Climate Change Is Messing With Your Dinner

Climate Change Is Messing With Your Dinner

A fisherman cleans his catch offshore from Newlyn, U.K.

The world’s dinner tables are seeing the impact of climate change, like it or not.

As cold regions become warmer, and warm places hotter still, farming and fishing are shifting. An evolving climate means big changes for people who grow, catch and rear for a living, and everyone else who buys and eats what they produce.

There are winners and losers. There are rich-world problems (less cod, more lobster) and poor (drought and pestilence). There are threats to the quality of the world’s basic staples including wheat and corn, as well as such nation-defining luxuries as Chateau Briand, Bordeaux wine and Java coffee. And whether through dearth or deluge, supply shocks can shake up prices.

As temperatures rise, the best growing conditions for many crops are moving away from the tropics, and from lower lying land to cooler climbs. Fish and other underwater catches, too, are migrating to colder seas as their habitats warm.
Projected wheat yield to 2050
World map showing areas of wheat yield loss or gain projections for 2050

CERES-wheat crop model based on past climate data and HadGEM2 projections for 2050. Fertilizer, water management are same in both periods.

Source: International Food Policy Research Institute

British fine wine, not so long ago an oxymoron, is now a thing. Coffee farmers in Indonesia, Ethiopia and Peru are venturing uphill. Across the Atlantic and the North Sea, U.K. trawlers see less cod and haddock for the nation’s fish and chips, and more squid and anchovies. The nation is importing its cod from Iceland, China and Norway.

“The very cold-water fish that our grandparents used to catch have moved further north, which means that we now import most of the fish that we eat,” said Dr. Stephen Simpson, an associate professor in marine biology and global change at Britain’s University of Exeter. “When we go on holiday in Spain, we often eat the U.K. fish.”

Blessed by Climate

It’s not gloom for everyone, with mostly colder northern areas benefiting so far.

“The areas where foods are grown the most efficiently are shifting,” said Jason Clay, a senior vice president at the World Wildlife Fund, who has more than four decades of expertise on farming and fishing issues. The U.S. corn belt stretching from Ohio to the Dakotas is edging toward the border with Canada, which is already growing more crops than it used to in some parts of the country, he said.

Russia is enjoying bumper harvests of wheat, the world’s most widely grown crop, partly as record temperatures boost yields. That’s adding to the global glut of grains, pushing down prices. In the U.S., North Dakota now has a longer growing season, while some California farmers are planting coffee.

Combine harvesters load trucks with wheat grain during the summer harvest in Ust-Labinsk, Russia.

Off the coast of Maine, lobstermen have been catching more of the delicacy than ever before. While further temperature increases may go too far and erode lobster populations in coming decades, for now crustaceans are still breeding in great profundity.

Bumper Harvest

Russian wheat output, in metric tons

100M

80

60

40

20

1987/88

2017/18

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Lobster Bounty

Maine lobster catches, in metric tons

60K

40

20

1950

2017

2017 data are preliminary
Source: Maine Department of Marine Resources

English sparkling wine is winning international awards as the climate in some areas of the country begins to resemble France’s Champagne region, while Poland is growing chardonnay and finicky pinot noir varieties.

Losing Out

But for many, the changes are bad news.

Warmer temperatures are encouraging pests and fungus to develop. Growers in the U.S. and Canada have suffered increased levels of poisonous mycotoxins from fungi in their crops because of drought and humidity. Coffee farmers face rising threats from pests including berry-borer beetles, while disease epidemics such as leaf rust have hit Central America, and Colombia to the south.

Extreme weather events from floods to droughts have taken their toll. In France, fickle weather has been a disaster for the vineyards of Bordeaux, with spring frosts damaging vines, and summer storms leading to grape rot in Champagne. The country’s production of wine overall hasn’t been this low in 60 years.

Into the Red

French wine output, in hectolitres

100M

80

60

40

20

1945

1969

1993

2017

Sources: French Agriculture Ministry, Eurostat

In California, wine country was ravaged by wildfires last year. Droughts swept across Africa, demolishing corn harvests from Ethiopia to South Africa two years ago. Brazil, the top coffee grower, has also been battling drought in the past few years that curbed crops. Researchers warn that the suitable area for the beans will shrink as temperatures rise.

Coffee Land

Brazil’s suitable areas, whether hot or cool, are poised to shrink...

Map of Brazil showing suitable areas for growing coffee shrinking by 2050

Source: World Coffee Research

“When extreme events occur, you’re in trouble,” said Lorenzo Giovanni Bellu at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. “For sure, climatologists see increasing occurrence of extreme events, which is the worst for agriculture.”

A Matter of Taste

Less immediately catastrophic is the effect on quality and flavor.

Arabica coffee beans, favored by cafe baristas, are the most sensitive to shifts in rainfall and temperature. Trees are usually grown at high altitude, where cooler temperatures allow the fruit to ripen slowly and develop more complex flavors of acidity and sweetness.

Workers collect coffee cherries during harvest at a plantation in Minas Gerais state, Brazil.

“When temperatures rise, as has slowly been happening in many coffee producing countries for years, the warmth causes the coffee to ripen too quickly, which means less flavorful beans.” said Jamal Gawi, a climate-change consultant in Jakarta. Java coffee is among those affected, he said.

For wheat, while some regions have benefited from larger harvests, parts of Europe and the U.S. have recently seen reduced protein in their grain (important for keeping bread airy) thanks to sudden downpours.

Even rising carbon dioxide that helps plants grow can flush out essential nutrients such as zinc and iron.
Diminished Quality

Elevated CO2 levels reduce essential nutrient content in plants

Zinc

Protein

Iron

-3.3%

-7.8%

-5.2%

Rice

-9.3%

-6.3%

-5.1%

Wheat

-5.2%

-4.6%

-5.8%

Corn

Source: Myers et al 2014 ‘Rising CO2 threatens human nutrition’

Global Divide

Whether through crop failures or price impact, changes in climate have serious implications for nations concentrated in equatorial and tropical regions, whose economies and people rely on agriculture more than others.

Natural disasters have cost farmers in poorer countries billions of dollars a year in lost crops and livestock, and it’s getting worse thanks to climate change. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are dependent on single crops—Ethiopia relies on coffee for a third of its export earnings and Malawi gets about half from tobacco.

Food supply shocks and surging prices have the power to displace people and destabilize governments, as riots in more than 70 countries during a crop crisis in 2007—2008 showed.

Food Dependence

Trade as a share of domestic food supply
Map of the world showing net trade as a share of domestic food supply by country

Source: UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization Global Perspectives Studies

Nations reliant on food imports, many also in the Middle East and Africa, are vulnerable to supply upsets thousands of miles away that ripple through global markets to push up the cost of household staples. Drought in the biggest growers, from the U.S. and Russia to Brazil, can have dramatic effects on international prices and in some cases threaten political and social unrest among exposed populations. As Europe is discovering, such desperate people can’t be contained by borders.
Supply Shocks Drive Prices

Wheat

Price per bushel

$8

7

Russia drought

6

5

4

Jan. 2010

Jan. 2011

Corn

Price per bushel

$8.50

7.50

U.S. drought

6.50

5.50

Jan. 2012

Jan. 2013

Arabica Coffee

Price per pound

$2.20

1.75

1.50

Brazil drought

1.25

1.00

Jun. 2013

Oct. 2014

Source: Bloomberg

“There will be some winners, but I think there are going to be far more losers and many of them, if not most, are going to be in the tropics,” said Clay at the WWF. “The bigger issue is that everybody is going to have to adjust, and the question is how fast.”