Essay by Eric Worrall
There is a more plausible explanation for what went wrong.
‘It’s not beautiful, but you can still eat it’: climate crisis leads to more wonky vegetables in Netherlands
Crowdfunding scheme salvages ‘imperfect’ fruit and veg following the country’s wettest autumn, winter and spring on record
Senay Boztas in AmsterdamSun 30 Jun 2024 03.00 AEST
When 31-year-old Dutch farmer Bastiaan Blok dug up his latest crop, the weather had taken a disastrous toll. His onions – 117,000 kilos of them – were the size of shallots.
“We had a very wet spring and a dry, warm summer, so the plants made very small roots,” said Blok, who farms 90 hectares in Swifterbant, in the reclaimed province of Flevoland. “Half of them were less than 40mm and normally at this size they aren’t even processed. We would have probably sold them for very little for biomass, or maybe to Poland for onion oil. It’s either far too wet and cold, or far too warm and dry, and there’s no normal growing period in between.”
Blok is one of a number of farmers in Europe’s largest agricultural exporterlinking the climate crisis to ever more “imperfect” fruit and vegetables, rejected by a food system based on standardisation and cosmetic appearance.
…
The wettest autumn, winter and spring on record have threatened the spinach and potato crops, leading to parliamentary questions and warnings from farming union LTO. Evelien Drenth, LTO agriculture specialist, said 61% of Dutch farmers report lost yields due to extreme weather, diseases are up and sowing is late or sometimes missed. “Consumers and supermarkets need to get used to empty shelves sometimes for short-season crops like spinach … and also irregular-sized Brussels sprouts and broccoli,” she added.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/29/its-not-beautiful-but-you-can-still-eat-it-climate-change-leads-to-more-wonky-vegetables-in-netherlands
I think the Guardian is a little premature calling the problem a climate problem. Unusually wet Spring Time weather happens from time to time. While this year was unusual, some sources suggest the record is still held by the Spring of 1983.
One interesting source of carrot deformation which might explain this year’s wonky vegetables is excessive soil nitrate. According to multiple gardening sites I looked at, exposure to high nitrate levels can cause carrot deformation.
Excessive rain may have complicated the issue. Nitrate is highly mobile, it is easily transported by water. Even if the farmer with the carrot field was applying the correct nitrate levels, their fields could have been affected by runoff from adjacent farms where much higher nitrate levels were applied to different crops. Or maybe some farmers made a mistake, and applied extra nitrate because they were worried the rain had washed the fertiliser out of their field.
There are plenty of crops which require far more nitrates than carrots, which could have been the source of runoff contamination. Cannabis is cultivated in the Netherlands, and Cannabis needs lots of nitrogen. Some fast growing flowering plants also love nitrates, and the Netherlands is a big supplier of decorative flowers. Even some fruit trees love nitrogen fertiliser – my Citrus trees put on an extra foot of growth every time I pour a bucket of leftover cleaning ammonia solution on them, after I mop the pet area.
To me accidental over-fertilisation presents a far more plausible explanation for the wonky carrots, than claiming “climate change” deformed the crops.
If accidental over fertilisation was responsible for a few deformed carrots, farmers already have adequate incentive to get the balance right – no need for bureaucrats to get involved.
WUWT has long defended the right of farmers in the Netherlands to use adequate agricultural chemicals, and will continue to do so. Our view is farmers understand farming better than bureaucrats – just look at the food shortages communist nations habitually experience, if you want proof that bureaucrats make poor farmers.
Some good news on the European War on Agriculture, there has finally been some substantial pushback at the political level. In the Netherlands farmers have really caught a break – the new right wing Geert Wilders government has promised to protect Dutch people from the EU climate crazies.
As for this year’s harvest, the deformed carrots are entirely edible – I’ve grown odd looking carrots, they look just the same diced up in the stew as normal carrots.
In an age where many people in Europe are struggling with their energy bills, I’m surprised farmers in Europe have any difficulties selling edible crops, no matter how weird they look.
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Claim: Climate Change is Causing “Wonky” Vegetables in Europe
_____________________________________________________
The actual head line when you follow the link to the Guardian is:
‘It’s not beautiful, but you can still eat it’: climate crisis leads to more wonky vegetables in Netherlands
Please note that it’s no longer “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” it has been changed to THE CLIMATE CRISIS
In Wokeachusetts, it’s officially The Climate Emergency. Every state agency uses the term. The Governor has ordered a full court press- all hands on deck- every state worker must push the cause. It’s the new established religion, unconstitutionally of course.
I did not know that. So the cartoon got it right, Snowball was just changing it to KLIMT EMR— when he fell off the ladder.
Actually it’s not the Climate Crisis, its the Crisis over the Climate and the proposed solutions to lower CO2 emissions.
Plants LOVE CO2
Plants consume CO2
Plants cannot increase ambient CO2 levels on their own
They need Us to do it for them
Plants hear and understand our call to cause a CO2 famine effectively stressing plants
Plants don’t like this, plants don’t want this so…
Plants are beginning to grow arms and legs so they can take over society and keep CO2 production levels up
Proof???
Who is in the White House in the top seat???
Climate Change is Causing “Wonky” Vegetables
Does that mean “Climate Change” caused Joe Biden ?
I would still like to know why the voters in Delaware kept sending him back to the senate time after time.
Truly remarkable! Fossil fuel burning causes everything bad!!
A supermarket chain in the UK has been marketing wobbly veg for a number of years.
It has everything to do with the first bite and the first bite is with the eye…
I dunno- my wife’s been buying carrots this year that are the largest I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know they could grow that big. Must be due to CO2 fertilization!
A bigger carrot fr your buck.
Carrots grown for commercial processing (frozen packages of sliced and diced) are quite large, perhaps 2 to 3 pounds or more.
More carrot, less stick.
Here in the UK in the 70s and 80s, we had a programme called “That’s Life” which every week feature oddly shaped (usually rude) vegetables. Nobody asked why – we just laughed.
Farmers would bring in funky or oversize veggies to the newsroom fifty years ago, and as the summer intern the desk would give me the assignment to try to make a story to go along with the photos. Was the 70s so no global warming narrative. That would have given me another graph or two….that photo above would have been far too phallic for publication those days!
Remember the 70s were actually Global Cooling
The coming Ice Age
The “wonky” vegetables are those who believe this nonsense.
Another day, yet another wonky climate change claim…is there anything the Magic Molecule cannot do?
According to the British media, co2 cannot cause anything good to happen. The default reason for everything bad is co2. I presume co2 is the reason for the declining sales of British newspapers. It couldn’t possibly be ridiculous stories like climate change causing wonky vegetables.
Yes of course, silly me.
BAN BAKING SODA!!!!!
I have read a few articles on EU food regulations. They have all sorts of restrictions — bananas can’t be too curved or too small, etc. Typical nanny state meddling. If people won’t buy food, sellers will drop the price or quit offering them, no burrocrata necessary.
At any rate, rant aside, that may be where the concern of wonky shapes comes from.
The site “oddstuffmagazine” has new photos daily called Funny Pictures. There are frequent postings of vegetables and fruits with odd shapes. If one has a reckless imagination these often have sexual connotations. No “Climate Change” required.
Besides, having gardened for years, I’ve seen many such.
It’s claimed that when J. Trudeau was strutting his blackface Jamaican persona, he used to place a cucumber in his undies.
I read that pictures are available, but I’ve never been tempted to view them.
Eeeeeuuuuwwwww!!
Was my tomato deformed by climate change or did I fertilize with Viagra?
Turn it over and that appendage is a perfect nose. Almost Hitchcockian in proportions
With all this global warming, why is it still too cold to plant tomatoes outside in March?
I’ve been waiting 50 years now, and it still doesn’t work.
So the weather affects vegetables. As I have grown them for decades I can agree. It has always been so.
“It’s either far too wet and cold, or far too warm and dry, and there’s no normal growing period in between.”
Reminds me of 3 most come gripes heard at the farmer’s co-op.
Never met a farmer who was happy with the weather.
As far as the UK goes, I wonder how much of the flooding of fields and lingering sogginess is due to the failure of those responsible for drainage. The Environment Agency has gone completely eco-mental and will put all sorts of obstacles in the way of doing drainage work. I pay a drainage board and some of their communications now has a lot of eco-bollocks in them but not as bad as the EA.
There’s no dietary problem with ‘wonky vegetables’. You just turn one wonky carrot/parsnip into three pieces of carrot/parsnip, peel each one individually, then cook them the same way you’d cook a perfectly shaped one.
Humans need to reflect on the fact that food is about nutrition, it’s not a Miss World in bikinis competition.
My experience of growing vegetables is that minor defects in shape do not affect your diet.
Wonky vegetables are normal, even if the overall growing conditions are perfect, there’s going to be a certain percentage of crops that react to an outside influence (can be as simple as a rock in the soil) and grow “strangely”. Anyone who grows their own or grew up on a farm knows this. Perhaps they’ve had a higher rate of strangely formed vegetables due to high rain, incorrect nutritional levels and such, but until I see some hard statistics to prove it, my suspicion is that it’s just another thing for climate alarmists to try to leverage into some alarm.
City folk don’t seem to realize how often wonky shaped vegetables occur because as far as they know, vegetables grow in bins at the supermarket. Grocery stores tend to only buy the vegetables that are “correctly” shaped. This has been going on for so long that most commercial growers don’t even try to sell the odd shaped ones to grocery stores, they end up being sold to companies that are going to use them “in” things (soups, sauces, juices etc), for animal feed, or just composted into fertilizer.
That doesn’t mean oddly shaped vegetables are rare, just that they’re not sold in markets because consumers (city folk) have gotten so used to their produce being “correctly” shaped that they won’t buy the oddballs, even though there’s not a thing wrong with them and they taste just fine.
I actually saw a show about this on one of the streaming services a while back…maybe food network? Anyway, it was about some people who were trying to buck the trend to cut down on food waste. They were working on convincing stores to sell the oddball veggies (perhaps at reduced prices) and, simultaneously convince the consumers that they’re perfectly acceptable to eat.
I wonder how that effort’s going?
ROFL
Mis-shapen carrots result from hard things in the soil such as pebbles or soil not tilled thoroughly thus has hard clumps or soil not kept moist so it dries hard.
And perhaps from a small pocket of air in the soil which the carrot exploits to start a forked off leg.
Eco-flappers need to practice gardening.