Did you know that tomatoes, delicious, delicious tomatoes (I do love tomatoes) originated in the Andes? Coffee in Ethiopia? Lettuce in the Mediterranean area? Grapes from the Middle East? Chocolate in Mexico? Potatoes in Peru?
What growing avocados in Sicily tells us about climate change and the future of food
At the fertile foothills of Mount Etna, Andrea Passanisi surveys his avocado grove under Sicily’s blue skies. He started growing the tropical fruit in what used to be his grandfather’s vineyard and, helped by the warming climate, is now sending his produce across Europe.
Passanisi discovered a love for avocados on a trip to Brazil as a teenager two decades ago, and decided on his return home to experiment with growing them in Sicily. Abandoning plans to become a lawyer, he converted his grandfather’s land and started to farm avocados as well as passion fruit and lychees, alongside longstanding lemon trees. (snip)
Climate change is shifting the frontiers of where food is grown as farmers and agricultural businesses adapt to warmer temperatures around the world. While in some regions heat and drought are threatening the cultivation of certain crops, raising food security concerns, in others, the warming climate has allowed growers to cultivate new crops and varieties which in previous decades would have been difficult to produce profitably. (snip)
The 37-year-old is among several growers in Sicily turning to tropical fruits. Global warming has sparked a 1C increase in the island’s temperature over the past 30 years, according to Francesco Viola, associate professor at the University of Cagliari, who has researched the island’s climate and the Mediterranean ecosystem.
Many farmers in Italy are grappling with a heatwave, after temperatures hit 45C in parts of the south of the country in June, part of a long-term shift, says Ettore Prandini, president of Coldiretti, Italy’s farmers union. “Every year we see longer periods with high intense temperature and tropical weather,†he says.
From the mangoes, avocados and bananas that grow alongside oranges and lemons in the south to olive oil from trees growing in the Alpine mountains in the north, the frontiers of crops in Italy are shifting, says Prandini. Italian farmers have seized “the opportunities, as evidenced by the arrival of the first tropical fruit crops in Sicily and the cultivation of olive trees in the Alpine valleys in Lombardy,†he says.
This is all your fault. Your fossil fuels addiction means that things can be grown in other areas of the world, which never happened before.
CNN is also getting silly
Chef says climate change can be tackled if you cook the way your momma (really) did
Sigh. Can’t these people just mind their own f’ing business?
Our distinguished host quoted:
The way Southern cooks cooked in the 1950s and 60s was with a mason jar or coffee can of congealed bacon grease on the stove, ready for reuse.
That’s also the way my father cooked except he used a Chock Full O’Nuts coffee can instead of a mason jar.
I love avocados and I don’t drink wine. Let it be avocados and I’ll be fine.
Tomatoes from the garden.
The mocked article is a classic example of “begging the question. Nowhere do they demonstrate that these crops could not grow in these areas beforehand – they want the reader to make that connection for them.
Also, Don’t liberals keep telling us that change is good, even essential?
No
Not all liberals think that all change is good
Someone must have misinformed you
Quite frankly I like many things,say like weather, just the way they were
I don’t want to have mangoes in Maine, nor do I want to have malaria there
Change is a constant but we are experiencing a RATE OF CHANGE that is extreme youbmust remember that during the last ice age we were only 4 to 6 degrees colder than now
Trach never talks about the rate of change dy/dx calculus was never his strongest subject in school
The miniscule rise in surface seawater Temps in NJ wiped out 90% of their lobstrr harvest (lobster eggs float to the surface and are very temp sensetive)
I grew up west of Boston and played hockey on pond ice We could usually have our guest days on cranberry bog ice after Thanksgiving
I was a freshman in high school the first time I played on what I still call artificial ice
That climate is now long gone
Mangoes and malaria in Maine, oh my!
#TheDebateIsOver
Bwaha! Lolgfy