It’s always worse than we thought. This article from the The UK Independent paints a stark gloomy picture of food crops adapting to Climate Change about one step below the Day of the Triffids.
Popular food crops including maize and beans respond to extreme conditions by releasing dangerous chemicals
Climate change threatens to poison the food supply of some of the world’s poorest people as crops respond to rising temperatures by pumping out dangerous chemicals.
When drought strikes, plants like maize, beans and cassava response by flooding themselves with nitrates and hydrogen cyanide – substances that can be fatal to livestock and humans alike.
Further problems arise from the spread of toxin-producing fungal infections under warmer conditions, which are already responsible for thousands of liver cancer cases in Africa every year.
And of course “if temperatures rise” as well as other things.
While these issues are a particular concern in developing nations with hotter climates, if temperatures rise as scientists predict, they will probably begin to take their toll further north as well.
Her interest in the problem was first roused when reports emerged from Ethiopia of impoverished farmers and their animals dying in mysterious circumstances.
The country was in the grip of a drought, but this did not explain the neurological problems that were afflicting these people, including blindness, difficult movements and ultimately death.
Scientists actually identified the real problem.
Researchers working in the area realised the drought had damaged the farmers’ crops, forcing people to consume wild plants they found by the roadside.
But that didn’t stop others from worrying about hypotheticals.
Unfortunately, the stress of drought had also triggered a defence mechanism inside these plants, flooding them with hydrogen cyanide.
Professor McGlade collected all the available information on this topic into a report for the UN back in 2016, in which she and a team of scientists attempted to identify emerging environmental problems.
“What I was trying to do was raise issues long before they become embedded as problems – raising the red flag,” she said.
“Fast-forward to today and we are talking about climate change – here is something that is really going to challenge food safety, because the very plants we are relying on are themselves adapting to climate change.
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. . . one step below the Day of the Triffids.
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I didn’t think anything could be one step below the Day of the Triffids. After reading this article, I agree with CTM.
Jim
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yUH1VxwN7m0
What about the tomatoes?
Great song: “I know I’m going to miss her; a tomato ate my sister.”
Jim
The rate of deaths by suicide is off the charts, depressing crap like this has got to be a factor. In a recent visit to the doctors office the receptionist, nurse and doctor asked if I was feeling depressed along with other questions to pry into my self esteem.
There needs to be a list to keep track of those causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in their pursuit of power and money or just trying to be accepted by the ‘socialist mob’.
Mostly, the MSM needs to be taken to task for: ‘If it bleeds it leads, and if it isn’t bleeding make it so.
‘flooding themselves with nitrates and hydrogen cyanide – substances that can be fatal to livestock and humans alike’
Perhaps she can provide us with the names of some of the people killed by cyanide in their corn flakes.
Toxicity is in the dose. Cyanide is rather common in foods humans consume. ‘Can be fatal’ is a head fake. Sure, in the right dose. But that has nothing to do with corn.
Look, clisci folk, you are forgetting your own basics. The tropics DO NOT WARM in the processs! Remember that. They stay the same except for a couple of degrees short term natural variation. It is boring. I’ve spent a good deal of time there. The temperature in Lagos was a couple of degrees either side of 29C in the 1960s, the same again when I went in 1997 and, apparently, the same now (world was cold in the 1960s (Ice-Age cometh! and hot in 1997 (end of world thermageddon), but Lagos, Nigeria stayed the same). It stayed the same when warming stopped for two decades, too.
Poor folk there will have no clinate change, okay. So their cassava tasted like cyanide both times I was there, although when made into french fries, which are delicious, I couldnt detect the cyanide on my tongue and certainly not on my stomach. My grandfather and my sister used to eat their apple cores and also, after eating a peach, cracked the pit and ate the nut inside, holding forth on how a bit of cyanide was good for you.
When I was a kid my parents always had a couple of milk cows and we used the raw milk. When it had an off taste we always said that the cows had been eating ragweed.
The goal of this is to put the “facts” as far away from where anyone typically arguing or reviewing could go and place it into the poorest of the poor communities where data is non-existent hence the conclusions can never be falsified.
Oh noes, if we don’t shape up pronto, the plants could turn into ones that feed only on human flesh and blood. Then we’ll be sorry! Gaia’s revenge indeed.
Rising temperatures in an actual greenhouse are much higher than what any climate change will achieve. Farmers use greenhouses to improve yields and grow crops that otherwise wouldn’t survive. If a little rise in temperatures produce toxics then greenhouse crops must be full of them according to these.
Secondly when it comes to drought, crops are watered daily anyway whether it rains or not in most cases. Farmers generally have never relied on only rainfall to water their crops for centuries.
The warmest regions around especially the Tropics hardly have any change in temperatures, so the general concern is irrelevant because it is far more to do with techniques and practices then relying on just the weather. Unless we all go back to medieval farming or before this concern is only scare mongering as usual when anything is blamed on the religion climate change.
Hi Matt G, – Crops are not watered daily; maybe you are thinking of plant nurseries as being set up for daily watering. For centuries farming has been rain-fed agriculture & some fortunate land holdings have had irrigation access. The technology of motorized pumps & greenhouse growing have not been widespread for hundreds of years. I assume your 2nd paragraph was written quickly & posted without review.
The second paragraph does indeed need correcting and/or adding more detail because farmers do mainly use rainfall for watering crops where there is normally plenty.
They use irrigation in times and places in which rainwater is not enough. Irrigation has been a central feature of agriculture for over 5,000 years and is the product of many cultures.
“The Indus Valley Civilization developed sophisticated irrigation and water-storage systems, including artificial reservoirs at Girnar dated to 3000 BCE, and an early canal irrigation system from c. 2600 BCE. Large-scale agriculture was practiced, with an extensive network of canals used for the purpose of irrigation”
Different farming watering techniques vary from daily to longer periods depending on the type of irrigation. Some of the oldest ways would have been simply using labour for watering crops with buckets or equivalent during desperate times.
There are several methods of irrigation.
Surface irrigation is the oldest form of irrigation and has been in use for thousands of years. Micro-irrigation, drip irrigation, sprinkler irrigation and subirrigation are later forms with the most recent still been in use for many years.
“And of course “if temperatures rise” as well as other things.”
Well, at least they said “if”.
So a plant that’s grown from the Canadian border down into central and southern America, is all of a sudden going to turn toxic because the atmosphere warms up another degree or so?
Anyway, from the limited description above, it sounds more like aflotoxin.
So, if you are in South Carolina, the food in North Carolina is poisonous. Of course if you live in Georgia, the food in South Carolina is poisonous.
Oops, said that backwards.
Or maybe it doesn’t matter. We are all going to die.
But our peaches are better.
The UK Independent. Toxic fish-‘n-chip wrapper … small print at bottom of page 4 says:
“Caution: Health authorities warn this product is not suitable for use as a toilet paper.”
It was a sad day when the EU told British fush-n-chup shops that their fish-n-chips could not be sold on used news paper sheets.
Talking of films, reminds me of the film called “The Happening”.
Bruce Ames and colleagues demonstrated in 1990 that most (99.99%) pesticides ingested were of plant origin, so that plants contain toxic compounds is well know. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54831/
But, again, they are NOT toxic. Toxicity depends on the dose. Cyanide in corn is NOT toxic.
You could, theoretically, process corn to extract cyanide and concentrate it so that it would be toxic. The Independent is using the ignorance of this to scare people.
OK, agreed. “…(potentially) toxic compounds is well know(n).”
Nothing new with “droughts in Ethiopia”:
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=A8qTXOaIDr2WjgassKLYBA&q=emperor+of+Ethiopia+Haile+Selassie+deposed+drought&oq=emperor+of+Ethiopia+Haile+Selassie+deposed+drought&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.