Is Climate Change Eating You? Then Change The Way You Look At Climate Change!

Elena Suglia asks, "Is Climate Change Robbing Our Food Of Nutrients?" The Facebook post (above) shared by Marcos Valdez appears in the teaser article by Miss Elena published in the Genetic Literacy Project webpage, but which leads to the full article that appears on the prestigious magazine Scientific American ("Vanishing Nutrients," 10 December 2018, scientificamerican.com). Miss Elena's answer to her own question above is: "Yes. According to a growing body of research, rising carbon dioxide levels are making our food less nutritious, robbing key crops of vitamins essential to human development."

Is your favorite crop included? Miss Elena says, "Studies have shown that crops as varied as wheat, maize, soybeans and field peas contain less protein, zinc, and iron when grown under levels of carbon dioxide expected by 2050." The list must include all crops, because they grow under the same conditions of Climate Change. The studies were triggered by a discovery of nutrient deficiency from, I say, literally & scientifically, fast food. Miss Elena says:

In 1998, a scientist named Irakli Loladze learned that zooplankton starve from nutrient deficiency when eating algae that are given extra light and grow faster. He thought the same thing might be happening with plants as a result of excess carbon dioxide, and his instincts proved right. The phenomenon was dubbed the "great nutrient collapse."

Today's implications: You modern-day humans who love to eat chickens whose growth has been hastened by hormones and antibiotics, you who frequent fast-food restaurants, you are malnourished. Not me – I don’t like fast foods.

Now, those scientists studying the Great Nutrient Collapse have not come up with an alternative to the fast-food poultry & livestock industry to solve that global problem of hidden hunger. If Climate Change is coming fast, we can't wait!

No problem. Right now, already there is a very simple, inexpensive response to the Great Nutrient Collapse – you already know it as Organic Farming. You grow foods the natural way, not hastening any process, and not using inputs that cause greenhouse gas emissions, and no toxic chemicals. Collecting what I know so far, in contrast, I'll call it the Great Nutrient Collect. Actually that is a romantic, scientifically sounding name for organic farming which I have just invented! Note the activities:

(1)   organic mulching (in which the humus collects nutrients from decaying materials),

(2)   multiple cropping (this is a collection of several sources of food and incomes, and each of the many crops grown side-by-side also collects beneficial organisms that defeat pests and diseases), and

(3)   minimum tillage (the soil collects moisture from the atmosphere and the underground water).

You can't beat that. Hey Primate: Change the way you look at Climate Change now! Do Organic Farming!