Heat’s on for Farmers: “The Seed as it’s Emerging gets Sunburnt and Dies.’’ 

Queensland farmer Linton Brimblecombe grows about 4000 tonnes of beetroot a year. But that’s becoming harder to sustain and he says the climate is to blame. “Humans are having an effect on the environment – we have to acknowledge that. We can’t disregard the impact we are having on the earth.’’

Graham Readfearn in the Courier Mail (15 January 2010) and on his Green Blog:

BEETROOT grower Linton Brimblecombe used to sit on his father’s farm in the Lockyer Valley and occasionally gaze questioningly at the smoke coming from the exhaust pipes of tractors.

“I spent a lot of time on tractors, I used to ponder where does that emission go? What effect was that chimney stack having on the rest of the environment?’’ he says.

Move forward about three decades (but remain on the same patch of prime food production land) and this fourth-generation farmer may now be getting the answer to that question.

“For the past eight years it’s become a lot warmer, and it’s a struggle,’’ he says.

Brimblecombe grows about 4000 tonnes of beetroot a year exclusively for Golden Circle and to keep up with the demands of his buyer, grows right up to early February. But that’s becoming harder to sustain and he says the climate is to blame.

“We are noticing an increase in days over 30C and a decrease in days below zero,’’ he says. “The seed as it’s emerging gets sunburnt and dies.’’ 

Adapting to the changing climate is the only option for Brimblecombe, but then fruit and vegetable growers have been adapting to gradual changes in the climate for decades.

“The options? We could move to a different growing district,’’ he says. “We could grin and bear it and work harder. There are options such as mulching the soil so that it’s cooler – and we’re looking into that – but everything comes with a cost.’’

Industry bodies and government scientists say that in the coming years, the problems are only likely to get more challenging for growers like Brimblecombe. 

Acceleration of increasing temperatures coupled with an increasing population demanding more food will test the ingenuity of Queensland’s fruit and vegetable growers more than ever before.

“You’ll often hear people in the industry talk about food security – making sure that we have secure food production under changing climate scenarios,’’ says David Putland, the climate change project officer for Queensland horticulture peak body Growcom. “I think most growers realise that climate change is a serious issue for food production.’’

Two weeks ago Growcom announced two new research projects with backing from state governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, looking at the avocado industry and apple and pear growers. Almost all of Queensland’s apples are grown in the Stanthorpe area, the warmest and most northerly apple-growing region in Australia.

But earlier this year, scientists at James Cook University found that since 1979, the tropical belt had been expanding,pushing its boundary, and the warmer weather that goes with it, south by as much as 600km. Recently the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed Australia had just been through its warmest decade on record. Each decade since the 1940s, the bureau said, had been warmer than the previous one.

“Fruit crops like apples and pears require chilling hours to develop the flower and the fruit and to get a good yield,’’ says Putland. “If it gets warmer and you don’t get those necessary chilling hours, we could see yields going down.’’

But Putland says that while this is of concern, it is not a time to panic, although it is a time to prepare.

“Some of this can be fixed, but it costs a lot of money. You can plant new varieties and have more irrigation – perhaps using micro-sprayers to keep the crops cool. There are clay-based reflective particles you can spray on hard fruit like apples and pears. All these things will make food production more expensive. That will only get worse with mitigation strategies to reduce emissions on farms.

“If those costs are too great and farmers go out of business, that’s when food security is threatened and you have bare shelves at certain times of the year and higher prices. That’s one of the challenges for managing and selecting new crops. At what point does the risk become unacceptable for a certain crop?

“You need to plan ahead and work out what the changes will be and identify when some crops might cease to be viable in some regions so you can then plan to grow something else. We have more than 120 different crops just in Queensland. Sometimes we just can’t answer all the farmers’ questions.’’

Queensland’s economy has more than a passing interest in horticulture. According to Growcom, horticulture is Queensland’s “second-largest primary industry, worth more than $1.8 billion per annum’’.

But the peak body says climate change is throwing problems at these farmers that employ about 25,000 people and supply Queenslanders and the rest of the nation with one-third of all the fruit and vegetables on their plates.

Days of continued high temperatures can put heat stress on plants. Crops under stress could be helped with increased irrigation, but would this be sustainable in the long-term as water availability becomes less predictable?

Putland says there are signs that the “winter growing window’’ for crops such as lettuce is narrowing, meaning farmers will need to change planting schedules or risk being beaten to the market by rivals in the south.

In a submission to the Government’s Garnaut Review, national peak body Horticulture Australia Council said horticultural crops were “very temperature-sensitive, and impacts on growing regions (eg stone fruit, pome fruit) and cropping times (eg wine grapes, mangoes, avocados) are already being felt’’.

Gatton-based Peter Deuter, a principal horticulturalist at the Queensland Government’s newly formed Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, says the most pressing issue for farmers is finding ways to adapt to rising temperatures.

“The change in climate in the past 50, 20 and 10 years shows temperatures have increased in all areas. All the climate-change scenarios say these temperatures will continue to increase. There are no scenarios which suggest that temperatures are going to fall. Here in the Lockyer Valley, we’ve had a 1.1C rise in temperatures since 1967.’’

Deuter says that so far, farmers have adapted well to the changes they’ve already seen and they could continue for the next five or 10 years in the same way. 

“Future scenarios are changing because climate change is happening more rapidly than we thought. We need to be careful and not just think that everything is fine. The rate of change is increasing.’’

Turning research from scientists into practical information for farmers, says Deuter, will be a key component in helping farmers to continue to produce fresh food.

“We don’t want to get caught with our pants down. Climate change wasn’t really an issue in horticulture until five years ago. The temperature is the major factor and there’s not a lot of disagreement about that. We need a good-quality watching brief.’’

Deuter says that overall, the contribution of horticulture to climate change is minuscule. Across Australia, he says the industry contributes about 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gases compared to 90 million for the entire agricultural sector.

Even so, back in Laidley, Linton Brimblecombe is starting to look seriously at ways that he can reduce the carbon footprint of his own property.

“I could easily justify me riding a tractor because compared to a highway full of vehicles it’s nothing. But what I wasn’t thinking about was the fertilisers and electricity and diesel I use to grow my crops. There’s an acknowledgment that humans are having an effect on the environment – we have to acknowledge that. We can’t disregard the impact we are having on the earth.’’ 

Source: www.blogs.news.com.au