Crap Shoot
It is snowing…again. Yesterday’s spring snowstorm happened for me at the most in opportune time, but fortunately I was driving a 4WD vehicle It was dicey going over the mountain. All my weather apps had called for rain and even in the midst of a blinding squall they were all still reporting rain. Snake eyes.
Some people want to chalk spring snow up to climate change, but the truth is mother nature has been tossing big snowballs at us in April for years. As a kid, I remember having to hunt Easter eggs inside the house because there was snow on the ground. There was the blizzard in ’82 when my parents had me crawl out my bedroom window to shovel the snow off the patio roof for fear of collapse. Going as far back as 1894, spring called winter’s bluff and lost to 18 inches dropped in a single day.
I keep track of the weather at the market in my sales record spreadsheet. Looking back over the last decade, there were times I was wearing my insulated coveralls as late as May. April is the transition zone where the weather can’t decide to stay cold or get warm. Perennial plants (ones that come back year after year as opposed to annuals which must be replanted each year) understand this, however, they may decide not to set fruit or produce seeds until the following year. I have been watching many of my orchard friends on social media lament the losses of their stone fruit crops for this season. Last year was phenomenal and this year will be a bust. That’s agriculture – the oldest form of legalized gambling in the world. While we may grumble about the sloppy mess, we really do need to be paying attention to the impact of what the weather as well as global politics is doing to our food supply.
Americans have relied on international grain markets to produce massive amounts of inexpensive grain-based products. My neighbor, who loves to spoil the dogs daily with biscuits remarked that the price had jumped three dollars a box. We won’t be able to blame geopolitics on our lack of cherries or the price of peaches this year, but I’m trying to point out how precarious our food supply really is.
Do you know who exports the most wheat in the world? Russia. United States exports 92 million metric tons and at the same time imports 100 million metric tons. If I had my way, we would grow 8 million more metric tons and keep what we grow. Instead play a shell game of agricultural economics. Years ago I was approached by an NGO to export breeding stock for meat goats to Cuba. This was shortly after meat goat breeds were first imported to the United States from South Africa. I posed the question, “Why doesn’t Cuba just buy their breeding stock from South Africa?” and was told by the USDA export representative, “That’s not how it works.” I think if farmers ran the world things would operate much more efficiently.
But it’s not just the farmers. Consumers need to be educated as well. Living in an I want it and I want it now society has us importing cherries from Chile when our own crops fail instead of going without for a year. I’ve got cherries canned in glass jars as well as in the deep freeze. Peaches, too. They can’t hold a candle to fresh, but they will have to do because when it comes to stone fruits, I only consume from farmers I know as a matter of principle. Anything else would be cheating.
Looking at the weather forecast for this week it looks like I will be wearing shorts to market with a projected high of 85°. I find that a little hard to believe as I sit here watching massive snowflakes splatter against the windows. This weather has left me loathe to take on the all-day outdoor projects I had planned. I guess I will spend the time digging through my closet for warm weather clothing, but I’m leaving nothing to chance and keeping those insulated coveralls by the door.