salmon, but they get the job done, and if you’re a decent cook and have access to spices, you can do good things with them.

As with so many other things,  I think our best path forward is to work on having a diverse array of options for anything we need to do, so that a catastrophic failure in one area, like a livestock epidemic or extreme weather event, won’t be enough to cause mass starvation or malnutrition. The way we do things now is not the way things have to be.

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New drought forecast for the 21st century looks grim. We urgently need to move food production indoors.

We need to move food production indoors. I keep saying it, but weirdly nobody running the world seems to read my blog. One of the central theses of this blog is that we missed the deadline on climate change, by at least a decade. That doesn’t mean we’re all doomed, but it does mean that returning to the global climate that gave birth to our current civilization is not an option. It could happen in a few hundred years, with active efforts from a global human society, but for that to happen, we need to survive those centuries of warming. To do that, we need to change how we do things in a number of ways, and agriculture is very near the top of that list.

A Washington State University-led research team analyzed climate, agricultural and population growth data to show continuing fossil fuel dependence will increase the probability of co-occurring droughts 40% by the mid-21st century and 60% by the late 21st century, relative to the late-20th century. That comes out to an approximately ninefold increase in agricultural and human population exposure to severe co-occurring droughts unless steps are taken to lower carbon emissions.

“There could be around 120 million people across the globe simultaneously exposed to severe compound droughts each year by the end of the century,” said lead author Jitendra Singh, a former postdoctoral researcher at the WSU School of the Environment now at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. “Many of the regions our analysis shows will be most affected are already vulnerable and so the potential for droughts to become disasters is high.”

I’d just like to pause to emphasized that. 120 million people dealing with severe drought each year. For a comparison, the WHO estimates the current annual number at 55 million, and they don’t even specify “severe” drought. I’ve mentioned before that starvation and malnutrition around the globe isn’t due to a lack of resources, but the factors that create that artificial scarcity are likely to be exacerbated by this increase in drought, causing mass famine well before we get to the point where conventional farming can’t produce enough food because of climate change. Without systemic change, this could mean anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions starving to death.

But because we know this is coming, I would argue that none of those deaths are unavoidable, even now. We could invest heavily in various forms of indoor food production, which can recycle water used, and be immune to things like drought. Making that a global priority now would mean that our inevitable mistakes will do less harm, because conventional farming is still producing food. If, as seems more likely, the people running the world continue to procrastinate on avoiding our looming extinction, then we’re going to have much less leeway. We’ve already lost a lot of that slack, but I fear we’re going to lose what remains pretty quickly.

The elevated risk of compound droughts estimated by Singh and colleagues is a result of a warming climate coupled with a projected 22% increase in the frequency of El Niño and La Niña events, the two opposite phases of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

The researchers’ projections show that nearly 75% of compound droughts in the future will coincide with these irregular but recurring periods of climatic variation in the world’s oceans, which have played a large role in some of the greatest environmental disasters in world history.

[…]

The researchers’ analysis specifically focused on ten regions of the planet that receive most of their rainfall during June-September, have high variability in monthly summer precipitation and are affected by ENSO variations, factors that lead to an increased potential for co-occurring drought. Several of the regions analyzed include important agricultural regions and countries that are currently facing food and water insecurity.

Their results indicate areas of North and South America are more likely to experience compound droughts in a future, warmer climate than regions of Asia, where much of the agricultural land is projected to become wetter.

Food produced in the Americas could therefore be more susceptible to climatic hazards. For instance, the United States is a major exporter of staple grains and currently ships maize to countries across the globe. Even a modest increase in the risk of compound droughts in the future climate could lead to regional supply shortfalls that could in turn cascade into the global market, affecting global prices and amplifying food insecurity.

“The potential for a food security crisis increases even if these droughts aren’t affecting major food producing regions but rather many regions that are already vulnerable to food insecurity,” said coauthor Weston Anderson, an assistant research scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland. “Simultaneous droughts in food insecure regions could in turn amplify stresses on international agencies responsible for disaster relief by requiring the provision of humanitarian aid to a greater number of people simultaneously.”

There is some good news, Anderson said. The researchers’ work is based on a high fossil fuel emissions scenario, and in recent years, the global community has made progress toward lowering carbon emissions which would greatly mitigate the frequency and intensity of co-occurring droughts by the end of the 21st century.

Also, the occurrence of nearly 75% of compound droughts alongside ENSO events in the future climate highlights the potential to predict where these droughts may occur with a lead time of up to nine months.

“This means that co-occurring droughts during ENSO events will likely affect the same geographical regions they do today albeit with greater severity,” said Deepti Singh. “Being able to predict where these droughts will occur and their potential impacts can help society develop plans and efforts to minimize economic losses and reduce human suffering from such climate-driven disasters.”

Research and development of new technologies should always be an ongoing investment we make as a society. That said, it is not necessary to do more research and development in order to take major action on climate change. We already have everything we need to make a huge difference in what our future looks like, except for a political and economic system that actually values humanity (let alone the rest of life). I know I keep repeating myself, but until real change actually happens, it needs to be repeated, and said in different ways and different contexts. The people who currently run the world, and the political and economic systems that put them in power are not going to save us. I don’t think they particularly want to, but I also don’t think they’re capable of doing it.  We can work within the system to do at least some good, but that will not be enough. I feel like that should be increasingly obvious to people, given how many decades it’s been since the IPCC was first convened. Vote, protest, and do all the rest, but we need to view democracy as a part of our daily lives and our daily work, not just something we participate in now and then. We need to stop relying on political parties for our political organizing, and start organizing more directly to put real pressure on politicians no matter who’s in office, and to work towards revolutionary change in who our society serves.

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From home gardens to communal greenhouses: changing agriculture for a changing climate

Before getting to the main point, I just wanted to vent for a moment. When I was looking through articles on food prices, two caught my attention for the same reason – they talked about the predicted price increases, but in discussing causes, they limited themselves to “supply chain problems” and corporate greed. The first article was, unsurprisingly, Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire; I would have been shocked if they mentioned climate change. The second I find a tad more worrisome, and it’s abc15 in Arizona, a “local” news source. The media’s love for ignoring climate change is a well-known phenomenon, but I find it discouraging that even in the most obvious circumstance, with “bad weather” being a known factor in the ongoing rise in prices, it’s not even mentioned. This kind of “reporting”, whether through malice or incompetence, serves to downplay the severity of the crisis we’re in, and to slow any efforts to respond to it.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I want to dig into the issue of food prices and agriculture a bit, as well as what we can be doing to both prepare our food supply for a hotter, more chaotic climate, and to decrease agricultural emissions.

These days, food shortages are a matter of policy. We produce enough food to feed everyone, but that’s not actually the goal of a lot of global food production. Things that humans could be eating, like grains, are used to feed livestock, so that wealthy countries have access to unlimited beef, pork, and chicken. Food that was produced for humans is left to rot because giving it to the hungry either wouldn’t generate profit, or would actually cost money. We create artificial scarcity for profit, and rather than rationing food to make sure everyone gets fed, we ration it to make sure those with money can buy as much as they want – by increasing prices. This is further complicated by the nature of our “just-in-time” production and distribution system, which is designed to maximize profits by removing the costs of buying more than a business needs, and of storing the excess. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted this problem, as there was a sudden spike in demand for certain goods, in a system that has no slack. Further, the same profit motive has always resulted in mistreatment of those people – like truck drivers – which means that they are also stretched to their limits. For all the pandemic and the Suez Canal incident put the supply chain in the spotlight, the relentless greed of the aristocracy was already starting to cause problems well before that.

As with so much else, there is a great deal that needs to change if we want a better future; with climate change already affecting global agriculture, and still on track to collapse the world’s fisheries by 2050, the time to make those changes is now. When I wrote about this before, I focused on factory-style production of high-protein algal and bacterial foods. I still think they’re something we should invest in right away (along with things like lab-grown meat), both because of the potential to provide a great deal of food, and because it’s a relatively new technology. There are going to be challenges in scaling it up, and would be better to run into unforeseen problems before large portions of the population are dependent on this stuff for survival. That said, I’m generally of the opinion that we would be wise to invest in a diverse array of food sources, both to distribute food production closer to where it’s consumed, and to reduce the chance of something disrupting the whole world’s supply. That’s why I like the community greenhouse solution that Aron Kowalski describes in the discussion below. The whole thing is worth your time, but I’m specifically talking about the bit starting around 29 minutes in:

 

Having collectively owned greenhouse farms for both food and recreation sounds like a brilliant idea to me. Even if you’re in an area without cold winters, climate-controlled green spaces like that can be a wonderful break from the world. It also makes me think of the Vietnamese arrangement that lets people who’re willing to do the work have space in a collectively owned rice field, to grow their own rice:

Even better, I’m willing to bet it would be possible to build indoor rice paddies pretty much anywhere in the world, even when the climate won’t allow them outdoors. The amount of food you can get that way never ceases to amaze me. I think it’s also worth noting that even with existing indoor farm models, there are models that combine vegetable farming with fish farming:

A sprawling new building that will soon be constructed in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania—at 250,000 square feet, roughly the size of two entire city blocks in Manhattan—will be the largest vertical farm in the world when it’s completed in 2023. Inside, though, you won’t find just vegetables: Tanks full of fish will sit near vertical stacks of trays filled with certified organic microgreens.

In the vertical farming industry, which is raising billions from investors, many startups grow greens like spinach or bok choy inside carefully-managed indoor spaces, and then selling the fresh produce to local consumers. But Brooklyn-based company Upward Farms is unusual in its use of fish, a version of a centuries-old practice called aquaponics. While others use synthetic fertilizer in their growing systems, the company uses fish waste that it filters out of tanks to provide nutrients to its plants. Both the fish and greens are then sold for food.

There’s a near-infinite array of ways to use communal greenhouse space, especially if the greenhouses are viewed as an integral part of the communities that work them. It can range from the methods currently being explored by for-profit enterprises, to dedicated food production zones like the aforementioned rice paddies, to space for people to experiment with new crops or techniques.  Additions or changes could be made with community approval, to better serve the wants or needs of that particular community, and to accommodate those interested in making food production their primary occupation. What’s important is that it’s done by and for the people, and that we change how things work to both allow and encourage people to take a little time to grow food.

As Kowalski said in the video at the top, it would be a good idea, on an individual level, to plant a garden if you have the ability, but remember that this is very much like the broader climate crisis – we need systemic change, and a revolutionary shift in societal priorities. We can have a society that clings to its greed as it withers away, or we can have one with indoor food forests with fish ponds, walking paths, and food carts, all next door to mostly-automated vertical farms that produce a majority of the food for the nearby population. I don’t think this would necessarily be “economical” as it’s reckoned today, but it would yield far richer rewards than any future the status quo can offer. Since we have to reshape society anyway, why not aim high?

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A brief agricultural report

I’m putting together a larger post on this, and I wanted to take a little time with it, so here’s a sort of preview. It’s a report from a regular caller to The Majority Report on his perspective as a farmer about the state of things:

Basically, there are a number of factors converging to create what looks to be an ongoing food shortage that will cause more empty shelves in some places, and higher prices in others. It’s important to remember that a lot of problems like this are things that could be solved, but not if access to food is controlled by the markets, with rationing based on wealth rather than need.

As with so many other problems today, we have the resources and understanding to solve this. What we lack is an economic and political system that values life.

A hotter planet means more extreme weather. Extreme weather means more expensive food.

Maybe lack of surprise is going to be a theme this week…

Agriculture, throughout human history, has been heavily dependent on predictable weather conditions. We have crops for every climate in which we live, but, they’re always tailored to the natural conditions, or to alterations like irrigation that rely on natural conditions. That means that we’ve known for a long time that, as climate change is now well underway and has planet-sized momentum, that our food supply will be affected. Just as increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere means that the planet will trap more heat until the new “insulation” is saturated, there’s no scenario in which that warming doesn’t change agriculture.

This past year has been a rough one for agriculture, and because our ability to access food is tied to markets and capitalism’s endless need for profit, that means that food prices are rising.

Global food prices in November rose 1.2% compared to October, and were at their highest level since June 2011 (unadjusted for inflation), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in its monthly report on December 2. After adjusting for inflation, 2021 food prices averaged for the 11 months of 2021 are the highest in 46 years.

The high prices come despite expectations that total global production of grains in 2021 will set an all-time record: 0.7% higher than the previous record set in 2020. But because of higher demand (in part, from an increased amount of wheat and corn used to feed animals), the 2021 harvest is not expected to meet consumption requirements in 2021/2022, resulting in a modest drawdown in global grain stocks by the end of 2022, to their lowest levels since 2015/2016.

The November increase in global food prices was largely the result of a surge in prices of grains and dairy products, with wheat prices a dominant driver. In an interview at fortune.com, Carlos Mera, head of agri commodities market research at Rabobank, blamed much of the increase in wheat prices on drought and high temperatures hitting major wheat producers including the U.S., Canada, and Russia.

Drought and heat in the U.S. caused a 40% decline in the spring wheat crop in 2021, and a 10% decline in the total wheat crop (spring wheat makes up about 25% of total U.S. wheat production). Economic damages to agriculture in the U.S. are expected to exceed $5 billion in 2021, according to Aon (see Tweet below). The highest losses are expected in the Northern Plains, where the spring wheat crop was hit hard by drought and heat. Fortunately, the 2021 U.S. corn crop was estimated to be the second largest on record, 7% larger than in 2020. The 2021 soybean crop was also estimated to be second largest on record, up 5% from 2020.

[…]

According to Reuters, global fertilizer prices have increased 80% this year, reaching their highest levels since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. Primary causes of the current high prices include extreme weather events (particularly the February cold wave in Texas and Hurricane Ida in August), which disrupted U.S. fertilizer production, and the high cost in Europe of natural gas, a key component in producing fertilizer). Fertilizer shortages threaten to reduce grain harvests in 2022, according to CF Industries, a major fertilizer producer.

Carlos Mera of Rabobank pointed out that Russia, a major wheat producer, hiked its export tax on wheat this year to incentivize keeping supplies at home. “That is quite scary,” said Mera. “Events like the French Revolution and the Arab Spring have been blamed on high food prices.” High wheat prices in 2011 (in the wake of export restrictions triggered by the 2010 drought in Russia) helped lead to massive civil unrest and the toppling of multiple governments (the “Arab Spring”).

As I will keep saying, we need to make radical changes to how we produce food, if we want to avoid mass starvation in my lifetime. More than that, as the article mentions, food shortages will cause political unrest and war, which in turn is bad for the environment, bad for agriculture, and in case this needs to be said, bad for humans. I’m also very worried that the nationalistic, and in some cases piratical behavior by wealthy and powerful nations will mean that the pattern of enforced poverty will continue, unless those of us living in those nations stand up to our own governments, in solidarity with those whose lives will be destroyed to keep us fed and happy.

I’m writing this as Storm Barra, which Wikipedia tells me is a “hurricane-force bomb extratropical cyclone”, rages outside. There has been some rain, but most of what I’ve noticed has been the wind. My area is already pretty windy, but this storm is really highlighting the degree to which cold temperatures haven’t been a problem here. Damp, and the mold it brings, is a constant concern, so there hasn’t been a lot of pressure to do things like make sure windows and their frames are fully sealed (it’s free ventilation!), and the flat has vents to the outside in every room. This means that while our home provides real shelter, it’s also very drafty, and doesn’t hold heat very well.

I’m wearing a wool sweater, a wool capote, and a fleece-lined wool hat over my clothes, because I don’t want to waste the gas or the money to keep the flat at a more comfortable temperature. It always strikes me as strange when I’m thinking about the horrors caused by global warming, while dressing like I’m outdoors to keep warm; it’s also the nature of climate change. The cold and darkness of winter can make it easy to feel like this crisis is still far enough away that we have time, but the numbers consistently point in the same direction – we’ve been out of time for a while now, and we should probably start acting like it.

Thank you for reading. If you find my work interesting, useful, or entertaining, please share it with others, and please consider joining the group of lovely people who support me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. Life costs money, alas, and owing to my immigration status in Ireland, this is likely to be my only form of income for the foreseeable future, so if you are able to help out, I’d greatly appreciate it. The beauty of crowdfunding is that even as little as $1 per month ends up helping a great deal if enough people do it. You’d be supporting both my nonfiction and my science fiction writing, and you’d get early access to the fiction.

Dwindling water supplies highlight the need for systemic change.

Our modern society was born in a period of relative climatic stability. Regional climate change did destroy various civilizations, but most of the planet remained stable enough for the various human populations to thrive.

A crucial product of that stability has been access to fresh water. That’s why our biggest cities grew by lakes and rivers, and in more recent years, why we’ve been able to expand in dry regions by tapping into vast deposits of underground water. We’ve known for some time that our consumption has far outstripped the ability of aquifers to replenish themselves, but it seems that we’ve reached a point at which some will never recover:

Under a best-case scenario where drought years are followed by consecutive wet years with above-average precipitation, the researchers found there is a high probability it would take six to eight years to fully recover overdrafted water, which occurs when more groundwater is pumped out than is supplied through all sources like precipitation, irrigation and runoff.

However, this best-case scenario where California has six to eight consecutive wet years is not likely because of the state’s increasingly hot and dry climate. Under a more likely, drier climate, there is less than a 20% chance of full overdraft recovery over a 20-year period following a drought.

The Central Valley produces about a quarter of the nation’s food and is home to around 6.5 million people. Using too much groundwater during and after droughts could soon push this natural resource beyond the point of recovery unless pumping restrictions are implemented. The study finds recovery times can be halved with modest caps on groundwater pumping in drought and post-drought years.

“This is really threatening,” said Sarfaraz Alam, a hydrologist at Stanford and lead study author. “There are many wells that people draw water from for drinking water. Since [groundwater is] always going down, at some point these wells will go dry and the people won’t have water.”

In ages past, the human populations in California would respond to this by collapsing. Many would die, many would migrate away from whatever had caused the wells to dry up, and some would stay. Those who stayed survived because they were able to adapt their community practices to the new conditions.

There are places that currently have plenty of water, but as the temperature rises, so does water consumption, and there’s no place on the planet that’s “safe” from the warming climate. Migrating will absolutely be part of how we cope with climate change (which is why it’s so important to end our nationalistic obsession with borders) but at the same time we will all be forced to confront the other two options: adapt or die.

The need for us to radically change how we use and dispose of water is almost as important as the need to stop our greenhouse gas emissions. That’s one reason I like the idea of moving food production indoors, where water can be more easily recycled, and temperatures can be controlled. It’s also why I think that the kinds of power generation we use should vary depending on regional and local conditions.

We’ve spent centuries behaving as though we were separate from nature, and many of us are consequently unused to adapting ourselves to the material conditions of our local ecosystem. It’s a thing we need to re-learn, and because I also think we absolutely need to retain the use of technology and science, it’s a thing we need to re-invent. I believe it’s possible to have a high-tech human society that can exist as a conscious part of the global ecosystem, and as stewards of it. I also believe that doing so will require us to let go of expectations about our lives that are rooted in a world that no longer exists because of the societies that gave us those expectations.

Thank you for reading. If you find my work interesting, useful, or entertaining, please share it with others, and please consider joining the group of lovely people who support me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. Life costs money, alas, and owing to my immigration status in Ireland, this is likely to be my only form of income for the foreseeable future, so if you are able to help out, I’d greatly appreciate it. The beauty of crowdfunding is that even as little as $1 per month ends up helping a great deal if enough people do it. You’d be supporting both my nonfiction and my science fiction writing, and you’d get early access to the fiction.

Solar panels and shade: using “negative space” to increase climate resilience

I’m generally a fan of solar power, both photovoltaic and thermal. As I’ve said for a while now, I think our best bet for a resilient society is to have a diverse set of tools available, so that the strengths of one kind of power generation can help reinforce the weaknesses of another. I like distributed power generation for its potential to make it harder to control people’s access to electricity, which in turn gives more political power to everyday folks, similar to how a solid mutual aid network or strike fund can allow communities to survive unexpected hardship or to win the “siege” of a strike. I also very much like the portability of solar panels. As circumstances like rising sea levels or persistent heat force us to abandon some of the places in which we currently live, the whole process will be much easier if we can bring our power sources with us.

One problem with solar power is that whether you’re using mirrors to concentrate heat, or photovoltaic cells to generate electricity, both depend on a large surface area covered in the relevant material to “catch” enough sunlight to use. While I don’t buy the idea that we can run our entire society with just wind or just solar, scaling up renewable power in general can potentially conflict with the equally important goals of re-wilding parts of the landscape, and growing “carbon crops” for sequestration.

The solution that’s most commonly offered – at least for photovoltaic power – is to mount the panels on places like rooftops or parking lots, where there’s already guaranteed direct sunlight. I like this for a lot of reasons. Part of it is that it provides a failsafe for individuals and communities – if your building generates at least some of the power you use, that’s a huge benefit for surviving the various dangers of the growing climate crisis. At the same time, there are things that require a lot of power in one place, and power is always lost in transmission. That’s one reason why the whole “we could power the whole planet if we just cover a section of the Sahara with solar panels” idea has never actually been seriously considered – even with magically indestructible transmission lines, too much power would be lost getting to to where people live.

Rooftops are nice because they generally have at least some correlation to the amount of power being used; more people consume more power, and more people means more rooftops. On the other hand, I think as the temperature continues to rise, cities are going to need to introduce a lot more plant life if they want to keep outdoor temperatures at survivable levels. It’d be nice if I didn’t feel the need to keep saying it, but we’re at the point where we need to be deliberately engineering our surroundings to account for lethal heat. If we can, it would be wise for us to also take some action to help our ecosystems cope with the chaos we’ve caused. Fortunately, with solar panels, there’s a way to do that while also getting the benefits of centralized solar farms.

While we should be reducing our use of highways for rapid transit lining those that we do have with solar panels, either on the roadside or even covering parts of the highway is one option. Another is covering canals.

California’s water system is one of the largest in the world and brings critical water resources to over 27 million people. Brandi McKuin, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz and lead author of the study, found that that shading the canals would lead to a reduction in evaporation of water, kind of like keeping your glass of water under the shade instead of out in the open on a hot summer day prevents evaporation from stealing sips. Putting up a solar panel using trusses or suspension cables to act as a canal’s umbrella is what makes the double-whammy of a solar canal.

“We could save upwards of 63 billion gallons of water annually,” she says. “That would be comparable to the amount needed to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland, or meet the residential water needs of over 2 million people.” Water is of especially critical importance to California, a state regularly stricken with drought.

The actual water savings aren’t huge, but there are also benefits to shading the water that go beyond losing less to evaporation:

Aquatic weeds also plague canals and can bring water flow to a standstill, but the researchers found that by adding shade, and decreasing the plant’s sunshine slashes the amount of weed growth. McKuin says preventing weed growth would also lighten the load for sometimes costly mechanical and chemical waterway maintenance.

As usual, the United States is lagging a bit behind on this one. India has been covering canals with solar panels for some time now, and have found that not only does it keep the canals cooler and more functional for human use, but the lower temperatures and limited sunlight reduce algal blooms that can make people sick, and that suck oxygen out of water, making it difficult for organisms like fish to survive.

Not only do we get those benefits, but the evaporation that does occur also helps keep the solar panels cool, improving their efficiency:

And while the water can benefit from the solar panels above, so do the panels from the water below. The running water helps the panels to remain cool, which increases their efficiency by at least 2.5-5%.

As most articles I’ve read on this point out, the up-front cost of solar farms over water tend to be higher than building on dry land, but I hope I don’t need to point out that cost should not be the primary concern when responding to global climate chaos. I’d like to see more research into the effects of things like shading ponds, lakes and rivers, but with those feeling the burn of climate change too, I think it’s worth trying out.

Going forward, I think there’s going to be a lot of austerity propaganda surrounding climate change. Whenever society has a ruling class, those rulers will always talk about the need to show “the resilience and ingenuity of our people”, by making everyone else suffer more, so that those at the top don’t have give up their power.

There are a lot of ways to combat that, but one is to relentlessly insist on framing the conversation about what collective investments will yield the biggest improvements to life for people in general. Reducing algal blooms and creating shaded swimming and boating areas, for example, could make a hotter climate far more bearable, and we’re going to need as much “more bearable” as we can get.

Thank you for reading. If you find my work interesting, useful, or entertaining, please share it with others, and please consider joining the group of lovely people who support me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. Life costs money, alas, and owing to my immigration status in Ireland, this is likely to be my only form of income for the foreseeable future, so if you are able to help out, I’d greatly appreciate it. The beauty of crowdfunding is that even as little as $1 per month ends up helping a great deal if enough people do it. You’d be supporting both my nonfiction and my science fiction writing, and you’d get early access to the fiction.

Morbid Monday: High temperatures are devastating wheat crops in the United States

I’m working on a fairly long and involved piece on organizing and how to move beyond the local efforts I will continue to promote (remember – direct action both makes a better future more likely, and tends to improve your own outlook and personal mental health). Because I want to add the new piece to my “guidebook”, I want to do it justice if I’m able. In the meantime, the need for action continues to grow, and paying attention to what’s happening now can help us to think about how to act, and to imagine life on the chaotic, hostile planet on which we find ourselves.

For decades now fossil fuel propagandists have used, among many other talking points, the claim that rising CO2 levels is actually a good thing, because “CO2 is plant food”. The problem is that it’s not the only factor affecting the growth of any plant. As with humans, high temperatures dehydrates plants, and as with humans, there are limits to the heat a plant can take. I suppose it’s understandable that people might not know that, since we’ve only been dealing with heat-related crop failures from time to time for a few thousand years. Regardless, the predictable is occurring, and this summers brutal North American heatwaves have been wreaking havoc on our wheat farms:

Sun-baked U.S. spring wheat fields have been so badly hurt by drought this year that some farmers are expecting to harvest what they’re dubbing a “half a crop.”
Plants are visibly stunted. So much so that when crop scouts toured the fields of top-producing state North Dakota this week they kept having to get close to the ground to inspect crops that were about 10 inches (25 centimeters) or shorter — about a third of the normal size for this time of year. Large patches of dry soil could be seen in between rows. In better seasons, the ground isn’t even visible.

All told, the harsh conditions will send yields for spring wheat in the state plunging to 29.1 bushels an acre this year, according to final assessment of estimates following the Wheat Quality Council’s crop tour. While that’s slightly higher than the most-recent estimate from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it would still mean a drop of 41% from last year’s harvest.

Spring wheat is highly prized worldwide for giving foods like pizza crust and bagels their chewiness. This season’s expected shortfall hits as neighboring Canada contends with extreme heat and dryness as well, putting those crops at risk. North American baking and milling companies may end up having to look overseas for imports. Some farmers, after battling shriveled crops and damaging grasshoppers, have already opted to bale up plants for hay or consider the entire field a loss.

The fact that so much of the food we grow goes to waste means that those of us accustomed to reliable access to food are unlikely to starve because of this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if wheat products became more expensive, absent some form of price control or subsidies. This kind of problem is only going to get worse. Various places will still have good years, but those will become fewer in number as the temperature rises, and with the temperatures we’ve seen in Canada this year, I hope it’s clear to everyone that no part of the planet is going to be safe from these problems. As I’ve said before, I think our response to climate change needs to include a massive increase in indoor farming, even if it’s mostly stuff like algae or edible bacterial cultures.

I hope you grew up wanting to live in some kind of science fiction setting where we use advanced technology to survive on a hostile planet, because while we can take steps to mitigate that hostility, I don’t expect the warming to end in my lifetime.

Life costs money and I’m currently in a situation where I’m unable to get conventional wage labor. If you find my work useful or interesting, please consider supporting me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (that’s just 25 cents a week!), and every little bit really does add up. If you can’t afford that – and I know that many can’t right now – please consider sharing my work with anyone you think might appreciate it. Beyond that, take care of yourselves and each other.