C-Change Conversations Strategic Advisor Karen Florini speaks about the climate impact of food systems Wednesday in the Hall of Philosophy.
LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
In her lecture at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Hall of Philosophy, Karen Florini, strategic advisor with C-Change Conversations, brought Sammy the sheep plush, a miniature solar panel for charging small batteries, pancake mix and a bottle of wine.
She connected these to her lecture’s framing questions: how food production impacts climate change and how climate change impacts food production.
In her lecture, titled, “Sheep May Safely Graze: Ruminations on Food and Climate Change,” she focused on the lesser-known aspects of climate change, which she said includes “the good and the not-so-good.” Explaining the scale of food production and climate change, she said that the full journey of food — from land to seed to table to trash — accounts for about 30% of the world’s emissions of heat-trapping gases that cause climate change.
Beginning with impacts of the food system she said are more obvious — deforestation, burning fossil fuels for farm activities and food transport — she focused on five climate pollution sources she believes may be less familiar to audiences. She explained the impacts of fertilizer, “cold chains,” food waste, “cow burps” and trophic levels. To address the effect of climate change on food production, she said one must look at both the food and the people involved.
Florini explained that adaptations to the food production system come with inherent costs in their discovery, development, deployment and implementation at scale, or present obstacles to their reliability.
She said an analysis by Nature concluded that supplies of six key staples foods will fall by more than 8% by 2050. The study also found that adaptation measures can curtail these losses by about a third.
“How much will that cost, literally? And who pays?” she asked.
In regard to the impact of supply on rising prices of foodstuffs, she said, “There is a demonstrable climate connection.” She said ingredients like coffee and chocolate are impacted, as well as wine due to its reliance on temperature-sensitive grapes impacted by rising heat and smoke from wildfires. Without significantly curtailing the current rate of warming, nearly 30% of winemaking regions are on track to become unsuitable for growing wine grapes, she said.
Then, Florini spoke about impacts on pollinators and the long list of foods that will be impacted by their population decline due to habitat loss.
Florini segued to the majority of the world’s surface: oceans. “The ocean’s ability to provide food is under severe pressure from multiple climate-related reasons,” she said. Yet, she said, “Serious climate change has only just begun.”
Speaking about the global annual temperature increase, she said heat is not only a problem for food, but for the health of farm workers — many of whom lack access to healthcare and working environments that offer ample shade, breaks and water. Florini said more agricultural workers die from heat-related causes than any other industry.
“That’s a lot of bad news about the effects of climate change on food production, decreased nutrient value of key crops impacts we’re already seeing on some cherished commodities and on the people who grow and harvest our food,” she said.
The “good news” she promised to deliver included the potential of scaling renewable energy without losing the working land. She said continued improvements and implementation of renewable energy sources in the next two to five years are promising to agriculture moving forward.
She said solar use of land on the earth’s surface is minimal, occupying 0.07% of farmland; she added that golf courses use two and a half times the amount of prime farmland that solar does.
To address the climate issues she named, she said opportunities exist but need work in order to be implemented on a larger scale. She spoke about practices aiming to reduce the climate impact of fertilizer use and noted that complications arise from expenses that make some solutions less feasible in developing countries.
The final opportunity she presented during her lecture pertained to the 32 million hectares of cropland dedicated to growing liquid biofuels that support just 4% of the world’s energy demand for transportation. She said calculations show that converting this land to solar panels could single-handedly generate more than 100% of the world’s current electricity demand.
“There’s a bunch of ways for the food system to reduce its overall climate impact,” Florini said. She listed agrivoltaics, transitioning some biofuel cropland to solar, using more perennial crops that require less fossil-fuel inputs, eating lower on the food chain, minimizing food waste and composting.
“The question is not whether we can adapt, but whether we can adapt enough and fast enough,” Florini said. She stressed that the relationship between food and climate is not a doom story.
“In this broader rewritten relationship, sheep can safely graze under solar panels, farmers around the world can thrive and the most vulnerable among us are not ravaged by a changing climate they are not responsible for and lack resources to adapt to,” she said.
She invited the audience to treat food as a part of the climate system they can influence through what they eat, policies they support and places they buy from.
She concluded with the words of Michael Pollan: “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much,” to which she added, “and please don’t waste it.”
