As drought conditions worsen in California due to climate change, B.C. can expect challenges in food security, says a food security expert.
In a report, Brent Mansfield warned about the danger of relying on California for the bulk of our fruits and vegetables given the state’s drought conditions. Mansfield is the director of the B.C. Food Systems Network and holds an M.Sc. of Integrated Studies from UBC’s faculty of Land and Food Systems. Sixty-seven per cent of B.C.’s imported vegetables and 44% percent of its imported fruit are from the U.S., he noted.
“The current drought levels,” wrote Mansfield in his report, “are a wake-up call that B.C. needs to become more self-reliant to secure our access to healthy food for our future.”
Since 2012, California has been suffering the worst drought in its history. Last year, NASA reported the state’s snowpack level was at six per cent of normal levels. Farmers are pumping water from groundwater aquifers more quickly than the aquifers can be recharged by precipitation, in some instances causing land to subside, or sink. The Pacific Institute in Oakland calls the current conditions a drought of “extreme proportions”.
Droughts are expected to occur more regularly in California due to climate change.
“The urgency is . . . as prices go up, will we be able to [afford to] put food on the table?” said Mansfield to the Globe and Mail. He predicted by 2019, the prices of fruits and vegetables could increase by 25 to 50 per cent from 2014 prices.
The solution? Mansfield called for greater self-reliance in B.C. for fruit and vegetable production. Canada is now the largest importer of Californian strawberries by far; the area of farmland for strawberry production in B.C. has decreased by 60 per cent between 1991 and 2011.
A transition to obtaining more food locally will bring its own challenges. B.C.’s agricultural sector expects issues such as more frequent hot weather extremes and strains on water supplies given climate change.
“[The Californian drought] is a wake-up call for an issue that is facing all of us,” wrote Mansfield.
By Jenny Tan, 7 July 2016