Food production in a time of change

Farming has always been a tough job. Now global warming and it's interactions with other human-caused changes is making nurturing the plants and animals we have use for increasingly complex. Temperature variability is increasing and even the growing season has changed. According to the National Arbor Day Foundation, which advocates growing many more trees, we in Western Pennsylvania are now in a new hardiness zone. They have an update at http://arborday.org/media/zones.cfm
and an explanation at
http://arborday.org/media/zonechanges2006.cfm.

Some of the larger more complex varieties of life are at a disadvantage in this time of increasing unpredictability of weather. Some larger species are dying off from human competition, hunting, and stress from climate change. And some smaller living things such as molds are increasing due to their having shorter life spans and so faster reproduction and mutation rates. We can help each other get through some of these developing difficulties by:

not using chemical fertilizers;

encouraging edible "weeds" which survive with or without our help;

allowing, as much as possible, a natural variety of plants and animals to grow in our gardens and farms;

encouraging soil fertility by recycling organic waste and increasing microbial biodiversity;

allowing trees and other life forms to grow wherever they want whenever possible.

And we can head towards converting to vegetarianism - increasingly getting our food more directly from plants rather than feeding plants to animals and then eating the animals.

The fact that the growing season is longer now is an advantage, of course. But the increasing temperature variation means at least some plants will be stressed by changing day to day weather. My response is to rely more on those food plants which provide food all during their growth period – such as greens which can be harvested at any time and may grow back after a frost or other damage - rather than something like tomatoes which only provide their fruit later in the season.

We humans’ quest for our daily bread is beset by many other changes at this time which make it necessary to grow more of our food locally and rely more on our own homegrown plant food – organic matter. Overfishing, pollution, ozone layer thinning, and the effects of manufacturing and use of synthetic fertilizers – all are leading us to emphasize our economies toward more small, flexible food production operations, geared toward more local distribution, and growing smaller easier to grow species such as the many variaties of microbes grown for food and for nutritional factors to be added to food.

It’s time to discuss drastic changes in how we do things, both at home and at work. The ideal of a neat well-mowed lawn has to go. An overgrown lot is no less safe than a mowed lawn, in my opinion. We need all the plants we can, including those “invasives” we define as enemies. If you can manage a gorgeous plot of food and/or flowers that are native to our part of the world, fine; if you can’t, don’t declare war on the spot because species you didn’t choose chose to grow there. The expense of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and labor hours to “civilize” a plot of land by putting in a monoculture of grass causes more problems than any safety fears from high weeds, in my opinion. Yes, we do have, ticks, flies, rats, cockroaches, and other undesirables in our cities, but they will never be put under control by chemical warfare and habitat destruction. Let biodiversity take care of disease control. Each living thing is food for another and must be given it’s due respect as a part of the web of life. Cats, hawks, snakes, and other animals eat bugs and rats. The Allegheny County Health Department provides wise ecosystem management by inoculating animals and wet areas with bugs to ward off mosquitoes and disease – increasing biodiversity rather than treating nature as an enemy to be totally eradicated. We can clean our air and put healthier food in our bellies by letting nature alone and growing food locally.