During the summer of 2024, more than two fifths of the continental United States faced summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit, along with more severe droughts. It is time to radically redirect our food system to better adapt to a hotter, drier world, what some of us now call Planet Desert. And yet, much of what the U.S. Department of Agriculture has funded to date in its climate change program supports baby steps toward climate mitigation, but no real deep adaptation toward the new normal. This timid approach is likely to hurt, not help, most farmers over the long haul.
By 2080 in North America, the climate of any foodshed will have shifted to resemble the climates in places at least 500 miles to the south of them. The grape varieties and vegetables now optimally grown in the climate of Napa Valley, California today will have a tough time reaching harvest there in 2080, but can be more easily grown near the Willamette Valley and Portland, Oregon. The truck farms outside of Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland will need to shift their crop mix to those that currently do well between Little Rock, Arkansas and Jackson, Mississippi. The citrus trees, olive varieties, and herbs best grown between Mexicali and Tecate in Baja California, Mexico will have an easier time being cultivated between Los Angeles and the Ojai Valley near Santa Barbara, California.
Of course, if farmers shift what crops they grow, they will need consumers, cooks, and chefs to adapt what they are willing to prepare and eat in the new normal. While climate change will generate many severe impacts on our food systems that we cannot control including floods, wildfires and more severe hurricanes. The shifts that I am recommending are among the few that may lead to fresh gastronomic innovation and pleasure as well as a better ratio of income to input costs for farmers.
And yet, there will be considerable retooling costs to move away from water-guzzling, energy-intensive production of annual grains and vegetables to multi-species agroforestry systems that involve many more perennial crops. Once the transition costs are covered, farmers will have far less production costs per year, and yields are likely to be far more stable from year to year. In addition, many of the perennial herbs and shrubs produce spices, and herbs become more pungent, and fruits more potent in their flavors when heat and drought team up on them. To resist the stresses that come with searing sun, heat waves, and drought stress, many plants of hot, dry lands exude more aromatic oils onto their leaves as a means of self-protection. To the benefit of farmers willing to invest in them, these herbs, spices and small fruits of desert climes are often priced higher than those from temperate climes, not because of the high regard for their heightened aromas and antioxidants, not merely because of somewhat higher harvesting costs.
More of those deeply fragrant and flavorful foods are likely to end up on our plates and in our bodies in the coming years. Once ingested, these desert foods high in antioxidants are likely to better protect consumers from the oxidative stresses caused by high solar radiation, heat stress and drought stress. These serendipitous benefits of the desert-derived foods we may be eating in this Braised New World may give us a modicum of both enhanced protection and pleasure in an otherwise uncertain future.
But where do we obtain the expertise and guidance to grow several desert crops that have only rarely been produced in the U.S. up until this moment? Ironically, the answer is at our doorstep. In the U.S. farm worker and food service worker force that brings us our daily bread, there are immigrants and refugees from at least fourteen desert countries around the world, who have grown up growing, harvesting and preparing these desert foods for family and community meals. They have the traditional knowledge about these desert crops that other farmers need to pay attention to.
In fact, some of these immigrants are already among the 30,000 small farmers currently managing agroforestry system on private and public lands in our country, but their operations often lack sufficient capital to mechanize, package and market their crops with sufficient ease. And sadly, they are currently among those in the outdoor workforce most at risk of suffering long hours in the sun and heat, unless they have already begun to grow their crops beneath tree canopies or agri-solar panels. The USDA needs to commit more support to these innovative farmers and farm workers, and to their health and safety.
At the same time, other members in their households already have the culinary skills to integrate these low water-requiring, heat-adapted desert foods into delicious empanadas, samosas, stews and salads. They too need to be raised up from their low-wage jobs as dishwashers and waitresses to head chefs, sous chefs, and school cafeteria cooks with better incomes than they now receive.
It is time to take climate change in our food system seriously and draw upon the guidance of the immigrants and refugees in our communities who have been adapting to these conditions for decades. American agriculture in the future will not at all look like it does today, and if we invest sufficiently in high-value arid-adapted crops that generate health benefits, our cuisines will not at all taste like those we consume today, for they will enhance our access to dreamy aromas and pungent flavors.
It is time to turn the corner from corn and soy monocultures to the sesames, prickly pear cactus, garbanzos, millets and mulberries of the world that desert dwellers have eaten in delicious dishes for millennia. It’s not just a matter of slowing and muting the devastating impacts of climate change, it’s a matter of taste.
Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.
Photo courtesy of Peter Broster, Wikimedia Commons
