A Farmer's Guide to Climate Disruption

A Farmer’s Guide to Climate Disruption

Rebekah L. Fraser

Bee Books

New Haven

A Farmer’s Guide to Climate Disruption

Copyright © 2018 by Rebekah L. Fraser

All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

For information, visit BeeBooks.org

Cover design by Rebekah L. Fraser

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

is available upon request.

ISBN 978-1-7326187-4-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-7326187-2-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-7326187-3-2 (e-book)

ISBN 978-1-7326187-9-4 (audiobook)

ISBN: 978-1-7353484-0-7 (audio rental/library)

First edition: December 2018

Audio edition: July 2020

ADVANCE PRAISE

A Farmer’s Guide to Climate Disruption weaves together science, anecdotes, and practical tips to explain the many issues farmers face as they try to continue growing the food we need in spite of water scarcity, more violent weather events, ecological change and sea level rise.  Farmers and others concerned about agriculture will find this book a valuable and accessible resource in confronting the many challenges stemming from global climate disruption.

~ David M. Driesen, Professor, Syracuse University

"Very user-friendly in its organization and well-written. We are all seeing the challenges of weather extremes and how to adapt agricultural practices to cope with these changes and develop resilient landscapes. A Farmer’s Guide to Climate Disruption brings many resources and ideas into one cohesive whole."

~ Ann J. Adams, PhD, Executive Director, Holistic Management International

"An incredibly important book. We are already being affected by a changing climate and the role of farming will be essential to our survival. A Farmer’s Guide to Climate Disruption is a very valuable resource for farmers, ranchers, and land managers as it offers a multitude of tools, techniques and evidence-based practices that can be used to build resilience and adaptation."

~ Andre Leu, International Director, Regeneration International

Rebekah is a much-needed, informative voice in the subject of climate change. Her expertise shines a light on the severity of the issues at hand. She’s able to effectively communicate those concerns that affect everyday growers.

~Michael Freeze, former editor Growing Magazine

A pleasure to read... We need to have more discussion about what we are doing and where we are going in agriculture to meet food needs and environmental goals of clean water and air.

~ Jerry Hatfield, USDA, co-author Third National Climate Assessment

Dedication

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to the many farmers and home gardeners who taught me what it means to tend the earth with care, and to my daughter, for whom I strive to build a healthier world.

CONTENTS:

FOREWORD BY ANDRE LEU

INTRODUCTION: WHY THIS book? Why now?       

PART I. FOOD SECURITY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS 

1.  Weathering Climate Disruption      

2.  Creating Food Security in Our Changing Climate     

PART II. COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE 

3.  Speaking in Tongues: The Language of Climate Disruption  

4.  To Teach or Not to Teach: Educating Consumers    

PART III. DISASTER AT YOUR DOOR

5.  How Proactive Farmers Are Resilient in Extreme Weather  

6.  Now What?        

7.  Prepare for the Worst: Tips for Recovering     

PART IV. SOIL: THE CLIMATE BELOW YOUR FEET

8.  Profile of a Misunderstood Substrate      

9.  Soil Solutions: Cover Crops     

10. No-Till for Soil Health?     

PART V. BEYOND CARBON

11. Nitrogen Must Be Managed for Climate Resilience      

12. New Tech in N²O Sampling     

PART VI. WATER

13. Adapting When There’s Too Much or Not Enough   

14. The Art of Water: New Concepts in Irrigation  

PART VII. UNDER PRESSURE: PESTS, PATHOGENS & WEEDS

15. Pests & Pathogens Are Adapting: What This Means   

16. How to Adapt to Adaptive Pests and Pathogens    

17. Learning from Weeds      

PART VIII. CROPS: WHAT HORTICULTURISTS KNOW

18. Preparing Slow-Growth Crops for a Changing Climate  

19. How California Almonds Are Thriving    

20. Breeding for the New Climate     

PART IX. CLIMATE SMART FARMING METHODS

21. Pollination Challenges and Strategies     

22. Regenerative Agriculture        

23. Push Pull: How Peas & Grasses Fight Climate Disruption  

24. The Post-Carbon City and Farming       

25. The Post-Carbon Farming System in Practice     

RESOURCES         

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR       

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS       

BIBLIOGRAPHY       

ABOUT THE AUTHOR        

FOREWORD

By Andre Leu, International Director, Regeneration International

Rebekah has written an incredibly important book. We are already being affected by a changing climate, and the role of farming will be essential to our survival. We need to ensure that farming can adapt and be resilient to the increase in extreme weather events so that there is enough food to feed all of us. This book is a very valuable resource for farmers, ranchers and land managers as it offers a multitude of tools, techniques and evidence-based practices that can be used to build resilience and adaptation.

Many people are not concerned if the world becomes a few degrees hotter; they do not understand that average temperatures are not the main problem.  The climate extremes are the existential problems that agriculture faces. At the time of this writing, the world is already one degree Celsius (1.8 degreesFahrenheit) warmer than 100 years ago. It takes the energy equivalent of billions of nuclear bombs to heat up the world by one degree Celsius. I am using this violent metaphor so people can understand that all this extra energy is violently pushing our weather to more extremes. Storms are getting stronger; colder in winter and hotter and wetter in summer.  Droughts are more frequent and longer.  When the rain comes, it is often heavy and destructive and out of season. Climate disruption is a better term than climate change to describe what we are already experiencing. This is leading to more crop failures. As farmers, we need to cope with this if we and humanity are to survive; after all everybody has to eat.

The atmospheric Carbon Dioxide level had been increasing at two parts per million per year.  In 2016, despite all the commitments countries made in Paris in December 2015, the levels of Carbon Dioxide entering the atmosphere increased by 3.3 parts per million, creating a new record.  The level of Carbon Dioxide reached a new high of 400 parts per million in May 2016. This is the highest level of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere for 800,000 years. [*author’s note: In May 2020, carbon dioxide is at a new high of 418 parts per million. For daily updates visit co2.earth/daily-co2] 

According to the World Meteorological Organization, "Geological records show that the current levels of carbon dioxide  correspond to an equilibrium climate last observed in the mid-Pliocene (3–5 million years ago), a climate that was two to three degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, where the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melted and even some of the East Antarctic ice was lost, leading to sea levels that were between ten and twenty meters [thirty to sixty-five feet] higher than those today."

Global sea level rises will cause the Atoll island countries, large parts of Bangladesh, Netherlands, coastal USA, New York, New Orleans, Miami, London, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Shanghai, Singapore, and other low-lying areas to go under water, causing a huge refugee crisis for over a billion people.

Even if the world transitions to 100% renewable energy tomorrow, this will not stop the temperature and sea level rises because it will take more than 100 years for the carbon dioxide levels to drop.

The fact is: we have to speed up the transition to renewable energy and we have to make a great effort to drawdown the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Agriculture has a very important role in doing this, as it can drawdown enough carbon dioxide and store it in the soil to reverse climate change.

Soils are the greatest carbon sink after the oceans. According to Professor Rattan Lal, there are over 2,700 gigatons of carbon stored in soils. Soils hold more than double the amount of carbon than is stored in the atmosphere (848 gigatons) and forests (575 gigatons) combined. There is already an excess of carbon in the oceans that is starting cause a range of problems. We cannot put any more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the oceans. Soils are the logical sink for carbon.

Most agricultural systems lose soil carbon. Current estimates state agricultural soils have lost fifty to seventy percent of their original soil organic carbon pool. Depletion is exacerbated by further soil degradation and desertification. Agricultural systems that recycle organic matter and use crop rotations can increase the levels of soil organic carbon. This is achieved through techniques such as longer rotations, cover crops, green manures, legumes, compost, organic mulches, biochar, perennials, agro-forestry, agroecological biodiversity, and livestock on pasture in holistic grazing systems. These systems are starting to come under the heading of Regenerative Agriculture because they regenerate soil organic carbon.

We have enough evidence-based science and practice to show: widespread adoption of regenerative methods to increase soil organic carbon can drawdown enough carbon dioxide to reduce the greenhouse gas’ levels every year and return the global temperatures to pre-industrial revolution levels. Through widespread scaling up of regenerative farming methods, we could achieve this by the year 2050, thus avoiding global catastrophic climate change.

The immediate goal must be to stabilize the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent any further increases in the extreme weather events caused by climate change. Ideally, this should be done by capping the current emissions and adopting a combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency. However, under the Paris agreement this will not happen until the year 2030 at the earliest.

Regenerative Agriculture can change agriculture from being a major contributor to climate change to becoming a major solution. The widespread adoption of these systems should be made the highest priority by governments, international organizations, industry, farming and climate change organizations.

INTRODUCTION

WHY THIS BOOK? WHY NOW?

When I first heard about global warming in the 1990s, I didn’t think much of it. Although I considered myself an environmentalist at the time, and I was an ardent supporter of organic agriculture, I didn’t see the threat as real. A New England native, I had moved to Southern California, where I worked in a climate-controlled office at a manufacturing company. Even as I was enjoying my beach time, I felt generally disconnected from nature.

It took moving to rural Massachusetts to heighten my senses. Taking daily walks in the woods, I began to observe the subtle changes in my environment as they were happening. Entering journalism, my environmental awareness expanded. An assignment to cover electronic waste for EM, the Air and Waste Management Association’s magazine, opened my eyes to a variety of waste management issues — including what to do with food waste. I became fascinated by composting and started a blog about creative waste diversion, which led to an assignment from Vegetarian Times about composting for urbanites. In the fall of 2008, I was hired by Growing Magazine to write a feature about the art and science of seeds. Because the article was so well received, the editor invited me to write a monthly column about seed science. As a film/screenwriting scholar, I was in strange territory, exploring the worlds of genetic engineering and traditional seed breeding.

In the five years that I wrote the seed research column, I also wrote several feature articles for Growing and its sister publication, Farming: the Journal of Northeast Agriculture. I visited farms and land-grant universities. I connected with agriculture professionals from all over the world. I noticed a trend: researchers were expressing concern about climate change (which many now call climate disruption).

They weren’t spouting the message of Bill McKibben or 350.org. They were not quoting Al Gore. The researchers I met were observing the subtle changes in their fields and in their crops, both at home and work, as the overall warming of the globe was causing ever-more erratic changes in the worldwide climate. Researchers were identifying genes that cause various responses to temperature, moisture, or other climatic shifts. They were seeing alterations in pest behavior and proliferation. All these observations led the researchers I met to ask: how will climate disruption affect food security, not just in my area, but region-to-region, country-to-country, across the globe? They were concerned about all aspects of food security:

Production and Yield

Pest and Disease Pressure

Food Quality

Population

Because I am obsessed with food (specifically fruits, nuts, and vegetables), and I am always concerned that everyone has enough to eat, I became obsessed with the connection between agriculture and climate disruption.

According to current projections, global population will be thirty percent higher in 2050. Because of this and anticipated dietary changes, growers will need to produce fifty percent more food annually by 2050. Farmers will need to increase productivity without expanding the land base (there is little land base on which to expand) or causing further environmental degradation. Expanding food production by fifty percent in thirty years in a changing climate requires an all hands on deck approach. But what can growers do to shape the future of our global food supply? What happens if population growth exceeds expectations?

Those questions led me to pen Growing’s first-ever monthly column about climate disruption, Changing Climate, which ran in each issue of the publication from January 2016 until the magazine folded in December 2017.

In preparing for the column, I interviewed some of the world’s top researchers in the field of agriculture. I could not get those same interviews today because the United States’ executive office banned all