Consuming Temperature

It is July 24, 2008. Yesterday the high temperature was 65°, not the normal temperature of 76 °; that is 11° cooler than usual. The low temperature, 53°, three degrees cooler than the normal low of 56 °. The weather forecast predicts highs in the 60’s for a couple of days then getting hotter, into the 70’s. The nighttime lows will stay in the mid-50’s. In the wee hours of the morning, such as 3 a.m., you can see your breath. This is July - that's just wrong.

This is awful weather for food plants. Two major factors regulate plant growth: sunlight and soil temperature. While air temperature is important, soil temperature is the determining factor.

To provide a wider variety of vegetables throughout our 20 week CSA season, we plant sequentially. That means that we really have three gardens that should provide four gardens of food (the first garden is replanted). Plants germinate and grow all summer long. This year, we are transplanting more than ever before to ensure that our plants have a good start. We are direct seeding, too, but not as much as is economical. Here is why we are spending more time, which equals money, on transplanting.

Let us consider the Broccoli plant. The soil temperature for germination must reach 70°, but not exceed 80° to 90°. Seeds take 3 to 8 days to germinate, and reach maturity in about 70 days.

Next, let us consider the Cucumber. The soil temperature. for Germination must be between 70° and 90°F. It takes 7 to 14 days to germinate, and they mature in 70 to 85 days.

Finally, let us consider lettuce. For this year, it is the best. The soil temperature for germination has a wide range, from a low of 40° for some varieties, extending up into the 50s for many other varieties. The top high temperature ranges to 80°. For many varieties, when the air temperatures suddenly increase, for example go from the mid-60s into the high 70s, they bolt, that is rapidly produce seeds. Depending upon variety, it takes 40 to 65 days to mature. This means, however, that when temperatures exceed 80°, lettuce dies.

Sounds quite predictable, but not this year. Soil temperatures are in the 60s. That means that our little broccoli and cucumber seeds had to be planted in the green house, hardened (a process of acclimating the plants to the cooler temperatures outdoors), and transplanted. We even transplanted hundreds of heads of lettuces. There is no guarantee that the transplants will survive.

This spring the air temperatures did not rise above highs of 45°, which means that the soil temperatures were several colder. Not even lettuce would germinate.

The temperature for germination really tells the temperature range in which the plant will survive. The Cucumber survives between 70° and 90°F. A more mature plant can survive and grow in temperatures ten degrees cooler or warmer, but the progress towards maturity will be adversely affected at either end of the range.

When you hear of cold temperatures in the Pacific Northwest, or extraordinarily hot temperatures in other areas like New York, that means that the crops are stressed and may under produce or simply die.

For this reason, climate change directly affects our food crops. We are told by those who visit many farms in the whole Puget Sound Area, that our crops are doing marvelously, considering the weather. We have more of everything. It is taller, more mature, and more abundant. This is due to our diligent Co-farmer, Brad, and his workers, Lesley, Allison, and Kathy. Still, our crops are slow: perhaps six to eight weeks behind. Pray for a long season.

"Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting."

What is water worth? One major American investor, T. Boone Pickens betting $100 million that water is the new oil. You can read Business Week's Cover Story for June 12, 2008,
There Will Be Water. (It is not on permalink, so it may disappear after a few weeks.)

Currently, water is desperately needed in the sub-Saharan areas, India, and China. I have been saying for some time that water is the new oil, and that some wars today are being fought over water, such as the war centered in sub-Saharan Darfur.

Pickens is staying at home, and this interesting article talks about trying to sell water in the USA. We are not there yet, but as people loose their water rights, and water is wasted by being used as a waste/sewage disposal system, or dumped back into salt water, water could become as precious as Pickens thinks it will.

There's a saying in Texas: "Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting." Pickens decided to fight. In 1999 he created a company called Mesa Water and began to accumulate water rights so he could strike a deal with another city altogether. The hell with Amarillo. Pickens was confident he could sell his water: The population of Texas was expected to jump 40% by 2020, mostly in urban areas one dry season away from drought.

Ironically, it may be the flooding that boosts Pickens' investment, since the flooding is polluting the water with the damaged oil tanks, refineries, waste treatment plants, and so on. Flood and drought may radically change the cost of water and food.

Weather, the Jet Stream, and trees

The weather is back to overcast rainy days. At least the temperature is over 60 degrees F. We had our two or three days of summer last week. Temperatures jumped 25 degrees F overnight. At least the plants were happy.

We had to move the start of our 20 week CSA back two full weeks (did this three weeks ago) because of the cold weather. There was frost on the ground May 3. This is unusual in Kitsap County because we have a maritime climate, that while about 10 degrees F cooler than Seattle, is fairly warm. By mid-April we should have had consistent temperatures in the high 60's during the day, and in the mid-40's at night. From March on we should have been in the high 50's to low 60's in the day and low-40's at night.

This all may be due to the Jet Stream moving northward and weakening. MSNBC had an article on this April 21, 2008 Jet stream moving north, weather shifts likely. There have been several articles on this topic. If you have more information on this, please leave the links in the comment section.

I have no idea if global climate change is a natural phenomena or man-made, but it is probably due to a combination of the two.

People wanting to change the man-made problems are trying a number of remedies. In Pellston, Michigan, scientists have begun what will be a decades long test concerning tree varieties and the atmosphere. Scientists starve aspen trees in global warming experiment. This one is both curious and compelling. Trying to offset man-made change may be the fastest answer.

We sold out of our CSA shares two weeks before we originally intended to start. The demand for local food is increasing.

"Deadly Greed" Makes the Food Crisis Worse

The German magazine Der Spiegel is available in English at Spiegel Online International. A wonderful magazine, it offers a very different world view of from that we commonly see in US papers. The Thursday, April 24, 2008 issue appeared Wednesday evening, my time, and while not what I was looking for as after dinner reading (I feel guilty and overfed), I am glad I found its five thoughtful, in-depth, and provocative articles on food, hunger, and greed. In addition, there are three articles from last week, several more from that past six months on food shortage topics and the environment. All the articles lead to more through a seemingly endless cascade of links to other related articles. For example, there is an interesting article on BMW's opposition to ecological laws being proposed in Germany. When you click on the links that in the titles below, you will move to Spiegel and all of these articles.

Beat Balzli and Frank Hornig expose the seamy side of hunger, the food futures speculators who bid the price of food in warehouses up to the point that the hungry cannot afford it. They have two articles discussing this activity.

DEADLY GREED: The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis

DEADLY GREED: The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis: Part 2: 'Passive and –Profit Oriented'

Philip Bethge explores the claims of those who see genetically modified food as the saviour of the poor, and the difficult reality of the situation in the following two articles. In the second article, the weakness of genetic modification driven, and perhaps profit driven farming is revealed.

“Using the tools of genetic engineering to increase crop yields is so complicated that most genetic researchers have not even tried it yet."

Does this mean that designer plants are incapable of satisfying expectations altogether? Some companies are now touting conventional cultivation methods again.”

Too complicated or too dangerous to grow, is that what they mean? Yes, actually. In cases such as this, complicated and dangerous means that the test plant has a likelihood of adversely affecting other plants or crops in the wind affected area around the test site. Those effects could be mutation of all plants, mutation of a "weed" so that it encroaches on other plants and crops, something else. These mutations could cause otherwise healthy plants to cease to grow or produce food. South Africa stopped tests of the Super Sorghum.

“The South African authorities have already prohibited a first greenhouse trial with Wambugu's super sorghum, arguing that it would be too dangerous for the environment.”

SUPER SORGHUM FOR THE POOR: Can Genetic Crops Stop the Food Crisis?

SUPER SORGHUM FOR THE POOR: Can Genetic Crops Stop the Food Crisis? Part 2: Can Designer Plants even Work?

Kenya, a country that until a few weeks ago had been politically stable and peaceful, has been going though a horrible time of civil unrest, almost civil war, over a contested election. Food prices, health care, and most other aspects of a stable life have become scarce. Horand Knaup profiles one family in Nairobi in the article:

OATMEAL AND WATER: Nairobi Living, in a Season of Expensive Food

The food crisis is not only one of shortages, it is one of price,. How it is affecting Egypt is reported by Ulrike Putz in Cairo and Mahalla, Egypt. In this food crisis it is not always a shortage:

“If you want to learn how global food shortages are affecting the poor, a good place to go is the street market in Cairo's impoverished Boulek al-Dakur district in the early afternoon.

Market stands might be piled high with cucumbers and tomatoes, flat bread stacked high on trays which bakers have pushed out of bakeries to cool -- but that is precisely the problem. While traders used to sell their perishable goods by midday, now they cannot get rid of them.”

CRISIS IN EGYPT: The Daily Struggle for Food

Could the experience in Egypt happen here? Of course it could. My parents talked about the food lines of hungry people in Seattle and Chicago during the 1930's. In any American urban, suburban, and perhaps rural areas there is less than three days of food stored. How food gets from the farm to the store to your kitchen or restaurant is quite complex. Any rift in the process could cause a food crisis.
The problem could be political, as it is in Keyna, economic as in Egypt, or it could be a natural disaster like an earth quake. One lesson of New Orleans is that we are vulnerable.

The conflict between food and fuel was discussed in January, 2008, in this article.

OUR HUNGRY PLANET: The Choice between Food and Fuel

Two articles on biofuels and how they are hurting the world’s food supply are also linked.

'A TOTAL DISASTER': Critique Mounts against Biofuels

The second of these articles focuses on German politics, rather a relief to read about someone else’s problems except that their problems are our problems, too.

GERMANY VERSUS THE EU: Merkel Caught between Industry and the Climate

Each of these articles has many more links to interesting and worthwhile articles.

If I may add my opinion, reading Spiegel is such a change from reading most American newspapers and articles. The quality of the thought is far greater than what I read in the US papers. If you like shallow, poorly thought out articles do not bother to read any of these, because all of these articles, while fairly short, have great quality.

Locally Grown Food Will Keep Food On Your Table

Links to relevant articles are at the bottom of these observations.

Climate change is not same world wide: in some areas it is warming; in other areas it is cooling. In the Pacific Northwest, where we have our farm in Kitsap County's maritime climate of Puget Sound and Hood Canal, the weather is colder. For the third consecutive year, April is about ten degrees cooler than the norm. At night, it is very cold, down into the mid-30’s and up to the low-40’s. The soil cools off, and even the seeds of the early crops rot in the ground. This means that early crops come in later, and that we have to use season extenders such a row cover, hoop houses, and greenhouses to make sure we have vegetables for our CSA customers.

In other parts of the world, like in one of Australia’s grain baskets in its Southeast, high temperatures and no rain have caused the total failure of the rice crop.

Most of the grains and vegetables we humans rely on grow in a very narrow window of temperature: 60 degrees Fahrenheit to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. They will survive a few days of high temperatures up to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with water, but not for more than a few days.

Hunger has always been a problem; however it usually has been caused or exacerbated by very human political circumstances: war, transportation breakdown, and greed.

For those of us in the United States and Canada, the preservation of local farms is a buffer to these failures. We need to take ourselves out of the world food market, so that we can continue to put food on the table.

In addition, sustainable farming techniques – tending the soil as nature intended, as it was tended for millennium – will help increase production and preserve fertility of the land.

Local food is not a fad. It will be a necessity, and unless farms are preserved, they will be gone. It takes years to put farmland back into production. Even backyard gardens help preserve knowledge, a skill-base, and arable land.
Below are links to articles about these problems.

A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice
Food Boom Brings Unpalatable Truths
Michael Pollan NYT blog: Food From a Farm Near You
Switch to Organic Crops Could Help Poor

Climate Change, Global Warming, and Mary Rosenblum's Water Rites

Less than 3% of the world’s water is potable, and a large percentage of that is in the polar ice caps and glaciers that are melting into the oceans to become unusable salt water. Desalination plants have proven to be inadequate and costly, so maintaining the fresh water we have is increasingly important.

In the past few years, it has become clear that water is the “new oil” in terms of ownership, availability, price, and a reason for war. In Darfur,the war there is a geo-political disaster that is being fought for water, oil, tribal dominance and religion. In Darfur, drilling a well is a political act than can get you murdered. Other parts of the world, such as China, India, most of Northern Africa, and a few areas of the US, do not have enough fresh, potable water to meet the needs of every person who lives there.

In her novel, Water Rites, Mary Rosenblum explores what a world dominated by water shortages will be like in the Pacific Northwest. We just added Water Rites to our Bookshelf because it brings home the problems of global warming in an excellent novel. You can buy it there from Powell’s Books.

This is a book that you can and should read with your family, including children. Water Rites should be on every reading group’s booklist.

I’ve know Mary Rosenblum for about 20 years. Her knowledge of life and our world is wide and deep. Whenever we get together, she educates me in the most delight conversations on global warming, sustainable farming, child rearing, and sheep herding. She understands in the way that only a person with ties to family, the land, and the Earth can that global climate change is accelerating. Mary started thinking and writing about global warming in 1992. In Water Rites, Mary explores what life will like when too little fresh water is the norm.

In 1994, Mary published her first novel, The Drylands, and received the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. That book is again available with three short stories set in the same world and sharing some the same characters as Water Rites.

Mary set her stories south of Portland, Oregon, near the area where she lives and farms, and about 200 miles south of our farm. Her characters are men and women like us, who are caught in a global disaster, enduring the hardships while helping other people to survive, too.

The first three stories, Water Bringer, Celilo, and The Bee Man, depict the lives of people living on the land that is dying from the drought. These people, seen as hicks by the ignorant, are shaped in amazing ways by their circumstances. I really cannot say much more, because the unfolding of these stories is so moving that I do not want to harm them with spoilers.

The fourth story is the award winning novel, The Drylands. We follow Major Carter Voltaire, of the US Army Corp of Engineers, trying to allocate water and build a pipeline to drought stricken agricultural areas. The story is vivid and the characters richly drawn. The characters we meet in the first three stories inhabit Voltaire’s world. It is his responsibility to get fresh water to the drought-stricken farm lands, while Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and other coastal cities drown in sea water.

In the foreword, Mary writes that in 1994 the scary global warming predictions were forty years out, but now, fourteen years later, they are becoming a fact of our lives. As Mary concludes in her foreword, “Think of that next time you vote, or purchase a car. Pay Attention, okay? It won’t be a nice world to live in.” (Water Rites, p. 11)

You can visit Mary’s website at www.maryrosenblum.com. There you will find a list of her other novels and short stories. There is also a picture of Mary with the wonderful dogs that she breeds and trains.