Signs From Earth

Fries with that? Study says potato introduction may have been among the most important human advances (via @FP_magazine)

 
 Grumpy potato photo by banger1977/flickr 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/hot_potato

"...The importance of potatoes first hit home for co-author Nancy Qian during a trip to rural Rwanda, where she noticed something about her hosts' diet. "All they were eating were potatoes," she says..."

"...Qian, along with Harvard University's Nathan Nunn, decided to see how universal the connection was. Looking at population trends from 1700, when the potato was introduced to the Old World, to 1900, they estimated that 12 percent of the population growth and 47 percent of the urbanization during this period was directly potato-related. ..."

Posted via email from Signs From Earth Notes

Map: McDonald's Golden Glow in the United States

Stephen Von Worley has produced a golden glowing map (no arches visible) of McDonald's restaurants in the lower 48 United States. He has called this "The Contiguous United States, Visualized by Distance to the Nearest McDonald's," and writes about his inspiration at his blog Weather Sealed, under the heading "Where the Buffalo Roamed." 

"To gauge the creep of cookie-cutter commercialism, there’s no better barometer than McDonald’s – ubiquitous fast food chain and inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide," he writes.

Based on numbers from aggdata, Von Worley says more than 13,000 McDonald's are spread across the land, and 107 miles is the greatest distance or "McFarthest Spot" to a McD's. (I guess that means somewhere in the west a pair of McDonald's is 214 miles apart?) If you live in central Nevada, southeast Oregon, Idaho's Salmon River Wilderness, or northwestern South Dakota it will be a long ride for that burger fix.

For a reality check, see the film Food, Inc. If it hasn't played your town yet, already has, or (likely) never will, this important film will be out on DVD Nov. 3. See it to understand how the American food and farm landscape has been transformed by more than the ubiquitous presence of hamburger shops. Show Food Inc. to your friends. You may want to find that spot 107 miles away and stay there.

After Borlaug: A New Green Revolution?

Wheat near Dalby, Western Australia. Photo by Raeallen/flickr

Norman Borlaug improved wheat harvests and kept starvation at bay. As population keeps rising what will the world do for a second act?

In the early 1970’s when I was studying agriculture at Oregon State, the name of Norman Borlaug was spoken with great reverence, especially in my cereal grains class, where we learned how Borlaug bred short, stocky wheat plants with big heads that could hold more grain than before. His efforts to improve grain production and stave off starvation in places like Latin America and Asia earned Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize.

Borlaug became known as the father of the “Green Revolution,” a transformation of world grain production that produced better harvests of wheat and rice when irrigation water, nitrogen fertilizers, and weed and insect pesticides were applied to crop fields.

So now Borlaug is gone, but we must continue the hard work of feeding an ever more populous world. World population nears seven billion people, about twice as many as when Borlaug’s Green Revolution began raising grain yields in the 1960s, and it is expected to top nine billion by mid-century.

Rising living standards pressure grain stocks as more people eat meat fed by harvests that otherwise would go to people. We’re also seeing large portions of corn harvests devoted to ethanol as a substitute for gasoline.

In late 2008 we saw severe price spikes for cereal grains and food. Supplies and prices of oil and natural gas have become volatile. Many analysts say we have seen the end of cheap oil. The Green Revolution would not have been green had it not been for cheap oil, and inexpensive natural gas used to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Then there are the droughts, floods, and heat waves from climate change beginning to affect farm productivity in food growing regions worldwide. We’re seeing soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and loss of glaciers that feed farm irrigation. Nearly half of the world’s people live in tropical and sub-tropical subsistence agriculture regions, increasingly vulnerable to crop loss as rainfall and temperature patterns are disrupted.

So Borlaug's work must continue with even higher stakes. Just as when Borlaug worked to feed the earth, whether we achieve food security ahead remains a daunting challenge, as National Geographic reported this June in its article Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty.

Climate Change vs. National Security

 A coal fired power plant in Germany. Action against causes of climate change is tied to significant reduction in world use of fossil fuels. Photo: davipt/flickr

Slowly the idea seeps into major media mindset that climate change presents challenges far beyond polar bears and melting ice, that political stability and security of nations also are at risk. As has been discussed here and elsewhere, carbon emissions affect how the atmosphere works, and this in turn impacts stability and security of food and water supplies, and eventually survivability of societies.

The question remains whether these concerns linking continued use of fossil fuels and their impact on global climate will make a meaningful difference in the views and actions of policymakers and the public. 

John Broder reports in an August 9 New York Times article, "Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security,"  that climate change impacts in other nations, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia, could demand an American humanitarian or military response.

“The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Warm Winters Threaten California Tree Crops

Cold winter fogs that chill California fruit trees are disappearing. Photo: flickr/junmon603

Cold winter temperatures that fruit and nut trees need for proper spring flowering are disappearing from California's Central Valley. These warmer winters are beginning to adversely affect tree crops like walnuts that depend on this winter "chill" to reset themselves each year.

In a study published July 22 in PLoS One, researchers from the University of California-Davis report that the number of hours of "chill" temperatures have declined about 30 percent in the Central Valley since 1950. Apples, cherries, and pears used to grow in about half the valley's orchards but now only about four percent of the valley's orchard land is cool enough in winter to support these crops.

These rising winter temperatures will force California farmers to find new tree varieties that produce crops without this "winter chill," which trees need to trigger dormancy. 

Other studies already have shown that rising temperature and heat in California are causing changes in the type of wine grapes that can be grown there. Rising temperatures are driving a variety of changes in plant and animal behavior, and these trends for the United States are the focus of Ecological Impacts of Climate Change from the National Academy of Sciences.

Dust on Colorado Snow Looms Over Mountainfilm

 

Dust-laden snow May 19 on Rocky Mountain peaks south of Montrose, Colorado. Photo: Dennis DImick (click to enlarge.)

I've been in Colorado the past few days, participating in a symposium on food at Mountainfilm Telluride. Last year we discussed water, and energy was our focus in in 2007. Among speakers this year were writer Bill McKibben, soil scientist Jerry Glover of the Land Institute, plant geneticist Pam Ronald of UC-Davis, and Roz Naylor, who heads the food security and environment program at Stanford. A report on the forum from the Telluride Daily Planet is here: The Future of Food: Daunting but Doable.

The film Food,Inc., shown at the festival and scheduled for nationwide release in June, will get some attention here soon. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns also premiered his elegant new 12-hour film on the National Parks at Mountainfilm. The series will air on PBS this fall.

One scene repeatedly mentioned indoors was on colorful display outdoors in the mountains above this southwest Colorado town. The snowpack, or what remains of it, looks pink. The color comes from repeated dust storms this past winter and spring. 

Red-colored dust arrived as clouds from repeated blow-ups in the red rock areas of Utah and Arizona. The dust darkens snow and increases its melt rate. Early snowmelt and runoff from the mountains reduces the amount of water available in streams later in summer for irrigation and other uses.

The impact of dust on snow has gotten some attention in the scientific community. A study two years ago by the National Snow and Ice Data Center indicated that rising temperatures across the West are increasing the likelihood that dust storms will become more frequent, shorten the snowpack season, and affect timing of runoff in rivers and soil moisture in the mountains. The water will come off the mountains earier in the spring, and mountains soils will dry up sooner in the summer.

April 3, 2009 dust storm in northeast Arizona. From NASA Earth Observatory.

References:

Young Ice Dominates Arctic Ocean

Credit: From the National Snow and Ice Data Center, courtesy J. Maslanik and C. Fowler, University of Colorado

Data released April 6 from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the age of ice in the Arctic Ocean is declining. Ice less than a year old dominates the Arctic ice cap as the melt season begins. 

The deep red color in the top right map shows the extent of multi-year ice, which has fallen to about 10 percent of the ice total according to NSIDC. The red color in the map at top left shows the average extent of multi-year ice for the period 1981-2000, when multi-year ice made up about 30 percent of the total. 

There has been a small uptick in the volume of ice 1-2 years old (orange color) and it is possible some of this juvenile ice and ice less than a year old could survive the summer melt season, thereby slowly adding to the stock of more hardy multi-year ice. Or it could not survive.

The melting of Arctic Ocean ice has increased in recent years. In the period from 1979 to 2005 about 20 percent of the ice cap melted in summer, but in summer of 2007 another 20 percent disappeared. Ice cap melting in 2008 was not as severe as in 2007, but last summer's melt still left the ocean with the second-lowest sea ice extent on record.

Implications from loss of Arctic Ocean ice in summer revolve around potential changes in wind patterns and ocean circulation. As the white-colored heat reflecting sea ice disappears, more dark heat-absorbing water dominates the ocean, causing even further water temperature increases. 

This unfolding change in Arctic Ocean ice cover could impact wind, weather, and precipitation patterns in northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, where hundreds of millions of people live and depend on reliable supplies and timing of rainfall for drinking and the growing of food crops.

Washington Post: New Data Show Rapid Arctic Ice Decline

Wall Street Journal: Polar Ice Cap Shrinks Further and Thins

Drought Shrivels China's Wheat Region

The New York Times reports on a worsening drought in China's wheat growing region: 

Worst Drought in Half Century Shrivels the Wheat Belt of China

"Northern China is dry in the best of times. But a long rainless stretch has underscored the urgency of water problems in a region that grows three-fifths of China’s crops and houses more than two-fifths of its people — but gets only one-fifth as much rain as the rest of the country.

"The current drought, considered the worst in Northern China in at least half a century, is crippling not only the country’s best wheat farmland, but also the wells that provide clean water to industry and to millions of people..."

Long-term droughts already are underway in Australia and California, both major agricultural producers. Now with China potentially running short of cereal grains, this all bears watching.

Incredible Shrinking Trophy Fish

Trophy fish caught on Key West charter boats in (a) 1957, (b) early 1980s and (c) 2007. From Monroe County Library

If you are not convinced that our overfishing of the seas is having an effect, look at the shrinking "trophy fish" of the Florida Keys.

Scripps Institution graduate student Loren McClenachan rounded up more than five decades worth of archival photographs of Florida Keys fish catches, and what she found showed a drastic decline in the size of "trophy fish" caught in the seas around Key West, Florida. 

Her analysis of photographs from the 1950s through 2007 showed that fish caught today are nearly 90 percent smaller in estimated weight than those caught in the 1950s. Her research, part of the emerging field of historical marine ecology, is being published by Conservation Biology.

McClenachan discovered a cache of historical images of nearly 1,300 fish in the Monroe County Library in Key West which gave her visual baseline fish size data for her analysis. 

These images showed fish on a hanging board next to the sport fishing passengers of the day who caught the fish.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography: Historical Photographs Expose Decline in Florida's Reef Fish

Abstract of Paper: Historical Photos Document Changing Reef Fish Communities 

Interview with Smithsonian Magazine editor who discusses McClenachan's work.

Report: "Food Crunch," With Rising Prices

From The Financial Times: Warning of "food crunch" with prices poised to rise.

Javier Blas: "The world faces "the real risk of a food crunch" if governments do not take immediate action to address the agricultural impact of climate change and water scarcity, according to an authoritative report out today. 

"Chatham House, the London-based think-tank, suggests the recent fall in food prices is only temporary and that they are set to resume an upward trend once the world emerges from the current downturn. 

"There is therefore a real risk of a 'food crunch' at some point in the future, which would fall particularly hard on import-dependent countries and on poor people everywhere," the report states. "Food prices are poised to rise again..."

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Chatham House Report: The Feeding of Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century

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PR: Food Prices Are Set to Rise Again

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Earlier Report: Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Indications for Development

Report: Hot Summers, Crop Losses Coming

Figure: Likelihood (in percent) that future summer average temperatures will exceed the highest  summer temperature observed on record (A) for 2050 and (B) for 2090. For example, for places  shown in red there is greater than a 90% chance that the summer-averaged temperature will exceed the highest temperature on record (1900–2006). Courtesy of Science/AAAS.

Hot summers and declining crop yields will become common by mid-century in some regions according to research published in the journal Science. Yield reductions globally will likely become the norm later in the century, this while populations in the most vulnerable regions double by 2100.

The researchers, David Battisti of the University of Washington and Rosamond Naylor of Stanford, projected future temperatures by applying 23 global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to estimate end of century temperatures.

The summer of 2003 in Europe was about 3.6 degrees (C) higher than normal and crop losses were about 25 percent. The researchers said that this will seem cool compared to summers at the end of the century.

This bodes ill for future crop yields and the ability to produce enough food unless heat- and drought-tolerant crops are developed, and water supplies are sustained. Hot temperatures cause plants to grow too fast and reduce yields. Rising temperatures can affect rainfall patterns.

Three billion people, almost half the world's population, live in tropical and subtropical regions potentially most affected by these projected temperatures rises. With incomes of less than $2 a day, most of the people here depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and live in regions where population is expected to double by century's end.

The world will need to grow even more food under temperature conditions that will make it nearly impossible just to maintain current harvest levels. 

Links:

Hot Planet: Our Path Ahead

Farm Bill: Taking the Long View

Wes Jackson of The Land Institute and Kentucky essayist Wendell Berry propose a different approach to farm bills that transcends the commodity, lobbyist, and subsidy driven approach we have now. 

They propose an approach that addresses the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

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New York Times Op-Ed: A 50-Year Farm Bill

"The extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall — by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.

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"Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute — and no powerful friends in the halls of government...

Links:

Volatile Prices, High Costs Plague Farmers

Wall Street Journal - Bumpy Crop: Farming's Sudden Feasts and Famines

"As Grain Prices Rise and Fall and Perhaps Rise Again, Growers Struggle to Navigate a New Age of Volatility and High Costs

BugMan50/flickr

Scott Kilman and Roger Thurow: "Benjamin Riensche has just come off two of his best years in farming. But like growers all over the globe, he is in the midst of a more turbulent era of sharply rising and then suddenly falling prices.

"Now the 47-year-old, who grows corn and soybeans across 10,000 acres in Iowa, fears he will incur losses in 2009 that would be his first red ink in 16 years. His revenue is falling, but the costs of seed, fertilizer and machinery have remained high. 

"Mr. Riensche bought most of his supplies months ago, when grain prices were still high. Many of his suppliers are still trying to pass along the higher costs they absorbed in recent years for everything from metal and chemicals to natural gas. To lower his costs, he could idle land, but figures raising a crop at least gives him a chance to benefit if prices move back up, as some predict..."

Two Families' Shifting Fortunes

Roger Thurow and Andrew Batson: ..."Although the world is producing more food than ever before, a tug on one link of the food chain still can rattle others far away. One prime example: the remarkable economic migration of millions of once-hungry people in places like China into the better-fed middle class inadvertently made it harder for the presently hungry in places like Ethiopia to also join the ranks of the well fed..."

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Interactive Graphic: The Ongoing Food Crisis

Slideshow: Danny Wilcox-Frazier

Also See:

Expert: We Must Rethink Food System

BBC: Food Needs 'Fundamental Rethink'

“A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of "new fundamentals", according to a leading food expert.

“Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing "structural failures", such as "astronomic" environmental costs...

..."The level of growth in food production per capita is dropping off, even dropping, and we have got huge problems ahead with an explosion in human population...

"Professor Lang listed a series of "new fundamentals", which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production...

October column by Lang in The Guardian: A food crisis is heading our way

Nature: Commentary - The Food Crisis Isn't Over "Although the credit crunch has lowered the price of food, a global recession now raises the hunger pains of the most vulnerable. The stage is set for the next international food crisis, says (IFPRI's) Joachim von Braun..."

IFPRI - International Food Policy Research Institute:

Global Hunger Index

Wall Street Journal - Bumpy Crop: Farming's Sudden Feasts and Famines

FAO: More Hunger From High Food Prices

Seeking Affordable Food

More Foreign Farmland Buys

The Chicago Tribune is covering the trend of buying up foreign farmland to ensure stability in food supplies. 

This on the heels of other recent articles from New Scientist and the The New Security Beat at the Wilson Center:

Global Farm Land Grabs

The New Colonialism: Buying Foreign Farmland

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Chicago Tribune: Global grain rush under way as rich nations snap up farmland overseas

Wealthy countries try to fend off food shortages

Laurie Goering and Alex Rodriguez (MOSCOW) — Wearing flowing red robes and pitching his own trademark desert tent, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi paid a visit to Ukraine last month in search of a remarkable deal to help feed his oil-rich but soil-poor people.

Under a proposed agreement with Kiev, Libya would lease 247,000 acres of Ukraine's rich black land to grow wheat. The harvest would then be shipped back to Libya, giving the desert nation a more secure supply of food in the face of predictions about higher food prices and potential shortages in decades to come. Ukraine, in turn, would get access to Libyan oil fields, helping free it from dependence on Russia for its energy needs.

Around the world, food-poor but cash-rich countries, spooked by last season's high food prices, are racing to snap up rights to farmland in developing countries and breadbasket nations. They're aiming to boost their own food security and cash in on what might prove one of the few sound investments left in a world in financial crisis.