Back in August 2015, I wrote a post about the findings of a joint task force of experts from the U.K. and U.S. The group had released recommendations for Extreme Weather and Resilience of the Global Food System. You can read the original post on food security here:
Read More: “Extreme Weather and Food Resilience for Home Growers”
Quite frankly, that report was pretty scary. It detailed all sorts of reasons why our global food supply was in serious jeopardy. When that report was released in 2015, I had noted how relevant it was in light of a number of catastrophic weather events going on at the time, wreaking havoc on crops and raising food prices in some areas.
Now, just a couple of years later, the situation has become even worse. Hurricanes, mudslides, drought-related fires, disrupted weather patterns, wars, and more have caused crazy fluctuations in food supplies around the world.
In March 2017, the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) released a Global Report on Food Crises 2017.1)http://www.fao.org/3/a-br323e.pdf In that report, they indicated that the number of people suffering from severe food insecurity had increased by 35% since the release of the 2015 report.
Quite a bit of that lack of food security was related to conflict. However, catastrophic weather events like droughts had also driven up the costs of staple foods, making them unaffordable for large groups of people.
If you think this can only happen in poor, war-torn countries, then consider this. In the U.S. in 2017, there were at least 16 weather events that cost over a billion dollars each and resulted in losses of crops, livestock, and other resources, as well as of homes, businesses, personal property, and lives.2)https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events/US/2017 In 2016, there were 15 of these weather catastrophes; in 2015, there were 9; in 2014, there were 8; and in 2013, there were 9.
It might be too early to say that 15-16 catastrophic, billion-dollar weather events is the new normal for the U.S. However, new data modeling shows that there are real risks that both the U.S. and China might simultaneously experience catastrophic crop losses that could drive up prices and send more countries into food famine in the coming decades.3)https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/15/climate-change-food-famine-study
In 2017, due to a weakened dollar, food prices in the U.S. increased by 8.2%.4)https://www.thebalance.com/why-are-food-prices-rising-causes-of-food-price-inflation-3306099 That trend hopefully won’t continue in 2018, but between weather and world volatility, isn’t it better to bank on building your own food security independent of global markets and events?
We think so, too! So, we want to give you some ideas to help you build your own food security at home.
Food Security Recommendation #1: Understand Your Risks
Building on the ideas from our earlier post on “Extreme Weather and Food Resilience for Home Growers,” it’s really important to know the risks for your area and plan your gardening practices to be resilient even when disaster hits.
Many governments and global non-governmental organizations have made predictive models for the likely regional effects of climate change available. You can use these models to identify trends in your area. Here are a few example models available:
- U.S.: https://nca2014.globalchange.gov
- Australia: http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/climate-science-data/climate-science/impacts
- United Kingdom: http://ukclimateprojections.metoffice.gov.uk/21708
Even if you don’t live in one of these areas, a quick Internet search for “climate change impacts” for your area should give good results. This search may link to articles about impacts as well as to modeling tools. Focus on search hits from government or academic websites for more comprehensive, peer-reviewed climate change data.
Food Security Recommendation #2: Consider Using Permaculture-Based Landscape Design
There have been so many weather-related disasters recently that it is hard to know what to prepare for anymore. In California, extreme dry weather and winds made for a devastating fire season. Then, the loss of vegetation from the fire season led to severe mudslides during torrential rains. Parts of Australia have also been suffering similar catastrophic cycles of drought and flooding.
In Western North Carolina where I live—a locale that we chose specifically because it is expected to be less impacted by climate change (e.g., sea levels rising, coastal hurricanes, etc.)—we’ve had extended dry periods followed by heavy rains that led to lots of vegetation losses in our area.
Drought-flood cycles are extremely damaging to plant life. In dry periods, plant roots dehydrate and shrivel. Soil also shrinks from water loss. Then when heavy rains come, the soil and roots no longer have the water-holding capacity they once did. Rather than the rain being absorbed, it sits on top of dry, compacted soils in flat areas, causing flooding. Or it moves downhill, taking topsoil and vegetation with it as it goes, causing mudslides and flash flooding in other areas.
When you use permaculture design in planning your foodscapes, you take into account these kinds of cycles of drought and heavy rain that would otherwise be damaging to vegetation. In fact, you make them work for you. Simple solutions like catching and storing water high on your land can help you better weather the cycles of drought and flood.
By applying permaculture principles, you can help safeguard your food security by making your landscape more resilient to weather extremes and diversifying your food supply to ensure you get good yields regardless of weather.
To get an idea of how permaculture works, check out this tour of Zaytuna Farm given by Geoff Lawton.
Also, if you want a short but powerful introduction to what permaculture can do in extreme landscapes, check out these titles by Sepp Holzer:
- Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale, Integrative Farming and Gardening
- Desert or Paradise: Restoring Endangered Landscapes Using Water Management, Including Lake and Pond Construction
Food Security Recommendation #3: Manage Your Microclimates
Every property has microclimates. For example, in North America, it will almost always be a bit warmer along the edges of a south-sloping blacktop driveway. This is because the path of the sun will cast more sun on southern-facing slopes. They are literally like sun scoops, catching its rays.
“Closeup of pavement with grass” by User:Angel caboodle is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Additionally, dark colors absorb more heat than light colors. If you painted that same driveway white, it would still be warmer due to its southern slope. However, the white paint would reflect light and heat away from the driveway and would keep that same area cooler than with a blacktop driveway.
The physical mass of blacktop asphalt material also acts as a heat sink. It draws in heat during the day and releases it back into surrounding areas as air temperatures cool at night. The same driveway made with light-colored concrete might not absorb quite as much heat as an asphalt driveway due to its color. However, it would still act as a heat sink by virtue of its mass.
The shade of a large oak tree creates a cooler area than the dappled shade of a pruned fruit tree. Large bodies of water will help regulate extreme temperatures. A wide, stone knee wall around a raised bed will insulate the soil inside better than thin wood boards because of its mass. Boulders in your landscape are also heat sinks. Even things like black trash cans can impact temperatures directly around their vicinity.
Gaining a basic understanding of how colors attract light waves, learning how different kinds of mass (rocks, soil, trees, etc.) store heat and divert wind, and knowing the path of the sun at different times of the year in your area can help you use microclimates to moderate the effects of extreme cold and heat. Using your slopes, like north-facing slopes to keep things cooler and south-facing slopes to heat things up, can also help. Working with shade patterns to minimize or maximize sun exposure can help moderate hot and cold temperature extremes.
For example, I live in USDA planting Zone 7a. With the extreme cold weather we’ve had this year, our conditions were closer to Zone 5. Some of my plants—like rosemary, which is hardy to zone 7—were killed by the cold. After our last risk of frost passes, I plan to replant rosemary bushes in front of our south-facing house and mulch them with dark stones. In that location, even if we have Zone 5 conditions again, my rosemary should make it just because the heat mass from our house and the stones, the southward orientation, and the wind protection give it the right microclimate.
Cold frames, greenhouses, and underground areas (e.g., walipinis) are also good ways to create microclimates on your property to ensure longer and more secure food production in extreme conditions. Check out this post from Marjory to learn about building your own underground greenhouse.
Read More: “Underground Walipini Pit Greenhouse Construction”
Food Security Recommendation #4: Go Big on Organic Matter in Your Soil
If I pour a bucket of water over some of the heavy clay soil in my landscape, water runs off on slopes. In flat or cratered areas, it sits on top, eventually making a big muddy mess that becomes algae-covered if we don’t have enough wind or sun to dry it out.
If I pour a bucket of water over the same approximate amount of area in one of my vegetable garden beds, loaded with compost, the bucket of water soaks in. Even on sloped beds, the water sinks and stays put rather than running off.
Soils that are high in organic matter are more porous and spacious than compacted soils.
If you try the same experiment with sand, the water will also soak in as it did in my garden bed. Unfortunately, it won’t stay there. Come back a few hours later and that water will be gone, which means it is not stored in the root zone for later use by plants.
Soils that are high in organic matter also preserve moisture better than sandy soils.
In order to hold water in your soil during droughts and catch it during heavy rains, you need a lot of organic matter in your soil. Here are a few easy ways you can up your organic matter quotient at home.
- Add compost.
- Mulch with things like wood chips, straw, old hay, grass clippings, and mulched leaves.
- Plant, then chop and drop cover crops like grain grasses, clover, mustard, or chicory.
- Use no-till or minimal till practices and leave decaying roots and plant matter in the soil.
Check out these TGN posts to learn more about these methods.
“No Till Gardening: Homesteading Basics (VIDEO)”
“Build Your Compost Pile Right On Your Garden Beds!”
Adding organic matter not only slows the flow of water in your landscape and sinks it deeper into plant roots, but it actually sinks carbon dioxide, too.
Yes! Building soil that is higher in organic matter can actually help solve our CO2 problem. And solving our CO2 problem will moderate the disastrous effects of climate change and can mitigate future weather extremes. (No, this one answer won’t solve all our problems—but if lots of us do it, it will help!)
Food Security Recommendation #5: Remember ABC—Always Be Cover-cropping
Plant roots are like plumbing for your soil. They create little channels that help divert water down into the earth so it can be accessed by the plant and other biological soil inhabitants. By growing something in your soil at all times, you keep those pathways open for water to filter down into the soil.
For annual growing areas, planting cover crops in off seasons is critical. However, even for the rest of your landscape, having some sort of cover crop is necessary for extreme weather resilience.
Many of us grow lawns as our primary perennial cover crop. Traditional lawns, though, are shallow-rooted and do not contribute much to soil health. Growing grasses with deeper root systems like perennial rye and other prairie- or meadow-type grasses can be even more beautiful and give you deep roots to help sink water further into your soil.
Using vegetative perennials (i.e., that die back in the winter) with expansive root systems is also a great way to prevent soil erosion and build biomass in your landscape. Yarrow, Russian comfrey, curly dock, burdock, vetches, and even invasives like mints are useful for covering bare soil in a hurry. Since these plants lose their leaves each year and can be heavily pruned in the growing season, they make great green manure or mulch plants, too. Tap-rooted trees like black locust and paw paw also drill water and air down deep into your soil.
In addition, having a continuous cover of plants (or leaves from those plants) keeps your soil cooler on hot days and warmer on cool days. This protects all the biological life in your soil like bacteria, fungi, worms, and more so that they can work year-round. Their continued hard work means that your soil will get better year after year so that your plants will have more disease resistance and resilience during bad weather streaks.
Bare soil = No biological life = More pests, more diseases, and greater weather sensitivity for your plants
Covered soil = Year-round biological workers = Healthier plants better adapted to your weather extremes
If you are willing to do the research and the work, there are plenty of things you can do to mitigate your risks from a changing climate and more volatile weather patterns. These ideas are barely the tip of the iceberg (which is lucky for us since glaciers are now melting at an alarming rate)!
What about you? What other ways are you safeguarding your food security against extreme weather patterns?
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Tasha Greer is a regular contributor to The Grow Network and has cowritten several e-books with Marjory Wildcraft. The author of “Grow Your Own Spices” (December 2020), she also blogs for MorningChores.com and Mother Earth News. For more tips on homesteading and herb and spice gardening, follow Tasha at Simplestead.com.
COMMENTS(13)
Great reminders for my area in zone 5 as well.
Joanna – Thanks for reading !
Informative article, thank you, good resources linked too! Climate change can be a contentious topic, because it’s become so political. In fact, part of the politics is to cover up over 70 years of renegade weather modification and geoengineering. Trump’s plan has been to increase the experimental geoengineering programs, which is why the disasters are being exacerbated. I really want to encourage all growers and those concerned about climate change to get informed about weather modification/geoengineering that we might together raise awareness and hopefully halt this disastrous programs. Some excellent resources: https://weathermodificationhistory.com/ and http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/
Mishelle – Thanks for sharing this information. I agree – it seems like the more we try to make things better, the more we upset the balance. Nature is so complex and intricately woven, that you can change one thing without changing others and humans tend to be a bit short-sighted with respect to natural consequences. Thanks for reading in and sounding in with this information! Tasha
Great stuff. Really thick with information.
I went to a forestry workshop once where they suggested that one of the best strategies for capturing CO2 was to selectively cut down and replant forests for lumber. It’s a bit against the grain from the typical environmental message. But there is a logic to it. the carbon is sequestered in the body of the tree. You use that to build things and let new trees grow in place of the old ones, trapping even more carbon.
It’s not a perfect plan, because many of these replanted forests become mono-crop rows of pine trees. Still, it’s something.
Thanks for the knowledge.
Hey Scott – I have heard that before too. Building with wood is a way to trap carbon. I think the challenge with that approach is how much CO2 it takes to transform and transport that wood to end-users. I don’t know if the carbon storage capacity in a 2 x 4 offsets the usage for production or not. I have also heard that younger trees sink more carbon as they add mass, then when their growth slows, they just hold what they already stored. So there seems to be some big benefits in constantly planting new trees. If you’re interested, here’s a link to an awesome PDF that explains CO2 storage in trees. It’s geared for teaching kids…which is about my speed! Thanks for reading and sharing your knowledge!
http://forestlearning.edu.au/images/resources/How%20carbon%20is%20stored%20in%20trees%20and%20wood%20products.pdf
You know, I never even thought about the carbon expelled to make the product. Thanks for pointing that out! (Although it does make the task of weighing pros and cons more difficult) 😉 Oh well. Real life is complicated.
Good article, however I’ll have to finish reading it later.
But here are some point to consider:
I have been buying fruit trees that are more cold hardy to deal with climate change.
For drought on larger farms, the tractor is used to create dust on the plants, which will conserve the plant’s water and washes off when it rains. On smaller gardens, watering just prior to rain will open the soil and allow the rainwater to enter instead of running off.
While I did notice many good points in the article, the ones above are not well known and I assume they were not mentioned.
Hey Louise – Thanks for sharing these ideas. I agree it’s definitely a good idea to buy trees that are a bit hardier than your current climate zone. I usually shoot for zone 6 hardy in my zone 7A. But heat and humidity are a big challenge in my area, so apples that do well too far north never seem happy here in our heat. Finding the balance is tough. And chill hours are a factor too. There are only a few peaches that will grow well for me since we hit our chill hours for most peaches in February and then are at risk for early bloom almost every year. I am hoping more fruit tree growers will start applying the AHS Heat Zone ratings too to help us choose trees that can tolerate the cold and heat! http://ahsgardening.org/gardening-resources/gardening-maps/heat-zone-map
I hadn’t heard about the dusting with tractors. I’ll have to check that out. But, watering before rains during a drought is a great idea to pre-moisten the soil and make it more permeable when the rains come. Thanks for bringing that up!
Great ideas Louise!
Wow Tasha, another really good article. Hah! I am so focuxed on running this organization I sometimes forget why… and you’ve reminded me in spades. My concern about these kinds of changes is what prompted me to create The Grow Netowrk. Most people just aren’t aware of how fragile the food supply is.
Louise, yes, moistening up your soil before a rain (or better yet, not letting it get that dry – especially if you are gorwing food there :)) is importnat.
And here is a somewhat controversal topic: most permacutlrurists, and me too, have recommended having lots of trees for fruits and nuts. But with really extreme climate change tree production gets more and more of a dicey proposition. Late spring frosts killing fruiting buds is the most common thing. Bigger extremes both higher and lower temps causing dmaage is another problem. And the weather statistics sure are showing more volitile weather. So finding cultivars of trees and bushes that can withstand greater ranges is super important.
But lately, I’ve even been in discussion with elder permaculturists who are suggesting focusing more and more on quick growing annuals for survival.
Whew, it is going to be a ride, huh?
I super apprecatie your writing Tasha.
These are all great recommendations for keeping our yards productive in bad times. Thanks!
One thing I would like to add is that harvested foods not all be preserved in a freezer that relies on electricity. One year our house was smashed by a tree; wiring from the attic hung down into the living room (along with a lot of branches), and the power was gone for 9 weeks while half the house was being repaired.
We have great neighbors who had a little room in their freezers for some of our frozen harvest, but not all. If the emergency had been widespread, we would have lost a lot more. We use the dehydrator as our main food-preservation method now. Lots of pieces to the puzzle of keeping food-secure!
Good article with excellent ideas. I would like to add that finding fruit and nut trees that are more native to your area will ultimately be more productive than others. For us, crab-apples might not be the tastiest off the tree, but they are more likely to grow and produce more reliably. Peach trees are tricky, even in Georgia, so we opted for fig, pear, crab-apple and plum. We did plant two apple trees that were supposed to be good for our area, but one appears to have been struck by lightning. We have also discovered a mulberry tree and a pecan tree on the property.
For winter cover, we just mulch everything that falls from the trees into the garden along with any “grass” clippings from the remainder of the yard. I put grass in quotes because the majority of our back yard is weeds – white clover, dandelion, wild strawberry, plantain, cleaver and several I’ve yet to identify. After planting, we lay out newspaper and cover it with straw and more grass clippings. I try to avoid anything in the gluten producing family as our youngest is highly reactive to it.
I also agree that the freezer isn’t the ideal for food storage. Dehydrating and canning are less susceptible to problems.
Great ideas. Cutting down and replanting trees is a topic that is often discussed in our home. I hate to cut down a tree. There was an ice storm several years before we purchased our home and many of the trees were damaged. We cut them down as we need firewood, preserving the healthy ones. I plant back 2 trees for every 1 we cut down. They don’t all survive the deer however. Seems like our summers are getting hotter and longer. What thrives one year doesn’t necessarily make it the next.