The climate is changing unfortunately. Why this is happening isn’t what this post is about. We’re not going to get into… all that. But we do have to acknowledge that the composition of the atmosphere is changing, and it has been for a while.

While this may have scores of implications regarding temperature, oceans, the landscape and even geopolitics, one thing many people aren’t talking about is how it affects the food supply. Well it is affecting the food supply, and not in a good way.

First principles

Principle 1: We all likely remember from 7th grade biology class: animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; plants inhale (so to speak) carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. For a plant to live and grow, it needs four things: soil, water, sunlight and carbon dioxide.

Principle 2: Carbon dioxide has been rising for at least 200 years. Before the Industrial Revolution (which was between 1760 and 1830), the Earth’s atmosphere contained 280 parts per million (ppm) of Carbon Dioxide. That number is now up to 410ppm and it’s expected to be more than 550ppm by 2070.

Principle 3: The more carbon dioxide a plant has in its environment, the higher its carbohydrate content and the lower its micronutrient content. This one might be new to many, (even though winegrowers have known something like this for Centuries) but it’s terrifyingly fascinating. An experiment in the mid-1990s found that increasing light and carbon dioxide to algae made it grow like crazy. Researchers thought that having more algae would mean there would be more zooplankton as well (because zooplankton eat algae). But what they found was quite a shock! The zooplankton started dying because the new, more abundant algae didn’t have the same amount of nutrients and was basically just made of carbohydrates.

Contributing factors

It is well-known that crops grown over the last 50 years have been steadily losing their nutritional content. A study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin analyzed 43 common garden crops over a 49-year period and found that there was a significant decrease in calcium, potassium, Vitamin B, Vitamin C, iron and protein in ALL 43 types of crops.

When the study was published in 2003, the explanation generally centered around a depletion in the quality of America’s soil. Further research started factoring in the use of chemical fertilizers. Even further research considered how plants have been bred to produce a high yield volume but, in doing so, sacrificed nutrition.

The research turns to climate

Around the same time, a mathematician at Arizona State University, Irakli Loladze, started studying data related to rising CO2 and declining nutritional content. His research and that of a team at Harvard culminated in a study published in 2014 in Nature that unequivocally related climate changes to nutritional depletion worldwide.

Loladze said:

Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO₂ levels keep rising. We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history―[an] injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.

The Harvard researchers expressed concern for the billions of people (mostly in Asia) whose nutritional needs were met by only a few select crops, namely rice. These populations don’t get zinc or iron anywhere else. The lack of these nutrients is a major contributor to infant and mother mortality during childbirth, pneumonia and malaria. As with nearly any worldwide food supply problem, it is the poor who are the most vulnerable.

But don’t think those in the West are immune. This lack of nutrients in our vegetables is effectively turning our what we rely on most for micronutrients into empty calories and junk food full of starch and sugar. And this is a problem that “going organic” doesn’t fix as the atmosphere around a factory farm is the same atmosphere around an organic farm.

What do we do?

That’s the big question any individual bumps up against as they grapple with global issues like climate change. Putting pressure on politicians does no good in a political system designed to favor moneyed interests (who profit from pollution and suppressing any meaningful acknowledgement of climate change). And these issues seem to advance more quickly than groups of people can mobilize to address them. It is indeed dire.

All I can say is… (1) vote with your dollars and (2) live your life the way you’d like to see others do it so you can at least set an example for your children and those around you.

1. Research companies that conduct environmentally-friendly business. Buy organic anyway, (for your health, i.e., less toxicity) but if nothing more than to signal to the agricultural industry that you care.
2. Do your part to minimize your impact on the environment: walk or ride a bike rather than drive when it’s reasonable to do so. Use energy-efficient appliances, light-bulbs, cars, etc. when it’s reasonable to do so. And here’s one: eat grass fed beef. Factory farming of cows in particular contributes more to greenhouse gasses (via methane from cow farts) than automobiles.

And feel free to talk about these issues. While most people know about many effects of climate change, this is a relatively unknown issue. Let’s get the word out!