Truffle in paradise
Volume X Issue 5
Published March 2019
From the very first few river valley civilizations, humans history has been molded around the reality of an ever-shifting Earth and its cycles of growth and devastation.
In settlements scattered across the globe, natural disasters have been bollards the vehicle of human progress has had to dodge around. And while the term “disaster” certainly gives light to the catastrophic proportions of such events, the aftermath of these cataclysms often left behind the means for an agricultural boom. Flooding and volcanic eruptions revitalized the soil, restoring minerals depleted by farming.
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This fact can be easily inferred in how frequently various ancient religions have a god reigning over both death and agriculture — symbolizing a domain over both life and death, or more aptly put in this case, birth and rebirth. The Egyptian god of death, Osiris, has ties into agriculture and rebirth — a near parallel to the sort of natural cycle of the refreshing floods of the Nile. In Indonesia, before the introduction of Islam and Hinduism, the Javanese Dewi Sri controls the growth of rice and the underworld, fitting for a region active volcanic islands.
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However, what these civilizations did not account for in their worship are the long-term shifts to climate patterns. While the Earth is obviously no stranger to an altered climate — having seen multiple ice ages, a range of oxygen levels, and a myriad of globe-impacting meteor strikes and volcanic activity, such changes either occur closer to the pace of evolution, thus allowing for the survival of its flora and fauna, or encompass a shorter time span and lead to those defining moments between eras — the five mass extinctions.
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While a change to the world’s climate is not inherently a negative, the rapid pace at which the climate is being altered can lead to massive biodiversity losses that chain into a general breakdown of nature’s function.
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For humans, despite the advances of our technology shielding us from any direct impact of the rising temperatures, should the weather continue to alter at its current rate, there is little doubt that humans will face some indirect, arguably more severe consequences than some warmer years.
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The most straightforward effects of climate change on the whole of human civilization can be described through agriculture.
While it is plausible to consider global warming to actually be a positive for crops, what with more sunlight, carbon emissions providing resources for plant growth — a phenomenon dubbed carbon fertilization, and increased rainfall, the actuality of the changing weather is, in fact, the opposite. Despite the superficial positives of increased sunlight and carbon actually do more harm than good as rising temperatures lead to more intense evaporation of water as well as a greater demand for moisture from plants.
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According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Evaporation from the soil accelerates when temperatures rise and plants increase transpiration — that is, lose more moisture from their leaves. The combined effect is called ‘evapotranspiration.’ Because global warming is likely to increase rainfall, the net impact of higher temperatures on water availability is a race between higher evapotranspiration and higher precipitation. Typically, that race is won by higher evapotranspiration.”
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Additionally, variance in the traditionally fairly consistent year-round weather patterns — such as predictable flooding, monsoon weather, etc. — may be offset by an altered climate, overall causing a net negative for agriculture.
“Continued changes in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, heat waves, and other extreme events are likely, all which will impact agricultural production,” according to an excerpt from the Soil Science Society of America (Soils). “Furthermore, compounded climate factors can decrease plant productivity, resulting in price increases for many important agricultural crops.”
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Although naysayers might attribute these claims to mere predictive sciences, such warnings cannot be entirely ignored as early signs of faltering crop biodiversity have already surfaced.
Take the case of truffles, for instance, the renown fungi’s price has been on the rise, not due to the typically invisible hand market forces, but rather due to the physical reality of fewer and fewer truffles being harvested. Appraisals of the industry, such as that done by The Atlantic, note the elevated temperatures and decreased rainfall in the already limited areas where truffles can grow in Europe have drastically reduced the number of truffles being found.
In a similar article looking at the truffle industry, National Geographic states, “The European truffle harvest, which topped 2,000 annual tons a hundred years ago, is now down to a mere 20 or so, a victim of climate change’s elevated temperatures and decreasing rainfall.”
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With how much selective breeding has gone into the most widespread modern crops, even if they are more resilient to varied weather than the delicate truffles, their finely tuned optimal growth temperatures are put at risk by the threat of climate change.
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The resilience of these crops has thus far staved off the early effects of climate change, but should the Earth’s transformations continue at their present rates, there isn’t much reason to believe the agricultural basis for our society will survive through what may be the sixth great mass extinction.
The rise of global warming has turned out to be a greater disaster than the volcanos, floods, and other cataclysms faced by our ancestors, pulling off a feat rarely seen in our world; truly uprooting the natural order of the Earth and threatening the foundation civilization was built upon: agriculture.