UK Crops To Suffer: Farming Practices to Alter
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I’m quite the dreadful snob when it comes to the consumption of alcohol. Whereas the less intellectual types may sit on verandas, sipping red wine, discussing Voltaire, I’m indoors, crate of cheap lager at my side, football on the telly.
Whereas they may swill the grape juice, inhale the aroma and swoon over the subtleties cascading o’er the taste buds, I’m already on my third can and the match yet to start.
But my, how I jolted when I came across a story suggesting that English vineyards may, in decades to come, suffer because our summers are set to become too hot.
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Yes, the British wine industry is our best kept secret – so much so, that I was barely aware of it, looking instead to my continental cousins as the more likely producers.
However, Professor Richard Selley has written a book: The Winelands of Britain: Past, Present and Prospective.
In a BBC report he said: “I have been able to map how British viticulture could change beyond recognition in the coming years.”
So, yes, of course I was being glib above, but this is yet more sobering evidence of climate change.
If a wind and rain swept isle is to enjoy the dubious pleasure – arguably within my daughter’s lifetime – of summers with a 5 degrees’ increase by 2080, this really does drive home – to this writer at least, just what we are dealing with.
A nation with a relatively unknown wine industry will in 70 + years have summers unsuitable to grow grapes.
Wine aside, what other crops may suffer from this increase in temperature?
Well, initial research reveals that – on the face of it, a greater window of opportunity exists for farmers here in the UK.
Milder weather brings with it longer seasons. But dig beneath the surface – if that was a pun, it certainly wasn’t intended – and one finds that such a relatively rapid change in temperature is going to leave crops woefully ill-prepared.
Frosts will become rarer, a crop’s defence mechanism against said frost will lessen. Should there be a cold spell, the crop won’t prove so resilient against it.
Less harsh winters may prove kind to the crops, true, but they will also prove kind to pests. Farmers formally presuming a cold winter would kill pests would see them survive and earlier, warmer springs would bring earlier flights of pests into contact with the food.
This post, by its very nature, is designed to just give a taster of the complications that may arise – but I gleaned the above facts from the website Farming Futures should you wish to investigate more. You’ll find fact sheets available covering all aspects of UK farming in the face of climate change.
So, anything positive from all this? Well, perhaps just the one fact. Apparently Britain may become a chief grower of apricots.
All well and good I suppose, yet I’ve never really been that keen on them. Id’ rather just stick to potatoes that can survive frosts and pests, thanks.
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