By Susan Aldrich, Contributor
The hottest June on record, followed by the nearly the wettest July on record. A year’s worth of Massachusetts tornadoes in one afternoon, right here. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says wild weather events are the new normal, the daily events that make up our changing climate. Some of the noticeable effects the world is seeing now — like extreme droughts, severe heat waves and catastrophic downpours and flooding — are almost certain to continue worsening for at least the next 30 years. According to a study for Climate Ready Boston, by 2030 Boston could have more than 40 days a year above 90 degrees—compared with the old normal of four days a year from 1971 to 2000. Heavy precipitation events have already increased by 55% since 1958.
We all know what it’s like to have too much, or too little rain. And what it’s like to have days of scorching heat or bitter cold. What does this mean for the way we live? How can we respond?
We are already feeling the impact of weather on food prices. Most of our nation’s food is produced where drought is extreme. For example, California’s heavily irrigated Central Valley provides more than half of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States. The federal government has been forced by dwindling supply to cut water allocations to California cities and farmers by 75%. Vast stretches of farmland are fallow. Ranchers in the west can’t grow enough feed for their cattle.
Clearly, our current agricultural practices are not sustainable. We have the water here in the Northeast, but much of our farmland has become lawns, parking lots and forests. What remains makes for small farms – the state average is 69 acres. It is hard to compete with the huge, flat, unimpeded tracts of land in the west, with farms in Arizona averaging 1,365 acres and Montana averaging 2,156 acres. That competition is changing now that the west has gone dry.
Changing our agriculture system will not be easy, but is necessary. We need governments and institutions to create policies, programs and budgets that help reestablish agriculture where it can be sustained. Farm acreage in Massachusetts decreased from 2.5 million acres in 1920 to just .5 million in 2019, and we need to reverse that course somehow. Technologically, it is much easier for us to make land more arable today than it was in 1900. High volume composting is just part of that.
So what can we do, as individuals and as a town? An obvious first step is to keep the farms we have. Our supply of farmers and farmland is dwindling, and once a farm is gone we can never get it back. We all can pitch in and support our farmers. This is the time of year to spend your food and entertainment budgets at farms and farm stands. Buy the ice cream, traverse the corn mazes, walk with the goats, pick the apples, take a hayride. Bring your town friends. Repeat.
Then what? We can increase our own food production. Backyard gardens are not going to replace California, but I bet we can grow enough tomatoes for the whole town. Gardening is good for our emotional and physical health, in addition to reducing our reliance on a threatened source. There are enough skilled gardeners in our midst to help the rest of us succeed. Backyardgrowers.org has programs for backyard, community, and school gardens which would be wonderful here in Sterling. They promote a backyard garden kit supplied by Black Earth Composting, which contains a raised bed and sufficient garden soil to fill it. Wouldn’t it be great if someone would organize a weekly zoom or email that tells us what we should be doing now? If I had an advisor who would tell me when to plant and fertilize, I might pay enough attention to be successful. In the meantime, I treasure my local farmers who grow such fabulous food and happily pay for their product.
For more information about excess rain and local farms, read https://sterlingmeetinghousenews.com/excess-rain-damages-delays-local-farms-crops/