Giving Compass' Take:

• Karen Stabiner discusses how climate change changes agriculture growing seasons as fires, heat waves, and early frost create unpredictability for farmers. 

• How can funders work to ensure long-term food security in a changing climate? How can funders effectively partner with farmers? 

• Learn about the relationship between agriculture and climate change. 

Mike Cirone didn’t prune his apple trees as much as he usually does, this year, because an extended heat spell made him worried about sun damage on the fruit. There was “leaf scorching” on the outermost leaves, he said, so he left the trees bushy to shade the apples at his farm in San Luis Obispo, five miles from the central California coast.

An hour inland, in Paso Robles, Barbara Spencer and her husband, Bill, got a different kind of surprise at Windrose Farm—early, harsh frosts, down to 16 to 18 degrees. One frost brought their greens harvest to a “screeching halt,” says Spencer, because they hadn’t covered the hoop houses with protective plastic in time.

Statewide, California looked like one big bonfire last month, though so far 2019 has been less fiery than the previous two years. At one point there were 16 active fires, amid talk of global warming and its literal costs, with damages predicted to top $25 billion by the time the current fire season ends. The by-now-familiar calls to action were large-scale as well: eat less meat, fly less often, get an electric car, abandon plastic; turn back the climate crisis with wholesale, personal change today.

Daily life is more complicated for small farmers, as fluctuations in temperature and precipitation have even the most experienced farmers scrambling. There are no tidy answers for them, because the questions keep changing. When asked to describe the state’s weather these days, Cirone, Spencer, and Max Dornbush, produce buyer for Los Angeles’ Gjusta restaurant group, all choose the same word: “Unpredictable.”

“Our climate is shifting north. San Luis Obispo is more like Ventura than what it used to be here,” he says, referring to a city 120 miles to the southeast. His mother got her first air conditioner this summer for a house she’s lived in since the 1960s.

Cold is equally unreliable. Windrose Farm, with 22 acres and 12 hoop houses, sits in a hollow where cold air sinks and then lingers, technically a temperate zone, and Spencer is precise about when frost season is supposed to be: End of October to mid-April. This year, the first frost came the last week of September. If hoop houses aren’t covered, leafy greens freeze and there’s no harvest until the plants recover.

Read the full article about agriculture growing seasons by Karen Stabiner at The New Food Economy.