Weather problems affect agriculture all the time. But climate change is intensifying the challenges, making it harder to grow beloved foods like tomatoes
. Last year, the planned acreage was 231,000 and 12 million pounds—but as the season progressed, the expectations dropped to 11.6 million pounds, and then down to just 10.7 million.
Tony Montagnaro co-runs Pinyon, a small restaurant in Ojai, California that specializes in pizza and California-sourced ingredients. “Great tomatoes are just a staple food,” he says. “Maybe pizza is running the risk of becoming a seasonal food, if there aren’t enough tomatoes in the future.”No tomato growers are kidding themselves: It’s almost certain that growing the red fruit will get more challenging.
One promising idea was “deficit irrigation.” Turini tested how much water growers could save by shorting the plants a bit on their ideal water amounts during their last few months of growth, when they’re strong and well-established. His initial tests, run about a decade ago, looked promising: It seemed like growers could give them as little as half of what they wanted and keep the overall yield almost the same.
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