We can see that reality is catching up to the assumptions I made two years ago. This spring in France, a series of weather anomalies confirms de facto that climate change prevent many farmers to harvest fruits. Both winegrowers and stone fruit growers were hurt by soft temperature and frost that followed in a haphazard way, under the effect of the disturbance of the planetary jet stream. It was caused by the increasing temperature difference between our latitude and that of the poles, whose melting is accelerating dizzyingly. Besides this phenomenon, I guess that the deviation of the sea currents will soon worsen the disturbance temporarily delayed by the thermal inertia of the water masses. The media tell us that the IPCC is about to release its new report this summer, which revises upwards the impact of climate change, now described as cataclysmic. They thus confirm my skepticism about the value of the prognoses made by the scientific community. In the posts of October 23, 2019 and January 17 of this year, I made some assumptions about the causes of his inability to understand the issue of climate deregulation.

While facing the reality of climate change, agriculture persists in focusing on solutions that seem to me not sufficient. Agroecology and the shift of crops in the calendar or in space, timidly respond to the challenge of global warming but are not enough to overcome the one of climate deregulation, which is undoubtedly set to increase everywhere. The selection of species or varieties tolerant to extreme climate conditions is more appropriate, but far from being proportionate to the scale of the phenomenon.

I believe the solution of « putting agriculture under cover » is key to be able to cope with the deterioration of weather conditions. In other words, greenhouse cultivation is promised a bright future because it makes it possible to overcome disturbances in the external climate with the further advantage of making it possible to control consumption of both water and fertilizer while limiting the use of pesticides.

Such a solution is realistic for horticulture, but it is unfortunately not for the arable crops which constitute our staple diet. Because the yield of arable crops depends directly on the photosynthetic activity and, therefore, on the surface of light interception by the plant cover, the footprint of which is necessarily considerable. As a consequence, the financial cost as well as the carbon footprint of greenhouses built for cereals, oilseeds or protein crops, is prohibitive. Unlike greenhouse horticulture, open-field agriculture is therefore far from being a perfectly controlled activity since it depends on the one hand on soil conditions and on the other hand on weather circumstances. It is therefore clear that arable crops will suffer from the climate change against a background of a fossil fuel shortage.

Common sense leads me to think that for these productions, the following options are key:

Back to a collectivization of agriculture

In France, climate deregulation is already leading to a significant increase in the price of some aliments, resulting in unequal access to quality food, as a guarantee of health for the population. I am convinced that the imminent threat is that of the shortage which is already occurring in certain countries more exposed to climate change. In the mid term, food issue will certainly restore agriculture, as regards to the major place it deserves in view of its vital nature. Faced with this reality, politicians will have to buy social peace by ensuring on the one hand the security of supply of the people and on the other hand by securing the revenue of growers. Because the continuous decrease in the number of farmers who are struggling to pass on their farms or the increase in the number of those who commit suicide, shows how vulnerable their activity is. In addition to the volatility of increasingly open agricultural markets over the successive revisions of the CAP, there is also an increasingly uncertainty of harvesting under pressure from the climate change. This hazard is not sustainable for private-equity and especially for individual entrepreneurs such as farmers. This is why I am convinced that governments will regain control of agriculture, going against the liberalization movement of the years that have passed since the beginning of the CAP. In other words, subsidies and guaranteed revenue for farmers will be key, just like the nationalization of land. Horticultural crops, which are destined to become protected crops, will on the contrary be attractive for private investors, certain of having control over the yield and therefore, over the operating margin and finally, the profitability of companies.

Rehabilitation of intervention stocks

To cope with the uncertainty on yield in each region under the weight of climate deregulation, the most obvious solutions will be the dispersion of production areas (backup sites) associated with the storage of the harvest where it exists. In other words, I believe that the states – or possibly landowners – will have to look after the grain by trading with other states or private traders, to manage the level of intervention stocks, so as to ensure self-sufficiency of the people over the long term. This tool for regulating the cereals market will undoubtedly take on new colors.

Reversal of priorities for agronomists

In the context of agronomic uncertainty, it seems logical that the goal of maximum yield gives way to that of securing the harvest. Securing the harvest is antagonistic to the race for productivity, which is carried out not only at the condition of the negative externalities of agriculture for which the grower is not yet accountable, but also at the cost of greater fragility of crops and their environment. Between the choice of the highest possible yield and the possibility to harvest, the climate deregulation will undoubtedly push for the safety.

Other plant raw materials and decentralization of production

At the foot of the wall of climate deregulation, I guess that mankind will have to turn to food raw materials produced on the one hand protected from the weather circumstances and on the other hand, deployed in three dimensions to minimize their acreage. These are the algae that seem to me the most suited to these specifications. Flooding in water to dampen the temperature fluctuations of the atmosphere, they are distributed on a vertical axis which maximizes the area of ​​interception of natural light and from there, maximizes the production of assimilates. Associated with these autotrophic species, other algae would be responsible for converting assimilates into proteins and lipids in order to guarantee a complete diet. In a mode comparable to that of energy production in the future, algae-based « agricultural smart grids » could be a possible future to aim for food self-sufficiency on an individual scale. I personally doubt insect breeding and other avatars as these options involve producing plant raw materials upstream and thus only shift the issue.