Climate Change Doesn’t Pass the Hot Potato

“I think one of the big movements in agriculture is a desire to move to more local food sources, and I think agriculture needs to diversify and sell more directly to the consumer,” Burton said.

“So I think developing a greater diversity of products, like sweet potatoes, those sorts of things, are probably really key to agriculture’s sustainability.”

Sweet potatoes come in many different varieties, and since the vegetable makes six different copies of its DNA, instead of two like humans, there could be a greater potential for adaption in adverse climates.

Czeck thought of the market in global terms.

“Right now we consume a lot of wheat, corn, soybean, rice globally,” he said, “but a lot of these crops don’t respond to CO₂ in the same way that root crops do.

“Globally it could change the way we approach our agricultural practices, maybe convert to more root crop-type diets while also figuring a way to do this transition in a sustainable, societally accepted way. I think if you were to say: everyone has to start eating sweet potatoes or carrots or whatever it may be – it’s going to have to be a way to transition that works for all.”

Gruneburg, however, thinks this is thinking too far ahead.

“200 years, wow,” he paused and laughed. “Sorry, I’m laughing because I was thinking about one of my professors, when I had such a discussion with him, and he said ‘right well, if humans will still exist in 200 years is also another question.’

“What is in 200 years is very difficult to say … The animals we grow today are in a very protected environment, for chicken or for pigs it is a very industrial environment, but it is a very protected environment. There is no pig anymore which needs air to run around in the winter.

“In 200 years perhaps crops will be planted in factories in a nutrition solution without soil, I don’t know. But what is more important is what is in 20 years or 40 years or so.”

Or, as Zvalo put it more succinctly: “There’s so many things at play that I wouldn’t worry too much about that at this point.”

Feature image courtesy of Dave McLear
Banner image courtesy of iamrenny