With climate change, crops migrate north

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
"Farmers have always dealt with the whims of Mother Nature. But now climate change is changing what they can grow and where they can grow it.

The most unusual thing about Joe Franklin's 78-acre citrus farm is that it really shouldn't be where it is. "When I first started with it, people couldn't believe me when I told 'em it was grown right here in Georgia," they said. "They didn't believe me; 'Oh, no, you can't grow that here!'"

But Franklin now has 12,000 trees, growing fruit in the middle of Georgia you'd normally expect to find hundreds of miles south in Florida: Grapefruit, Meyer lemons, mandarins, mangoes.


In the middle of Georgia, Joe Franklin's 78-acre citrus farm is growing fruit you'd normally expect to find hundreds of miles south in Florida.
Correspondent Ben Tracy asked, "So, I'm not gonna find a Georgia peach anywhere on this land?"

"No, afraid not," Franklin replied. "One of the main things that drove my decision to plant 'em was the fact that it is so much warmer now than it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago. I know when I was growing up, golly, in October, you always had a couple of frosts. And November, you usually had a freeze. That doesn't happen anymore."

"Did you think of that as climate change, or did you just say, 'Something's different here'?"

"No, I thought it was climate change," he replied. "It's happening. There's no doubt about it."

"A lot of crops – not just in the U.S. but also in Africa, India – are already seeing the impacts of climate change," said Himanshu Gupta, CEO of San Francisco-based startup Climate Ai. The stakes are high: as the planet warms and climate change fuels more severe drought and flooding, it's estimated worldwide crop yields could decline up to 30% by the year 2050 (according to a report by the Global Center on Adaptation)."...

Gotta say, I saw a little humor in the title of this article. "With Climate Change, crops migrate north"

I have lived on a farm for a while, my parents had gardens when we were younger, and I ain't ever seen "crops" migrate. Never once heard anyone say, "Hey look, there goes a an acre of sweet corn moving north." or "Hey, did you see those Roma tomatoes moving up the I-5 corridor?"

Geese on the other hand, those things migrate every year, north to south or south to north depending on the time of year. That's what I think of when I hear "migrate".

Interesting article.