Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: Mainstays Vulnerable to Climate Change

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to Noon Wednesday, I’m Marisa Wojcik, multimedia journalist with Here & Now on PBS Wisconsin. So staples in Wisconsin’s food production are seeing harsher conditions from mother nature, and they’re taking a bigger hit because of it. On the Table is a new six-part series from Wisconsin Public Radio, and it explores how a change in our climate is impacting some of Wisconsin’s most iconic foods, and their production from dairy to beer, cranberries to wild rice, walleye and even potatoes. So Mary Kate McCoy, the series author joins me. Thanks so much for being here.

Mary Kate McCoy:

Thanks so much for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

So how much is the changing climate impacting Wisconsin’s harvest and food productions?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, I mean, it’s affecting everything kind of across the board, maybe to varying degrees, and it’s affecting each of these foods kind of in unique ways. But pretty much nothing is safe from changing climate, and it’s impacting production and how easy, and I guess I should say how difficult it is to kind of manage some of these crops. Things are becoming more expensive. The list kind of goes on and on.

Marisa Wojcik:

And you really show in your series a wide range of food products. Is that, is it good that Wisconsin has such diversity in what it grows because then we can adapt better?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. You know, in some ways yes and in some ways no. I mean, climate change is not going to be bad, like across the board for example, so something like a longer growing season, there are crops that will benefit from that. I think they say kind of the row crops, or even potatoes for example, a longer growing season could be good for them. That introduces a lot of other questions of when and how much rain falls and things like that, that’s kind of all part of the equation and important, but then also you know, like you said, we’re such a diverse state, and along with all that corn that we grow, we also grow cranberries, and wild rice grows here as well, and those crops are the crops that are going to be the most vulnerable to a changing climate, because both cranberries and wild rice, they’re native crops so they have adapted kind of alongside Wisconsin’s climate, and as that’s changing and as that’s getting warmer, it’s more difficult for those crops to kind of adapt. You know, researchers and people talk a lot about a kind of northward march of species, and that it’s just much more complicated than that, right? Like in the case of cranberries, for example, you can’t just pick up a cranberry farm and move it north. One, they’re expensive operations, like cranberry’s a perennial crop, it takes about three years before you’re going to get any fruit out of it, but then you also run into very different soils, and you run into forest, and you know, forests are really great for sequestering carbon and climate and whatnot, so it’s a difficult question to answer, but it’s going to affect everything a little bit differently.

Marisa Wojcik:

And you referred to Wisconsin as being on the southern edge of growing for a lot of these crops. What does that mean?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, so I mean it means mostly that, so the wild rice for example, or the northern variety, which is a variety that people eat, it grows in kind of the northern third of Wisconsin, and you don’t really find it south of that. Like, the conditions aren’t right for it, right? It’s a cold, hearty crop that is adapted to Wisconsin’s really kind of harsh winters. It needs those temperatures. So if, you know, for example in 100 years, it’s too warm to support that crop, or it’s too wet here, it’s you know, maybe it’ll work in Canada, maybe it won’t, but it doesn’t really help the people who harvest it here.

Marisa Wojcik:

There is some pieces of data that are repeated throughout your stories. One is by 2050, scientists expect the state to warm by an additional two to eight degrees Fahrenheit. Why in particular is warming such an issue for a lot of these foods and crops that you are highlighting in the series?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, so I think just temperature on its own can be difficult for some of these crops, and foods, I should say. I think dairy is a perfect example, cheese. You know, cows like it cold. Their optimal temperature is–

Marisa Wojcik:

Contrary to the commercial, happy cows come from California? No, they like the winter.

Mary Kate McCoy:

They like the winter, they do best in it, and they produce more milk, and they produce milk that’s higher in fat and protein, which makes really good cheese. And so as it gets warmer and as more extended heatwaves happen in Wisconsin, farmers may see less milk coming from their cows.

Marisa Wojcik:

And in addition to warming, you’re highlighting that we’re seeing things becoming wetter and that’s also causing an issue, how so?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Exactly, so kind of going off of that, you know, warm air holds more moisture, right? So that’s part of the reason why we’re seeing rain. You know, 2019 was the wettest year on record in Wisconsin, and that’s capping off the wettest decade that Wisconsin has seen. And you know, too much rain isn’t good for anything. Like, it affects all of these foods that I talked about. In the case of cheese, the majority of corn in Wisconsin is grown to feed cattle, and for ethanol and other reasons, and you know, these intense rains. Like the farmers I talked to said, the ground is just like kind of always saturated, there are no dry offs in-between, and it makes it really difficult to plan and manage, and to grow these crops efficiently, and you know, economically. In the case of like wild rice for example, too much moisture is not good on several levels. There’s, if we get a lot of spring rain for example, when it’s in its floating leaf stage its roots are so shallow an intense rain can just uproot them very very easily, but then just like more humid conditions, and more precipitation in general, the researchers and tribes are worried about brown spot disease. So again, these plants can’t just dry off, and a brown spot disease can wipe out an entire harvest of wild rice really quickly.

Marisa Wojcik:

So even if these crops have adapted to Wisconsin’s climate conditions over a long period of time these other changing climate conditions are happening too rapidly for them to be able to make any sort of adjustment.

Mary Kate McCoy:

Exactly, exactly.

Marisa Wojcik:

Particularly, I thought it was interesting that, there was a trend between farms, and beer production, where the size of the production and the scale, and the economies and consolidation all play into whether or not they are able to afford these kind of high-capital solutions, or sustainable solutions for some of these things like, if a farm wanted a digester to take the methane to produce energy for electricity or if a brewery wanted to purchase a large solar-powered battery. How does that all factor in, and are you more efficient if you’re just smaller inherently?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think that’s a question that kind of sees a lot of debate in the sustainability community. You know, in the case of digesters, well, I should say for all of it, it really just kind of comes down to efficiencies, right? How much can you get out of the smallest amount of time and space and whatnot. So the digesters that I talked about in the cheese story, the farm that I visited, they have about 2200 cows, and if they have less than that, it just doesn’t make economic sense to do it, right? ‘Cause electricity is very cheap in Wisconsin. So these machines, they take a lot of capital, and a lot of kind, they’re a little finicky, right? You have to be able to afford to be able to manage them, and to upgrade in the first place, and then it has to equal out to be like less than what electricity is, and that’s a hard bar to reach in Wisconsin, ’cause electricity is so cheap. The farm that I talked to, it didn’t make sense for them to do it unless they could find a second or third way to add value to it. So they use kind of the liquid byproduct as on their fields for fertilizer, and then they also, the solid byproduct from these digesters they use as bedding for their cows. In the case of beer I think it’s really prominent. They’re running these businesses, and craft breweries, for example, the smaller scale ones, the profit margins are really small. It’s a volume business, you have to produce a lot to make a profit, and I think where it’s really illustrated how much these efficiencies matter is in water use. So like large breweries, macro breweries, they can produce beer on a three-to-one ratio, so three parts of water to one part of beer. Smaller breweries, it’s more like a 10-to-one ratio. So they matter, but to get to that level, and to afford that equipment is really expensive, and when you’re working on a smaller scale, you probably just don’t have that extra capital lying around.

Marisa Wojcik:

And did you run into any issues when you were talking to people of them, because you were talking to indigenous communities, you were talking to business owners, you were talking to farmers, community groups, did anyone hesitate to call this climate change, or was the language difficult to talk about with different people? Because that phrase itself can be a controversial phrase.

Mary Kate McCoy:

Right, it can be pretty loaded. Yeah, there was a range of responses. I heard a lot of mother nature, you know, talking about how weather has always been variable. But, in talking to both farmers and researchers and scientists in this, people say that there has been a real shift in probably the last five years that people are starting to pay more attention, and understanding how it’s impacting them, and taking the issue more seriously than they have in the past. But yes, a wide range of responses.

[laughs]

Marisa Wojcik:

And does it matter if it’s all called climate change, or all called the same thing, as long as people are being proactive about it in different ways?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, I suppose it doesn’t.

Marisa Wojcik:

Kind of going back to the brewery side of things, compared to the farm side of things, the brewer that you talked about, Octopi Brewing, he said that he funded a lot of his things through state and federal grants. Is that how we are going to be able to get some of these industries to be able to afford things that are more sustainable?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, I think that is definitely one area. We talked quite a bit about that, and getting those grants made things possible for him to do, when we were walking around his brewery, he’s like every piece of equipment I have in this brewery, I could upgrade it probably 10 times to be more efficient, so there’s so many areas and room for opportunity to do it, and he said, the opportunity is growing, but things are moving really really slowly. But he’s, Octopi Brewing is the fifth largest brewery in the state of Wisconsin, so they’re not a small operation by any means, and even for them they need outside help to be able to make some of these upgrades. One thing that he said to me too, is often what is good for the environment is really good for my business, right? If I’m saving cost on energy and on water and things like that, that affects my bottom line, plus I’m using less and I’m being less wasteful.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is that how farmers are feeling? One quote from a farmer said, “the more climate change is impacting me, “the more I’m paying for it, “but no one’s helping me with that.” Is it different for different industries, are farmers really not being supported in helping for some of the high risk that they’re taking on as climate change is being exacerbated?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think that is a really big part of the conversation especially with the dairy industry, because they’re coming off some really, really difficult years. They don’t have a whole lot of extra capital lying around. You know, one dairy farmer I spoke to said that, this is the average dairy farmer is not the person who can invest in these other ways to kind of handle, and be more sustainable, right? Because it’s more expensive and the risk is higher, because there’s things that we know about making a farm more sustainable, but there’s a lot of open questions still too. So it’s a risky thing to do, and a risky thing to ask, so I think some people would really like to see more support from outside sources, but…

Marisa Wojcik:

It’s still up in the air.

Mary Kate McCoy:

It’s still up in the air, yeah, yeah.

Marisa Wojcik:

Well, I just love how this series really, it’s simple on its front. You have six different kind of food areas, iconic areas, as you call them, but it gets into this really complex web of how things cascade and this impacts this, and this ecosystem impacts this. Were you expecting kind of how intricate that would be when you started out?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, that’s a, I thought it would be complicated, but like, no, I don’t know that you can imagine how complicated it would be, ’cause I think walleye is a good example of that too. You know, climate change is affecting walleye for sure, but there’s a whole host of other things that are affecting walleye populations as well, and I think when it’s, one researcher kind of described it to me as that’s kind of the nature of climate change. You can’t point a finger at it and be like, these populations are declining specifically because climate change. It’s a factor and it’s very pervasive, but everything is, you know? There’s a whole host of things, and temperature, and precipitation, they impact everything. It’s really wide-ranging, but it’s not, you know, kind of one beast that you can point at, and be like, this is the only thing that’s happening.

Marisa Wojcik:

Did you have a favorite area that you learned about?

Mary Kate McCoy:

Wild rice, I think, yeah. That was just an area that I had some familiarity with, but just the cultural tie of wild rice is, it’s just so significant and it was really cool to be able to explore that more.

Marisa Wojcik:

Well, Mary Kate, very impactful series. Thank you so much for telling us a little bit more about it.

Mary Kate McCoy:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from Here & Now and PBS Wisconsin, you can visit PBSWisconsin.org, and thank you so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.