Some of your favorite foods are at risk of disappearing due to Earth's rising temperatures. From coffee to crabs, food producers are seeing the environmental impact on their yields — which can impact your trip to the grocery store.
What's happening?
Global warming has increasingly disrupted agricultural production in recent years. Fluctuating weather conditions have led to poor harvests, which have been detrimental to our food supply.
Last year, Georgia peach crops were down 90%, leading to prices tripling for consumers, according to CBS News. Meanwhile, CNN reported cocoa prices rose over the past year due to bad weather in production regions such as West Africa, causing the cost of chocolate to increase by 10-20%.
Climate change also impacts other industries in the food system. Some fisheries have had to close because warming waters have affected the snow crab and salmon populations in the United States, according to USA Today.
Why are changes in agriculture important?
With food producers facing volatile seasons, consumers are left with shortages of pantry staples and rising grocery costs. This can create a crisis for people who are already struggling with food insecurity.
Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can also impact the levels of nutrients in our food, leading to less nourishing produce.
"We have to figure out how to ready our system to deal with the volatility that we're going to face in the future, and we just don't have a system built for that," Sam Kass, culinary entrepreneur who served as President Barack Obama's senior policy advisor for nutrition policy, told USA Today. "So that means investing heavily in more resilient genetics, both plants and animals, more diversity in the foods that we're eating."
What's being done about changes in agriculture?
Kass told USA Today that plants and animals have begun migrating to adapt to changes in their environments. Kass pointed to the corn boom in North and South Dakota as an example of changes, some of which can be good for an area and others that can cause problems.
"When I was a kid, there was not a single stalk of corn in the Dakotas," Kass said, with some exaggeration but alluding to the increasing temperatures allowing for a longer corn-growing season now than in decades past. "[Now] the Dakotas are major corn growing states, and that's because the plants themselves are migrating as the weather is warming. You also see mass migrations of fish and animals moving north because it's getting too warm where the natural habitats have been."
Researchers have been discovering solutions to make certain crops more drought-resistant, a promising development for farmers and consumers.
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Not enough time ⏳ Scientists are also looking at ways to make indoor vertical farms cheaper to operate in order to address global food supply needs.
In the meantime, consumers can try saving money on their next grocery run by planning ahead to avoid impulse purchases or by looking up cost-saving alternatives for pricey grocery items.
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