Grace Ross: Weird Weather: What Does It Mean For Food?
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
I reminded her that much of Massachusetts is farms and orchards. I continue to be proud of the higher percentage of family farmers among our farmers, but that is a precious commodity we need to be holding on to.
Not far from Worcester, just in Spencer, today our fellow citizens were off testifying at a hearing on state legislation important in different aspects to our food supply in the Commonwealth. Just as we don’t think of how the weather is impacting food production for those of us not directly engaged in it, we were unaware that activists had gathered once again to try to protect our food supply.
Not as noticeable to us in the northeast, last summer was devastating for much of the crop growing areas of the United States. In spring 2012, inundation with more water than not only normal, but reaching historical proportions did in huge lots of farm land; this year that flooding has led to changes in property insurance for many of those areas that are going to price out some of the little guys still trying to form in that region. Another shift moving us closer to production held in ever fewer hands and controlling entities.
Alternatively later in the summer, huge swaths were consumed and production severely harmed by drought and historically unprecedented levels of fire.
Folks may not remember a few years ago that the tomato crop in the northeast was hurt by unusual moisture in the springtime. This year I can’t help wondering what it means that one weekend there’s snow up in the mountains and less than a week later we’re hitting high 80s even 90s in some part of the state.
Two of the key bills that were being discussed today may seem a bit rarified topics. We have gotten used to mass food production. Still, it turns out that whether it’s the diversity of many different varieties of seeds and many different strains of grains, etc, diversity creates not only interesting food on our table, but the diversity in nature is necessary to survive more and more extreme circumstances. If all of the crops are uniform with the same strengths and weaknesses if a weather pattern shifts, if the local organisms around the plants change in some way, they may go down in a massive epidemic. Under the same stresses, a diversified seed base can survive.
One of the bills under discussion is whether the state will commit to marking genetically modified food –nicknamed GMOs – on our packaging. Given the amount of swapping of genes that has already happened I’m not sure how all of that would get captured. It’s interesting, however, that a seed and food production strategy is so feared by regular people that big corporations do not even want labels on our food informing us what they have done to it. If they are convinced it’s so safe, it’s instructive that they cannot convince us. If they think crossing genes is so critical to food production and so good for us, let them show us how.
If not, then they have created the situation they fear. They should let the rest of us have some truth in advertising so that we know what we’re getting ourselves into and we can take informed risks.
Another important bill under discussion was raw milk. Most of us have gotten so used to homogenized milk that we do not even think about it, but raw milk like diverse seeds allows for diversity in our milk production. It could be important for our future. Surely those who choose raw milk and farmers who have good reasons to produce it should be allowed to do so with safe government regulations.
A friend of mine who’s pregnant and pleased that her due date was in early July was sweltering at the wonderful stArt on the Street Festival. I reminded her that the dog days of summer that used to be early August have shifted to sometime late in June. For someone who loves 95% of our weather except for those sweltering days, it has been a stark change with my always worrying about how I’m going to make it through that August 3rd -9th time period. Now I fantasize about escaping to Nova Scotia for a week at the end of June.
Will we have more sweltering temperatures this summer? Will end of June be really hot or did we literally have one of our highest peaks just a couple of days ago? I don’t know.
What I do know is that at some point all of us need to become aware of how the increasingly weird weather – as people keep referring to it – continues that we all remain dependent on food production and healthy, good food production in our lives.
Policies which support local food production and a diversity of food production are going to become more and more important in the changing weather patterns in coming years.
Grace Ross is a former Gubernatorial candidate and author of Main St. Smarts.
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