Essay by Eric Worrall
European climate activists seem determined to turn a bad season into a famine crisis.
If We Don’t Act Now on Climate Change, Nothing Else Will Matter
Category :ENVIRONMENT
October 10, 2026Let’s face it: drought isn’t just about dry riverbeds or yellow lawns anymore. These days, it’s turning up everywhere—from our dinner plates to our faucets, even right inside our homes. In this fourth episode of our summer series, biologist Marc-André Selosse takes us on a real-life tour of how drought is already reshaping daily life across France—and, spoiler alert, the consequences won’t be stopping at stained grass.
Drought on Our Plates and in Our Supermarkets
The first cracks are not just in the fields, but in what ends up on our tables. The Federation of Trade and Distribution (which brings together most of France’s big retail players) announced on August 18th that they would now welcome “ugly” fruits and vegetables onto their shelves. That’s right: the exceptional drought across France has pushed supermarkets to be more tolerant. Fruits and veggies once considered too small or unattractive—the kind your grandma used to stew—are finding their place in the produce aisle.
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This move is partly to keep a lid on soaring prices, which come as a result of massive drops in agricultural yields. According to French Vegetable Producers, losses are running from 25% to 50%—sometimes even hitting 100% for certain crops. That means tomatoes and cucumbers are reaching record prices in store, and forget about the cost of lettuce, which is especially thirsty for water.
…Repair and Hope: Individual and Systemic Responses
Our soils teem with life: not just plants, but bacteria, fungi, earthworms, insects—even moles. In our gardens, some good farming practices still apply:
- Disturb the soil as little as possible mechanically
- Avoid pesticides
- Feed the earth with a priority for organic fertilizers
And where do you and I have the greatest influence on soil? It’s in how we consume—specifically, what we buy. According to Selosse, France’s transition to soil-regenerating farming is lagging: only around 400 farms have made the switch, so the “Au Cœur des Sols” (Heart of Soils) label remains nowhere to be seen on store shelves.
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Read more: https://www.futura-sciences.com/en/if-we-dont-act-now-on-climate-change-nothing-else-will-matter_38730/#google_vignette
Can you imagine yourselves in the shoes of European and British farmers who have to deal with this nonsense?
Not only are you desperately trying to scavenge the fertiliser, agricultural chemicals and water your farm desperately needs, you have to deal with greens campaigning for you to revert to medieval agricultural techniques – fertilising your fields with manure and other organic processes, rather than the truck loads of chemicals which are the foundation of modern agricultural yields.
And since its Europe, there is a real chance someone in authority will listen to this green babble, and try to act on it. WUWT has already reported multiple attempts by ignorant bureaucrats to sabotage European agriculture through their arrogant insistence on organic farming practices.
Ayn Rand predicted this kind of regulatory lunacy in her book “Atlas Shrugged” – the complete failure of self involved activists and bureaucrats to respond rationally to a crisis. One of the pivotal events in the book was how despite everything farmers had successfully harvested a bumper crop of wheat. But all the trains which were meant to collect the harvested wheat were diverted by a well connected government crony to an experimental soybean plantation, leading to the loss of the wheat crop.
There is a real risk people will go hungry in 2027. Oil and fertiliser price rises due to disruption from the Persian Gulf crisis, combined with the West’s immense unpreparedness for a disruption to oil supply and fertiliser thanks to decades of green lunacy and the war on refineries, has led to farmers cutting back on food production. In addition if the coming El Nino does mess up agriculture in Australia, South America and the West Coast of the USA, Europe could be in for a very hard year.
The last thing Europe needs is greens adding to the pressure on supply chains and agricultural production with their organic farming and fertiliser / pesticide obsessions.
“Organic”.
Old Indian word for “Sprays at night”.
E-Coli is “organic” plus a number of other nasties. And they’re “natural”, to boot.
Absolutely everything is made from all natural ingredients.
Vegetarian = bad hunter.
and ugly spinster..bad papoose go teepee early kemo sabe
Bonkers… IDIOTS.
Same people who do this
“Many EU-NATO countries continue to purchase oil and gas from Russia, yet those same EU-NATO countries feign outrage at President Trump making a deal with President Putin to supply diesel fuel to the world market and USA to the benefit of consumers.
In fact, the EU is buying more energy from Russia this year than ever before, which is interesting because congress has authorized President Trump to deliver up to 500% tariffs against those same EU-NATO countries for purchasing Russian energy products.
EURONEWS – Europe paid around €7.88 billion for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia’s Arctic energy project in the first nine months of 2026 despite Brussels’ efforts to phase out gas from Moscow, according to the campaign group Urgewald.
The figures, compiled by Urgewald using data from the market intelligence firm Kpler, expose just how reliant the EU remains on Russian energy, with a record of 12.18 million tonnes reaching European ports between January and September this year.
(more…)”
CTH
Never take any notice of what leftists are saying, just note what they’re actually DOING.
Ah, Selosse! Another catastrophist invited onto left-wing programs (which dominate the French public broadcasting service, supposedly meant to represent the FULL RANGE of opinions held by the people who PAY to fund these TV and radio shows). This guy is an activist. He is opposed to ploughing… And to plant protection products. Yet the precise, targeted use of the latter makes it possible to avoid ploughing, so he should be happy. Not to mention that the products used today, in addition to being subjected to studies conducted over many years on substantial cohorts, are far less dangerous under normal conditions of use than the products we used in the past… And which are no longer used precisely because their harmfulness has been clearly demonstrated.
Anyone who dares to so much as qualify the alarmist claims made by these so-called “experts” gets called every name under the sun. What, modern agriculture feeds billions of people, while organic farming and permaculture don’t work on such vast areas of land?… What are we supposed to do?… Professor Malthus might have an idea. Besides, the degrowth advocates make no secret of it; you only have to read between the lines to glimpse the darkness lurking within them. When people start going hungry, they’ll take to the streets. I don’t know what might come of that, probably nothing good. But that’s generally when uprisings break out. Sri Lanka recently provides a good example.
Poor my country and my fellow countrymen.
To conclude: the story of a horrific experience I had with glyphosate… A gardener showed up (we renamed him Attila after his intervention) and liberally sprayed my mother’s magnificent raspberry bushes with this herbicide. The real problem wasn’t so much the herbicide as the IDIOT who mistook raspberry bushes for weeds… We made it clear to his boss that this guy would never set foot in our garden again… Simple as that. The raspberry bushes grew back, and the jam was delicious.
Modelled after the totally unbiased BBC, and vice versa.
and NPR- which can’t more than 15 seconds without trashing Trump and whining about the f****** climate- along with misc. lefty causes
NPR who?
National Propaganda Radio- now having to grub for its sustenance, like the rest of us.
How’s the resistance to the lefty lunacy going? Le Pen?
I wouldn’t count on it. It’s the right-wing party with the best chance of being elected compared to the others, so I’ll vote for the RN (Marine Le Pen’s party) in 2027, but there’s no chance whatsoever that it will change anything fundamental about our policies. Not even when it comes to immigration. It will be more a matter of limiting the damage that left-wing parties would cause if they came to power. But then again, the RN is pro-EU to the core. France and the Netherlands rejected subordination to the European Constitution in a 2005 referendum, only for it to be quietly imposed through the back door in 2007 (what is known as a denial of democracy, an act of extreme gravity with far-reaching consequences). Unless France leaves the EU, which would be impossible unless a sovereigntist candidate is elected, little or nothing will change. In fact, in almost every respect, if the RN wins in 2027, and assuming (rather boldly) that the Constitutional Council doesn’t veto every bill put forward by a right-wing government, French policy would look like Macron 2.0, but with more limited immigration, which would be the main reason for my vote.
Countries have borders for a reason!
I’m genuinely saddened by the image these high school blockades, riots and acts of vandalism project of France internationally. And yet that image is not misleading; to some extent, this is what my country has become. This is the darkness into which it continues to sink day after day. I’m afraid things will get even worse; to be honest, I’m afraid of a civil war breaking out in the coming months. If Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left comes to power, there will be “celebratory” riots; if the right wins, there will be protest riots (¡No pasarán!, etc.).
The current riots are dress rehearsals for what’s being prepared for the coming months. I hope I’m wrong.
Sovereigntism is practically seen as Nazism by many people in France. Yet wanting to determine one’s own destiny is only natural for individuals who are neither bees nor ants, genetically programmed to obey the dictates of a hive mind. Who would accept having their behaviour dictated by a foreigner who, after inviting himself into their home, told them not to eat this, not to put their feet on the chair, not to listen to certain kinds of music, or to watch this film rather than that one? … The answer: pro-EU supporters.
One last thing: a symbolic vote against female genital mutilation was held at Saint-Denis town hall. The LFI mayor (Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party), Mr Bally Bagayoko, abstained. This means that even on a symbolic level, he can’t bring himself to say that he opposes the genital mutilation of women and little girls. It should be noted that this abhorrent practice is carried out clandestinely in France. After all that, Mr Bagayoko has the nerve to wear a pink ribbon in his lapel in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
I FEEL LIKE THROWING UP.
What’s the high school kids rebelling against?
“It will be more a matter of limiting the damage that left-wing parties would cause if they came to power.”
So, in other words, they don’t really come to power. l’État profond!
High school students are protesting against the lack of teachers (obviously), the lack of resources (terrible heating, no air conditioning), the grueling schedules (more debatable; I also had 10-hour school days with a one-hour lunch break, and I survived just fine, but the question of whether you can learn effectively under such conditions is an interesting one. It seems to me that the timetables are genuinely poorly designed), and also against the ban on mobile phones on school premises (here, we are obviously dealing with the height of absurdity, which leads me to think that a good proportion of these kids simply want to do absolutely nothing).
Then, well-prepared vandals (wearing balaclavas and carrying baseball bats and cans of gasoline to set things on fire) join the protests, drag the high school students into their rampages, frighten many others, beat up school supervisors, assault teachers and attack police officers. Most of the students’ demands are not unreasonable, but if their goal is to learn under good conditions, why don’t they demonstrate on a day when there is no school? The prefecture would have absolutely no problem granting them a permit to demonstrate for three hours on a Saturday afternoon… But it’s more fun when you can protest AND be on holiday, isn’t it!
“In other words, they don’t actually gain access to power. The deep state!” ==> You mean that if the right comes to power, it will be prevented from implementing its agenda by the bureaucratic machinery? That would indeed be the case.
Yes, I misread the last part that you correctly interpreted. Perhaps if France didn’t spend so much on the climate it would have more for better schools.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/10/new-study-finds-international-communists-leftists-leading-french/
New Study Finds International Communists and Radical Leftists Are Leading French “Student” Protests – Only 1 in 3 Groups Are Students or Youth Groups
Thank you, I’ll look into it! If that turns out to be true, I won’t be surprised at all.
Isn’t it almost a rite of passage in France, for the young to put on street protests? More so than most nations.
Sure, open the borders, grub in the dirt for subsistence, and drive golf carts. Sounds like a plan.
So, Selosse is saying, “Let them eat kale.”
I imagine there’s still a Guillotine or two kicking around in museums.
Who needs Madam Guillotine when you have illegals arriving daily
Wait a minute. In what other countries adjacent to France are drought conditions prevailing? Belgium? The Netherlands? Spain? Germany? the UK? Name one and you’ll find that it’s either not a problem at all or a short term one. Besides if the issue of drought were so widespread, why does even the usually alarmist UN report that global agricultural output and food production has been consistently rising for decades now? So here we have just another example of leftist alarmism with only short-term facts supporting it.
I’m not talking about current food conditions, I was pointing out there seems to be a conjunction of adverse conditions:
If Governments listen to ignorant greens instead of focusing on real problems we could be in for a rough year.
El Niño actually has relatively smaller effects, if any at all, on Europe. It’s far more relevant to the Americas, north and south; Australia and the SE Asian island nations; also South Africa and Kenya.
As for ‘ignorance’, the ignorance is understanding the time it takes to ‘go organic’. You can’t just suddenly make compost overnight – it takes 3 – 12 months depending on climate. So starting to make compost now is preparation for the 2027/28 growing season, not next year’s.
As for yields, those that practice organic production as experts have quite phenomenal yields (150 tonnes/ha), but scaling them up is an ongoing challenge, although some in the USA have found ways to scale up effectively.
My understanding is that more CO2 available for the plants mean less water loss. Common sense would tell you that if you have less water available you would naturally want more CO2. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators.
I’m a bit surprised that no one has mentioned Sri Lanka and what happened there when they went “organic”.
(Not good)
I should have read all the way down before sticking my oar in.
Luckily I did 😉
“Organic” farming is far more labor-intensive and far less efficient. It would INCREASE water usage. (And not just for the crops. Farm workers need to hydrate too.) The last thing you want in a drought.
My experience is that you use far less water, although in droughts, there’s a minimum about of water required for plants to survive/thrive. The rule of thumb for organic growing is that you water straight after sowing/transplanting, then water in the days before harvest, but other than that, you never water unless the plants show signs of stress.
Whatever job you are in, you need to hydrate…..
Doesn’t work…here in the Midwest 1-2 in rain a week is cosidered really primo. You plant, according to you, and water once? Then some more just before harvest? Good luck with that.
Sari Lanka tried it. The head honcho managed to get out of the palace before he was lynched.
“ fertilising your fields with manure and other organic processes,”
I thought they were outlawing livestock because of methane conditions that will end all life on earth.
Details, details, mere details.
Perhaps the return of outhouses will solve the “water shortage crisis” as well.
And washboards to wash your clothes- uses much less than a modern clothes washer. /s
If they get rid of livestock, the source of manure, then an outhouse wouldn’t help.
They’d need to rotate “outfields”.
“Kid’s, this week do your business in the north 40. Next week we’ll switch to the south 40.
And don’t forget to eat more ruffage!” 😎
Controlled trials using cow manure vs humanure have been carried out the past few years. Human manure is incredibly good at increasing vegetable yields….humanure created by using an outdoor compost toilet.
I’ve been hearing this for the last 50 years.
We’re still here, the Earth’s still here, and, sadly, the climate worriers are still here.
We’ll have to wait until they die off- as they’ll never wake up to reality.
They could reimmigrate their non-indigineous immigrés and save water.
Right, and do it with conviction, so they won’t want to return, unless invited, if they could prove worth to another nation.
Two weeks ago I had some locust invading my garden and causing substancial damage. I resorted to poison, which I did by applying mosquito spray on the individual beasts I discovered. Partly disabled my foot did the rest on those fuckers by squashing them.
Cutting down the grass (with a 2 stroke lawn mower) thus depriving them of their cover solved the problem mainly to the birds and praying mantisses (sneaky as I am I left a few patches where I know that they lurk).
Well you can go partly organic but it is a constant uphill battle, fine for a small patch but unworkable on a large scale (as for that tiny bit of work I had to do was totally unproductive and a total waste of my time…from my perspective).
So much from my “hobby farm”, that if I wanted it to feed me I had already starved to death years ago and would keep to do so for the forseable future.
Food production going 100% organic is an utter pipedream..fine for a niche, sadly catastrophical on a large scale. period.
Farmers nearby my woods are expanding the no-till method supposedly for soil conservation. It makes sense to me but, I don’t have the knowledge base to make a positive or negative determination.
Sounds like a good question for AI. I’d bet it’s probably fine in some areas with the right type of soil- not so much in other areas. Just guessing.
At a water event for Continuing Education Credits to maintain my Ohio EPA certifications, I met a man who had worked with Toledo’s utilities. (I think he had a Ph.D.)
One of the presentations was about western Lake Eire have problems with algae blooms, including blue-green algae and the problems they were causing cities that drew their water from Lake Eire.
One thing in general for any surface water plant involves protecting the watershed. One thing that is done is to encourage no-till farming.
He had advised Toledo NOT to encourage no-till farming for the river that runs into Lake Eire at Toledo. He wasn’t against no-till farming in general but it was not the answer for Toledo.
The reason he gave was, that while no-till helps prevent silting from heavy rain runoff from tilled ground, it increases the nutrients from fertilizers (including organic) that run off in a heavy rain. Lake Eire didn’t need more nutrients in dealing with algae blooms.
With no-till, the fertilizer only soaks into about to top 3 inches of the soil.
With tilling, it’s driven into about the top 6 inches of the soil.
PS Lake Eire is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, particularly in it’s western part.
Thanks for info.
I heard somewhere that African men are very keen on no-till. The reason is they are the ones doing the tilling, while women do the planting.
Years ago I read that over 8-10 years yields in no-till plots decreased.
Check Charles Dowding data – he has done rigorous trials for 10+ years now and he gets 10%+ annual yield increases for no till vs digging in compost each November.
I’ve been doing no-dig on my allotment for the last three years. It works quite well, saves digging and I get many fewer weeds which I can deal with by hoeing. Yields have been quite good.
It does need a regular supply of compost which I get partly from composting the waste from the allotment and I am lucky to have a supply of horse manure compost nearby.
It’s ok for relatively small scale horticulture, but I can’t see large scale farming adopting it as the supply of manure and compost is limited, and although minimum tillage has become quite popular it does need inputs of fertiliser, herbicides and fungicides to give the crop yields needed to feed the expanding world population.
If you would like to know more about no-dig, look up some of Charles Dowding’s YouTube podcasts.
From AI-
Principles of No-Till GardeningNo-till gardening, as promoted by Charles Dowding, involves minimizing soil disturbance and allowing natural soil life to thrive. Instead of digging or tilling, gardeners add organic matter such as compost, leaf mold, or straw on top of the soil, mimicking natural processes like a forest floor where leaves and woody debris decompose on the surface https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.hTZAD5S1jkVhZa7qUKAYDQ
charlesdowding.co.uk
+1
. This approach supports fungal networks, bacteria, and soil organisms, which improve soil structure, drainage, and nutrient availability https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.PYg1TcsqCxIfSq0cdKdyUg
northerngardener.org
.
Benefits
So is it the ‘mulch’ effect with a vege patch that’s not feasible/applicable to broad acre farming although you do get economic yield improvements with say heavy clay soils and cheap gypsum application and obviously fertiliser replenishment.
I’ve done no-till growing of vegetables for a decade and small scale it works both in terms of yields/sqm and in terms of plant health and resilience to drought. It’s definitely environmentally sound on a small scale, but how you create enough fertility for field scale application of ‘compost’/’manure’ is the big question. You need 250 cubic metres/hectare of compost/manure to retain fertility. Some argue to grow a crop which will be chopped and left to decompose in situ as the major crop is sown and grown. That’s the big proving ground right now for no-till: how to scale up and provide continuous fertility for the soil.
See above and the obvious no till is hydroponics but horses for courses
Most farmers on the Great Plains have gone to low-till, not no-till. I read an article that compared it stirring your compost pile. Leaving the remains of harvest just laying on top does nothing to aerate the soil or promote decay. I never see plowing anymore. A disk harrow before planting to level everything and off to the races.
Well, American agriculture will do fine- with other nations’ agriculture dropping, should be good times for American farmers.
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Here’s and idea that might work: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/almerias-sea-of-greenhouses-150070.
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And hand over the expensive French defense systems like nuclear weapons, navy, and airforce to deserving countries like Ukraine, Finland, and the Baltic states.
The clouds are still in the sky, they continue to drop rain where they happen to be and plenty reaches the ground.
Humans need water personally and for getting both animal and plant food.
More people, more need for more water.
Build more dams. Recycle water already used.