Essay by Eric Worrall
There is a more plausible explanation for what went wrong.
“It’s not pretty, but you can still eat it”: Climate crisis leads to more crooked vegetables in the Netherlands
Crowdfunding program saves ‘imperfect’ fruit and vegetables after the country’s wettest autumn, winter and spring on record
Senay Boztas in AmsterdamSun 30 June 2024 03.00 AEST
When 31-year-old Dutch farmer Bastiaan Blok dug up his last crop, the weather had a devastating effect. His onions – 117,000 kilos – were the size of shallots.
“We had a very wet spring and a dry, warm summer, so the plants grew very small roots,” said Blok, who farms 90 hectares in Swifterbant in the reclaimed province of Flevoland. “Half of them were smaller than 40 mm and normally they are not even processed at that size. We would probably have sold them for very little money as biomass or maybe to Poland for onion oil. It is either far too wet and cold or far too warm and dry, and there is no normal growing period in between.”
Blok is one of many farmers at Europe's largest agricultural exporter who blame the climate crisis on increasing numbers of “imperfect” fruits and vegetables rejected by a food system based on standardization and cosmetic appearance.
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The wettest autumn, winter and spring on record have threatened spinach and potato crops, prompting parliamentary questions and warnings from farmers' union LTO. Evelien Drenth, agriculture expert at LTO, said 61% of Dutch farmers are reporting crop losses due to extreme weather, diseases are on the rise and sowing is delayed or sometimes even cancelled altogether. “Consumers and supermarkets will have to get used to the fact that shelves are sometimes empty of short-lived crops such as spinach… and also of Brussels sprouts and broccoli of irregular sizes,” she added.
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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 in calling the problem a climate problem. Unusually wet spring weather does happen from time to time. Although this year was unusual, some sources suggest that the record is still held by the spring of 1983.
One interesting cause of carrot deformation that could explain this year's crooked vegetable is too much nitrate in the soil. According to several gardening sites I've researched, high nitrate levels can cause deformation in carrots.
Excessive rain may have exacerbated the problem. Nitrate is very mobile and easily transported by water. Even if the farmer applying the correct levels of nitrates to the carrot field, his fields may have been affected by runoff from neighboring farms that were applying other crops with much higher levels of nitrates. Or perhaps some farmers made a mistake and applied more nitrate because they were worried that the rain would have washed the fertilizer out of their field.
There are many crops that require far more nitrates than carrots, which could have been the source of the runoff pollution. Cannabis is grown in the Netherlands, and cannabis requires a lot 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 fertilizers – my citrus trees grow half a meter longer every time I pour a bucket of leftover ammonia solution over them after mopping the pet area.
I consider unintentional over-fertilization to be a far more plausible explanation for the crooked carrots than the claim that “climate change” has deformed the harvest.
If accidental over-fertilization is responsible for a few misshapen carrots, farmers already have enough incentive to get the balance right. There's no need for bureaucrats to get involved.
WUWT has long defended the right of Dutch farmers to use appropriate agrochemicals and will continue to do so. In our view, farmers understand agriculture better than bureaucrats – if you want proof that bureaucrats are bad farmers, you only have to look at the food shortages that communist countries regularly experience.
There is good news about the European war on agriculture: at the political level, there has finally been a clear pushback. In the Netherlands, farmers have really been lucky – the new right-wing government of Geert Wilders has promised to protect the Dutch from the climate crazies of the EU.
As for this year's crop, the deformed carrots are perfectly edible – I grew some weird looking carrots, and when diced in a stew they look just like normal carrots.
At a time when many people in Europe are struggling with their energy bills, I am surprised that European farmers have any difficulty selling edible crops at all, no matter how strange they look.
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