How will that apple in your lunch look with climate change?

I’m curious about how different foods will be affected by climate change. We’ve already been seeing impacts, such as the loss of peach and nectarine harvests in BC, Canada, in 2024 after extreme cold piled onto previous years of extreme heat and harsh winters (see for example Junos, 2024) The podcast Gastropod has a good episode on the impacts of the Western megadrought on several fronts including increasing costs of cheese and ice cream.

A recent article by Preston and colleagues (2024) looks at the impacts on apples in major growing regions of the US. They found that climate change is already increasing risks, and this will continue. The risks come from an earlier end to the spring frost, fewer cold degree days (affects the dormancy period of the trees), increasing growing degree days (the days that temperatures are above the minimum needed for the growth of both plants and pests), more extreme heat days, and more warm nights. These risks have a wide range of impacts that could have negative impacts on apple production, including reducing the dormancy period, changing when blooms happen, increasing the risk of sunburn, and affecting things like colouration, which impacts appearance and quality.

One of the biggest issues is that large areas of the US that are important for apple orchards will experience changes in multiple factors simultaneously. This compounds the impacts, potentially creating even bigger losses. In addition, climate change has the potential to impact what pest species are able to thrive in a region, as we have seen with pine beetle in areas of the rocky mountains (e.g., Macfarlane et al, 2023).

To me, this is just one more reason to take action on climate change. The costs will be so much bigger the longer we wait for real action.