Climate Change Doesn’t Pass the Hot Potato

It can be absolutely true, but this situation will not come tomorrow, and most likely not in twenty years.”

Czeck agrees. The highest level of carbon dioxide in his study was almost four times as much CO₂ than is currently in the atmosphere, and he thinks this could be a reality in 200 years, not 20.

“I think in going forward with these sorts of experiments temperature, drought conditions, water supplies, those sort of questions need to be approached because those are going to be a lot of the problems that we’re going to be facing, especially in developing countries.

“If we’re going to relate this to agricultural production, we’re also going to have to understand other sort of hurdles we’re going to be facing which are going to be high, extreme temperatures and drought issues.”

Increasing concentrations of CO₂, according Burton, would bring mixed benefits to Nova Scotia’s fledgling sweet potato industry.

“In agriculture we have looked at some of the positive impacts of that,” Burton said about the increasing carbon dioxide from his office in Truro.

“In terms of regions like Nova Scotia, crops like sweet potatoes have been a challenge here because we don’t have a very warm or very long growing season. So there could be some positive impact in terms of the total number of heat units we’re exposed to and also the length of our growing season. But the potential for more extreme, intense weather events may offset that positive.

“So there’s concern that while we may have warmer, wetter future that would be more conducive to the production of crops like sweet potato in Nova Scotia, there’s equally a concern that this extreme weather may not allow us to realize that.”

The current production of sweet potatoes in Nova Scotia is a recent development spurred on by Zvalo.

“It started about 10 years ago when I went to a conference in New England, and realized they were growing sweet potatoes,” he said in a phone interview.

“That made me wonder – if they can do it in Maine, why can’t we do it here? So, I talked to Agriculture Canada … and we started a regional project that looked at 17 different varieties of sweet potatoes, and how they would be suitable to the region.”

Zvalo worked with Keddy Nursery, who is currently the only major producer of sweet potatoes in Nova Scotia. There are a number of smaller producers as well, but none of them are on the same scale as Keddy Nursery.

Exactly how Nova Scotia’s sweet potato industry will be expanding in the coming years is uncertain – Zvalo said that its growth would be tied to the ability to invest in processing and storage facilities.

Sweet potatoes need to be cured if they are to get their recognizable texture and taste – being saturated in heat and humidity for six to eight weeks helps increase their sugar content and reduce shrinkage in storage.

“Producing sweet potatoes is one thing, but storing, long-term storage is another thing all together,” Zvalo said.

“This one large producer [Keddy Nursery] has invested into a long-term storage last summer, so he’s involved and the quality of the product is excellent. But the future growth of the industry will depend on the ability of the growers to invest in storage. And that’s really hard to predict.

“We could grow the crop, there’s really no magic to it. There’s some expertise or knowledge, but that can all be learned. But the capital expenditure on the curing and storage facility is going to limit growth in the industry.”

But how will the results of Czeck’s study, if they do become reality in the next 200 years, affect the Nova Scotia sweet potato market?