And the world gets warmer….
Thought this was a really interesting graph that I saw recently. Basically shows how our summers have become hotter over time - and that the number / rate of extremely hot summers has also increased significantly over the last 90 years. Without getting into a significant discussion about why this is happening (after all there are entire books devoted to this subject!) it is interesting to explore what the implications are for food production. Certainly over the last 20 years on our grove at Manna Hill Estate we have seen the flowering time of our olives come earlier in the season. It used to be mid-December whereas now it is typically mid to late November (although this does vary a bit from year to year). Not unexpectedly, harvest season is also coming earlier. With the longer (often drier) summers there is now more stress on the trees and production is being impacted. At temperatures above 30 deg C the olive tree shuts down and the fruit stops growing. As the number of days (and sometimes nights) sitting above 30 deg C increases the amount of growth decreases. In 2018 when we had a particularly long period of warm, dry weather during the summer and the olives failed to grow which resulted in a reduced harvest of very small fruit. It is interesting to note that some of the apple orchards further to the north of us are not getting the required “"winter chill”. This often results in light and variable flowering, markedly affecting fruit yield through poor pollination, increased risk of frost damage or by directly reducing the amount of fruit that it produced.
Longer, drier summers coupled with less rainfall during Winter has impacted on our ability to capture water for the garden. This picture was taken at the end of Spring!
So what can we, as farmers, do to tackle this existential crisis? No doubt part of the solution is using regenerative agriculture principles and practices. What is regenerative agriculture you may ask. The Rodale Institute suggests that regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm by placing a heavy premium on soil health with attention also paid to water management, fertilizer use, and more. It is a method of farming that “improves the resources it uses, rather than destroying or depleting them,” I will share some of the techniques and practices that Manna Hill Estate has adopted to help regenerate the soil in a later blog, however if we just focus on the benefits for now then it can be shown that regenerative agriculture practices increase soil biodiversity and organic matter, leading to more resilient soils. This means that they can better withstand climate change impacts like flooding and drought. Healthy soils also produce better yields and nutrient-rich, better tasting crops. Due to better water infiltration it also diminishes erosion and runoff, leading to improved water quality on and off the farm. In addition regenerative agriculture practices help us fight the climate crisis by pulling carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground. So what’s not to like about that?
A healthy persimmon tree in autumn with lots of mulch and grass groundcover to help cool the soil and minimise evaporation