Global warming's Halloween horror

Extreme weather wipes out pumpkin crop

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 4:45 PM on 29 Oct 2007

Read more about: food | agriculture | holiday

Global warming threatens our 4th of July celebrations with droughts that have forced communities to scrap plans for fireworks displays. And it threatens our White Christmases with winter heat waves. And our Arbor Days with record wildfires. Now it imperils our Halloweens.

In a story headlined, "Rain, Drought, Wipe Out Pumpkin Crops Across U.S.," Fox News reports the frightening news:

Scorching weather and lack of rain this summer wiped out some pumpkin crops from western New York to Illinois, leaving fields dotted with undersized fruit. Other fields got too much rain and their crops rotted.

Pumpkin production is predicted to be down for the second straight year.

One expert ominously predicts a run on pumpkins: "If you've got to have them for your 5-year-olds, I certainly would not wait a long time to get them."

Even Stephen Colbert has reported on what he calls the War on Halloween (though, characteristic of his out-of-the-mainstream politics, he doesn't make the obvious link to global warming).

The bottom line, however, is clear: Pumpkins (like most people) hate extreme weather. Sadly, global warming means more droughts and more deluges.

What exactly does extreme weather do to pumpkins?

Hot, dry weather causes pumpkins to produce too many male blossoms and too few female ones. Farmers also can blame drought for scads of small pumpkins as well as lighter weights because of a lack of water.

Standing in a 2-acre pumpkin field at his Buffalo farm, Bob Gritt lamented the poor color and small size of the crop surrounding him.

"The color's not real good on them," he said. "There's not very many big ones in there."

At least Gritt has pumpkins. Some West Virginia farmers don't.

The West Virginia Pumpkin Festival has found itself in the unusual position of importing pumpkins for the four-day event beginning Thursday that lures about 40,000 visitors to Milton every year, organizer Martha Poore said.

All this is enough to make one lose faith in the Great Pumpkin. The impact is nationwide:

... production is down two-thirds in West Virginia, Kentucky and parts of Ohio ...

The drought has also hurt growers in western New York, and in Michigan, as much as half the crop has been lost because of hot, dry weather in the north, Michigan State University extension educator Ron Goldy estimates. Heavy rain that left standing water in southern Michigan fields caused much of the crop to rot, a problem Goldy says also affected parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

Ask southern Illinois grower Sarah Frey what happened this summer and she's quick to respond: "Thirty percent loss, at least. Hot, dry weather, drought. It was all those days that we had that were 105 degrees."

And who gets hurt? The American consumer, of course, as price rises but quality drops:

"There's no moisture in them ... The public is paying more per pound for it, but they're getting less."

Scary!

Equally troublesome, we are forced to turn to imported pumpkins:

Helping relieve pressure on the jack-o'-lantern crop is the increasing popularity of smaller, heirloom varieties, such as gray-blue Jarrahdale or the Marina di Chioggia, pumpkins native to Australia and Italy, respectively.

Pumpkins from Australia and Italy consume massive amounts of energy in transportation, releasing more greenhouse gases -- one more amplifying feedback to worry about.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For story: Global warming's Halloween horror
2 Comments | Post a Comment

Happy Halloween

When they came for the pumpkins, I said nothing.

by jcwinnie at 5:52 PM on 29 Oct 2007

jack-o'-lantern

We saw plenty of fine pumpkins recently in south-central Vermont, and in the parts of New York that we traveled through. And there are plenty for sale in the grocery stores on Broadway.

But those people who cannot get their hands on pumpkins this year, but feel a strong need to carve jack-o'-lanterns, should be resourceful and try some other fruit or vegetable. Jack O'Lantern himself, according to the story (perhaps originally Scottish or Irish, but soon enough common elsewhere in the British Isles), having died but been forbidden entrance to both Heaven and Hell, must forever walk the face of the Earth, and illumines his path with a lantern made from a turnip, lit by an ever-burning ember from the floor of Hell.

And one understands how the need in some can be very strong indeed. The belief is, Halloween is the night when the ghosts of all the recent dead are assembled by the Queen of the Dead, and follow her in a great cavalcade through every land, until at last she leads them through the hidden entrance to the Underworld where at last they may find rest. Before that, however, as they are being assembled and are stirring, they are dangerous, because they envy the living their life. Therefore the prudent thing is to stay indoors, and put a frightening face in your window. But if one happens to be confronted by any of the wandering dead, it is wise to be bearing offerings of sweet and pleasant food, with which they may be appeased.

Pumpkins, of course, are native to the New World. It is easy to see both why people feel they must have pumpkins in order to do Halloween right, and why people on other continents love cultivating them. But importing them from Australia and Italy looks a bit perverse.

For those who are a bit left in the dark by JCWinnie's cryptic and funny reference, which has nothing to do with Halloween but has a great deal to do with considering the fate of the dead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 7:48 AM on 30 Oct 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.