The precariousness of our food supplies.

[saundra]

There's nothing quite like English strawberries and tomatoes I don't buy much salad in the winter to be honest
So this shortage doesn't bother me

[Suff]

It's not just the winter salads which are a problem. As we see in the press, the UK and Germany are half the market for Spanish veg and Broccoli is impacted and other veg too. Not just on the shelves, but this is also a time when they freeze the veg for our freezers.

What this article does not mention, directly, is that the excessive humidity attacks other produce like tomatoes, ruining those crops.

There is another impact too. Crops which have been washed away have been replanted but that then knocks on to later in the season when other root veg will have to be planted later.

The UK gets 60% of its “veg” (full stop), from Spain. Carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, Onions and more. This winter crop failure will knock on into the spring and summer. Whilst we can source veg from elsewhere in the world, California is currently in the grip of one of its worst droughts. Short term in fill supply it can give but longer term supplies are tenuous.

In the medium term it just means our veg is going to be more expensive. In the longer term, we’re relying on the weather. That is driven by climate and the last three years have been a constant litany of “warmest year on record” with 2016 not just being the warmest but being the warmest by the largest margin ever recorded. Right after 2015 which was also the warmest by the largest margin ever recorded.

The future, as I see it, is not really that rosy and food security is a real issue.

Of course…. I would turn it to my own hobby horse. If we did rise and fall tidal islands, instead of tidal lagoons, we could have rise and fall tidal farms growing our food on the west coast under the balmy aid of the gulf stream..

Just a thgought...

[Workingman]

Well, surprise, surprise! A new report by the Universities of Leeds, York, Oxford and others, now says that the UK has to produce more of its own food to protect it from global food wars and weather events and make its own markets more resilient.

We are waking up, and the coffee is on.......

[Suff]

We are waking up, and the coffee is on.......

Today. Give them 6 months and they'll have forgotten again. The problem is that this message has to be reinforced every month of every year. If people don't hear about it, they will assume it's fixed. Just like they believe that the Fukushima disaster is "fixed". In fact that belief is sheer complacency, the truth is that the environmental danger is only slightly reduced from when the disaster happened. 6 years later they still haven't found the fuel.

On the scale of things Fukushima is only a tiny blip compared to climate change. Yet if people don't hear it every, single day, they will also assume that "Climate Change" is fixed and that it's not going to impact them.

I was amazed, at the time, the number of people who told me "we spent all that money on Y2K and nothing happened". With that kind of idiocy going on wholesale, is it any wonder that people ignore the realities of Climate Change and the food challenges it's going to bring.