Globe warms, holidays flee to Canada
The cranberry bogs of New England are flooding in warmer weather and soon Canada will overtake the US in production of cold weather goodies, according to the brilliant food writer, Corby Kummer in a NYT Op-Ed. (reprinted in stopglobalwarming.org)
Your pie crusts will also wear the maple leaf as the thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/americas-breadbasket-moves-to-canada/)”>US sees a drop in wheat production.
Local and organic will be a thing of the past as we come to rely on genetically modified seeds to stave off the devastating effects of a radically altered ecosystem.
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3 Responses to “Globe warms, holidays flee to Canada”
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Anna Stevenson Says:
December 28th, 2006 at 11:39 amWell, a “drop in wheat production” might mean that we’ll stop shipping nearly 1/3 of our wheat overseas - which we usually do at lower-than-market rate prices, undercutting local markets in the countries we are “aiding.” That might be a good thing. (For a breakdown of world-wide wheat production, click here.
And changing climates doesn’t mean we wont be able to grow any food, it just might be different food. And it might point us towards MORE local and small-scale farms, whose diversified are better suited to adapt to changing climates than large-scale monocultures (and who’s transportation methods aren’t putting miles and miles worth of C02 into the atmosphere, exaccerbating the problem).
Finally, GM foods are and are not a thing of the future. We’ve been genetically modifying plants since we started agriculture through breeding and selection, and there’s no reason not to continue to select for hardier, sweeter, bigger, more drought resistant varieties as we have always done.
What IS still relatively new is GM foods that are altered at a molecular level in labs, often mixing species that would never naturally cross breed (ie, pig genes in tomatoes). And the effects of these plants are debatable, but potentially extremely harmful. The “terminator gene” introduced into GM soybeans (so that the farmer will have to buy new seeds every year) is particularly worrisome–what happens if it cross breeds with wild grasses, trees or other crops, and everything starts terminating itself?
There’s more info on GM foods here: http://sunflowerstrewn.wordpress.com/ and all over the web; see also the movie The Future of Food for a good look at the science behind it, and the potential effects.
It’s a complex issue. But it is NOT the only solution to a radically altered ecosystem, nor is it antithetical to local food.
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Sarah Says:
December 28th, 2006 at 1:20 pmTrouble is, that as Canadian habitat becomes more favorable to our cereal crops we’re simultaneously destroying cold-weather homes for other critters. Our farmers may - and likely will - adapt, but global warming is wreaking havoc with migration patterns for carbiou, brown-bear, geese ect and obliterating plankton counts in the oceans. Many climatologists predict extinctions.
Further, declining wheat production means higher prices - but not necessarily fewer exports. It’s already a boom market in cereal crops, the cost of feeding ourselves and our livestock has risen dramatically in the past year. This is a cost that tends to hit the most fragile members of society hardest.
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Sarah Rose Says:
December 28th, 2006 at 2:09 pmThen again, cheap food is thought to be a big component of our obesity crisis…
