Climate Change is on the table this Thanksgiving
Every Thanksgiving Americans consume 365 million pounds of turkey, 250 million pounds of potatoes and 483,000 pounds of pumpkin. $293 million worth of that food will be lost as food waste.
While we have come to expect the classics, like turkey and cornbread stuffing, the state of agriculture around the world is changing. Let’s take a look at where our food came from and where it’s heading.
A little history lesson:
Most of the food we associate with Thanksgiving has indigenous roots in the Americas.
Our modern, domestic turkey - Meleagris gallopavo - or Wild Turkey is native only to the Americas. The Aztecs domesticated this species in south Mexico and Spanish traders brought it to Europe and Asia in the 1500s.
The potato - Solanum tuberosum - is the world’s fourth largest food crop, following wheat, rice and our maize friend down below. Dating back to around 8,000 B.C., the Incas in Peru were the first to cultivate potatoes. In 1536, Spanish Conquistadors conquered Peru, discovered the flavors of the potato and took them to Europe.
Called maize in many languages, corn was first cultivated in the area presently known as Mexico more than 7,000 years ago. Spread by the indigenous people, corn began appearing throughout North and South America. With the exception of Antarctica, corn is produced on every continent in the world.
Green beans originated in Peru and spread to South and Central America by way of migrating indigenous people. Green bean plants have butterfly-like blossoms in shades of red, pink or white. When the Europeans encountered these native plants in America, they used them not as food but as ornamentals in decor.
One of only three fruits native to North America, cranberries grow in the wild in sandy bogs and marshes. Native Americans, long before the Pilgrims arrived, mixed deer meat and mashed cranberries to make pemmican - a convenience food that kept for long periods of time. The cranberry was used for medicinal value and as a natural dye for rugs, blankets and clothing. The Delaware Indians in New Jersey used the cranberry as a symbol of peace.
The name pumpkin comes from the Greek word pepon, meaning large melon. Cultivated in Central America, these round gourds were one of the earliest foods the first Europeans brought back from North America. Seeds from related plants have been found in Mexico dating back to 7000 B.C. and references to pumpkins date back many centuries.
Where are these Thanksgiving staples grown now?
Turkey
Wild Turkeys live year-round in forest edges in 49 states (excluding Alaska), parts of Mexico, and parts of southern Canada. The domestic turkeys are what we see on Thanksgiving plates and weigh (on average) twice as much as a wild turkey does - making them too heavy to fly. Most domestic turkeys come from these 6 states
Poultry flocks are particularly vulnerable to climate change because birds can only tolerate narrow temperature ranges. As heat waves and droughts become more common, Turkeys won’t grow as big and farmers will face increasing costs to cool and water their flocks.
Potatoes
The first permanent potato fields in North America were established in 1719, most likely near Londonderry (Derry), NH, by Scotch-Irish immigrants. The largest producer of potatoes is currently Idaho.
Potatoes are the world’s fourth largest food crop and the risk of diseases and pests, due to a warming climate, could have a significant impact on the crop worldwide. Climate change is predicted to have significant effects on global potato production.
Corn
The sweet corn on most tables this Thanksgiving - canned corn, cornmeal and cornbread - is a genetic mutation of field corn. The naturally-occurring genetic mutation causes kernels to store more sugar than its ancestor. Sweet corn is harvested on almost 29,000 farms, in all 50 states. Florida, California, Washington, New York and Georgia are the largest producers of fresh sweet corn. The production for processing corn is heavily concentrated in the upper Midwest and the Pacific Northwest: Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin.
As the climate crisis heats up, flooded farms in the Midwest can’t plant corn.
One study suggests that warming will also cause corn yields to become more variable from one year to the next, in addition to just being lower overall. This means there is a higher probability of major corn-producing regions experiencing a bad crop year all at the same time which would would significantly drive up corn prices around the world.
Green beans
The first to put green beans on their restaurant menus were the French - which is why we can buy them ‘French-style.’ In home and urban gardens, green beans are the third most commonly grown vegetable in the US, outranked only by peppers and tomatoes.
In the early part of the 1900s, the ‘Blue Lake’ bean was the bean grown for canning, harvested in the Blue Lake District near Ukiah, California. In 1932, this bean arrived in Oregon. By 1952, western Oregon grew 10,000 acres of the beans. Now, Wisconsin is the top state producer.
Cranberries
Americans consume nearly 400 million pounds of cranberries each year, around 20 percent of that during the Thanksgiving week.
Wisconsin is the leading producer of cranberries, producing 62 percent of the U.S crop in 2017. Today Massachusetts is No. 2 in cranberry production, but climate change is forcing growers in the state to re-think their business.
Pumpkins
Roughly 65,900 acres of pumpkins were harvested in 2018, producing more than 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkins. The top nine states - Illinois (the top producer), California, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and New York) - grew nearly 75 percent of those pumpkins.
The USDA Economic Research Service reports that the demand for fresh specialty pumpkins continues to expand in the US as consumers look for new and interesting variations. Also, according to Nielsen, the total sales of pumpkin-flavored food, beverages, personal and household goods sold across the U.S. increased almost 80 percent in the last 4 years.
Pumpkins depend on dry weather. Increased precipitation late in the year has led to several pumpkin shortages over the last year, with many pumpkins rotting right in fields right before becoming ripe. The flooding that struck the Midwest is just one way climate change is complicating life for the region's growers.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
START A CONVERSATIOn
Climate change can be a tricky subject to broach with friends and family, but food is one great way to connect the impacts of climate change with our everyday lives. Follow these tips from Helix Magazine Acclimatize has this handy guide to having productive conversations about climate change this holiday season. Their top five tips include:
Start with just one thing that matters.
Tell stories, not facts.
Frame communications in a way that resonate with people’s values.
Be reasonable in the ‘ask’.
Share hope.
WHAT YOU EAT MATTERS
Learn about where your food comes and as much as possible source your food from local, sustainable farms. Reduce food waste and eliminate excess packaging.
For more, follow the Interfaith Power and Light’s guide to hosting a climate friendly Thanksgiving
SUPPORT OUR PROJECT
Farmers share the important task of feeding us not just on Thanksgiving, but every day. As the climate changes, this task becomes even more challenging. Help us spread hope in this time of uncertainty as we share the stories of farmers planting the seeds of resilience.
This holiday season, consider making a contribution to support our project.