Cherry and other stone fruits, such as plums, peaches, and nectarines, are grown in British Columbia's interior region, where growers say that disruptive weather patterns from flooding, lack of protective snow cover, warmer temperatures, and sudden bursts of cold weather have likely ended this year's fruit crops, particularly cherries.
British Columbia cherries are exported to the United States, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union. After leaving Brexit, the United Kingdom faces shortages of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the produce bowls in Spain are reeling from global warming. Farmers are left holding empty bags, and many seek compensation from their respective governments.
Farmers in B.C.’s Interior say rapid fluctuations in winter weather have wiped out many of their peach, grape and cherry crops, meaning consumers will likely see fewer local soft fruits on grocery store shelves this summer.
Emily Chambers, co-owner of Blue Canoe in Creston, said not one of her orchard’s 1½ hectares of lapins cherry trees has produced a single viable flower bud this season.
Peter Simonsen, president of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association, said the weather-related damage is the worst the industry has seen since floods caused by extreme weather devastated parts of southwestern B.C. in November 2021.
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“What happened was an unseasonal period of warm weather that suddenly got very cold in January. As tree sap was rising it was sort of like having the pipes in your house freeze — it kills the flower buds and can also hurt the tree in the long-term.”
Simonsen, a grower of apples, pears and peaches on a 25-hectare farm he owns in Naramata, said that while some of his apple and pear flower buds managed to survive the extreme weather, he doesn’t expect to see any of his peaches make it to store shelves this summer.
Meanwhile, tropical pests such as fruit flies promise additional damage as temperatures continue to warm unabated. California officials have found increasing populations of fruit flies in traps. Species such as Mexican, Oriental, and Mediterranean lay their eggs in “apples, avocados, and oranges, and those eggs hatch into larvae, which tunnel through the fruit, making it unfit for human consumption.”
In the tropics, increased flooding is damaging fruits, putting the lives of isolated megafauna at high risk.
Afrotropical forests host much of the world’s remaining megafauna, although these animals are confined to areas where direct human influences are low. We used a rare long-term dataset of tree reproduction and a photographic database of forest elephants to assess food availability and body condition of an emblematic megafauna species at Lopé National Park, Gabon. Our analysis reveals an 81% decline in fruiting over a 32-year period (1986–2018) and an 11% decline in body condition of fruit-dependent forest elephants from 2008 to 2018. Fruit famine in one of the last strongholds for African forest elephants should raise concern about the ability of this species and other fruit-dependent megafauna to persist in the long term, with potential consequences for broader ecosystem and biosphere functioning.
It’s not just fruit. Climate change will affect our cereals as well.
Climate change may affect the production of maize (corn) and wheat as early as 2030 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, according to a new NASA study published in the journal, Nature Food. Maize crop yields are projected to decline 24%, while wheat could potentially see growth of about 17%.
Using advanced climate and agricultural models, scientists found that the change in yields is due to projected increases in temperature, shifts in rainfall patterns, and elevated surface carbon dioxide concentrations from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. These changes would make it more difficult to grow maize in the tropics, but could expand wheat’s growing range.
“We did not expect to see such a fundamental shift, as compared to crop yield projections from the previous generation of climate and crop models conducted in 2014,” said lead author Jonas Jägermeyr, a crop modeler and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. The projected maize response was surprisingly large and negative, he said. “A 20% decrease from current production levels could have severe implications worldwide.”
Climate change is altering the relationship between plants and pollinators.