Farming on the Fringe Climate Change and Coastal Farms
Transcriber: Amanda Zhu
Reviewer: Peter Van de Ven
Like 40% of the human population,
we live within 100 miles of a coast,
and here, in Great Mills,
we’re only about five miles from a coast.
Our coasts, as you can see,
are beautiful and bountiful,
but they’re also in danger.
The seas are rising across the planet,
threatening our homes
but also the farms where we grow our food.
For instance,
the eastern shore of Maryland
was farmed for many years
by native peoples
before the British colonists arrived,
and it is still heavily farmed even today.
But America’s first farms
are starting to go underwater;
our history is quite literally drowning.
And even as we lose land
in our own backyards,
we’re losing land
in Vietnam and Bangladesh,
two coastal countries
where we grow a large portion
of the world’s rice.
And when we talk about climate change,
we often talk about it
like it’s this thing of the future,
something we can worry about
in a couple of years
or even a couple of decades,
but climate change is happening.
It’s happening now.
And here in Maryland,
the symptoms of the disease
are already starting to show.
Many people are unaware,
but there is an invisible flood
moving far inland
in advance of the surface floods
that can drown our homes and our farms.
And that invisible flood
is called “saltwater intrusion,”
and it can make our water undrinkable.
And it means that many of the crops
growing along our coastlines
have salty and wet “feet”;
that is, their roots
are burrowing below ground
searching for pure water,
but they’re finding only salt.
And you can see what that looks like
in this picture here.
All of this white stuff
along the edge of this farm field
is salt.
And just like in Vietnam and Bangladesh,
it can feel like our Maryland farmers
are fighting a losing battle.
Here in the Chesapeake bay region,
sea level rise rates
are three times the global average.
And that means that our communities
are some of the first to be hit
by the slow burn of climate change.
And unfortunately,
we’re not going to be able
to stop climate change right now
or reverse it, reverse the tides,
but what we can do is work together.
We can work together
as researchers, as farmers
and local government agencies
to design solutions that can help us
prevent climate change in the future
but also allow us to thrive
as communities right now.
And when I say communities,
I mean communities of people
but also of plants and animals.
So, what do we do?
We have to manage the transition,
and that means thinking
about climate change as a moving target.
So what’s going to work now
on this farm field
won’t work in five years,
and what works in five years
isn’t going to work in 10 years.
With some of the fastest rates
of sea level rise on the planet,
the Eastern Seaboard of the United States
is at the leading edge of climate change.
And it is our job
to manage that moving edge.
The first thing we need are maps,
like this one,
that can help us understand
the current extent of saltwater intrusion
but also understand where it’s headed.
And that will provide us
with an early warning system
that can help us generate a targeted plan
for every stage of saltwater intrusion.
And so my team is working to develop
some of these first ever maps
of saltwater intrusion,
giving us “eyes” on the disease
for the very first time.
And so you can see here in this map
all of these pink areas
are where we believe
saltwater intrusion to be right now
in two coastal Maryland counties,
in Dorchester and in Somerset.
And so, if we can understand
where saltwater intrusion is
but also understand
the rate of its spread,
we can help fight it,
that will help us fight it
and maybe even contain it.
The second thing we have to do
is work together.
We have to work together
as landowners and as scientists
and as policy makers
to design solutions that can help us
protect our environmental health
but also the farmer
or landowner’s bottom line.
And third,
we have to start making changes now
that can help us prevent
climate change in the future.
And if we can do these three things,
we can save our coastlines.
So let me give you some examples
of what that might look like.
Saltwater intrusion is leading
to the large-scale death
of coastal timber plantations and forests,
often called ghost forests.
And we’re going to watch
a short clip just now
that will give you a sense
of what that looks like,
the dramatic impact
that saltwater intrusion
is having on our systems.
(Video) (Insects chirping
and wind blowing)
Narrator: When you see
a ghost forest for the first time,
you’re struck by how eerie it is,
sort of like a ghost town.
(Ominous music)
This ground is now too salty and too wet
to support living trees.
[Ghost forest]
(Music ends)
Kate Tully: If left unchecked,
saltwater intrusion can burn trees
from the inside out,
and the understory that’s left
can become overrun with invasive species.
And these invasive species
can choke out native marsh plants,
and they do not provide good habitat
for nesting bird species.
However, we can help design solutions
that will enable landowners
to remove timber early.
We can use our early warning systems,
these maps,
to help us identify
the optimum time to remove timber
so that the landowners
can maximize their profits
and minimize their financial losses;
and at the same time,
we can promote the transition
of these ghost forests
into marshes.
So my team has been
working very closely
with the Maryland Department of Planning
and the Maryland Department
of Natural Resources,
two Maryland agencies
that are thinking about this a lot.
And we’re asking really tough questions,
like “What happens to your property rights
as your land slips under water?”
We can’t ask landowners
to bear the full burden
of climate change alone.
These people are our neighbors,
and we can help support them
with science-based management strategies
and policies.
In some cases,
the traditional crops we grow are failing,
so the typical mid-Atlantic rotation
of corn, soy, and wheat
is no longer viable.
And these crops are not adapted
to high concentrations of salt,
and they can’t sit around
for a long time with wet feet.
And so my team is working to develop
some new alternative crop rotations,
better adapted to this new normal.
And so we’re experimenting with sorghum,
a salt tolerant soybean,
and malting barley
for many of our microbreweries
in this area.
And we are not the only people
working on this.
There are Norwegian farmers
who are experimenting
with a salt-tolerant potato,
and in Louisiana, they’re experimenting
with a salt-tolerant rice
that could be grown
in many coastal low-lying regions,
like Vietnam and Bangladesh.
And many a health nut
will be pleased to know
that quinoa is actually
a very salt tolerant crop.
However, there is another issue.
Farm soils are loaded with nutrients,
like nitrogen and phosphorus,
from decades of fertilizer applications,
and these nutrients are leading
to toxic algal blooms in our water bodies
that can be seen from space.
And this image here shows you
a map of the current impact
that agriculture is already having
along our coastlines,
such as causing the formation
of the dead zone
in the Gulf of Mexico.
And the problem is
that saltwater intrusion
only makes matters worse.
Because of its unique chemistry,
it can actually release
even more nitrogen and phosphorus
from farm soils.
So you can imagine
that as saltwater intrusion
marches across the landscape,
this could have potentially
devastating consequences for water quality
all along the Eastern Seaboard.
However, there are options.
We can plant fast-growing grass species,
like a switchgrass,
that can suck nutrients out of the soil
and store it in its plant tissues.
And many livestock operations
are interested in using
some of these fast-growing species
as bedding for chickens.
So you can imagine
that an endeavor like this
could actually provide
a farmer with income
as their land transitions,
help promote water quality,
and prevent species invasions.
These are all great ideas.
But as we think about
the changing face of farming
along our coastlines,
it will be critical to involve farmers
at every step of the way.
We have to ensure
that there is a market
that they can tap into
and that we take into account
their farming heritage
and wealth of knowledge.
So that is, scientists can’t just come in
and tell farmers what to do
without understanding
where they’re coming from
and leveraging their
generations of expertise
and understanding
their financial constraints.
For example,
the equipment that’s needed
to grow that potato
is very different than the equipment
that’s needed to grow soybean,
such as seen here.
And so my team is dedicated
to working very closely with farmers
in order to make sure
that we are designing management solutions
that work for them now
and also in the future.
In some cases,
we have already lost large swaths
of coastal timber plantations,
forests, and farms
to the invisible flood
of saltwater intrusion.
We didn’t know that it was coming
until it was too late.
But that doesn’t mean
that we should give up hope.
We can facilitate the transition
of these areas into marshes,
marshes that are filled
with native grass species
and marshes that can serve as sponges
for sediment and agricultural inputs,
like fertilizers.
These marshes can promote
environmental health,
which means they can support
a thriving crab industry,
and they can also provide nesting habitat
for many endangered species.
Marshes are also very good
at storing carbon.
And coming up with strategies
to store more carbon on our landscapes
is actually a key way
that we can fight climate change
in the long term;
that is, by sucking carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere
and storing it in plant tissues
and storing it in soils.
And so, my team was really interested
in the carbon storage potential of farms
as they transition into marshes.
And it turns out the potential is huge.
So I’m going to show you some data -
because I’m a scientist
and I can’t help myself.
So on the y-axis,
we have soil carbon concentration,
and the x-axis is a transect
across a salt-damaged field.
So imagine you’re standing
in the center of a cornfield
and you’re looking out towards the marsh.
These are the levels
of carbon in your soil.
So in the tidal marsh, we have
very high concentrations of carbon.
That’s to be expected.
What is incredible is how much carbon
is on the edge of those fields,
in the field edge and the ditch bank,
where you’re starting to see
some of that saltwater intrusion.
In fact, the carbon levels
are five times higher
than they are in that crop area
where the corn plants
are struggling to survive.
So on these fields,
where it’s becoming increasingly
challenging to turn a profit,
we could actually allow the migration
of marshes into these farm fields.
Maybe we even help them out a little bit
by planting some native grass species.
If we did that,
we could store a lot of carbon,
and we could store it very quickly.
So in some cases, consider a situation
where we are subsidizing
the farming of carbon
rather than the farming of corn.
This work is, in a way,
a struggle to stay ahead
of a moving target,
and to do that requires
coordination and collaboration
among researchers
from many different disciplines.
And so, we’re working together
to develop these first ever maps
of saltwater intrusion
to understand where it is
and also where it’s headed.
And every day, my team is working
to gain a deeper understanding
of what crops are likely to grow,
how we can store more carbon,
and how we can protect water quality
as our coastlines transition.
The truth is we aren’t going to halt
climate change in its tracks.
We can’t slow the rising seas,
at least not in the short term.
To do that will require
coordinated global action.
But that doesn’t mean
that we can’t do anything about it.
When the world is sick, we wear masks.
We adapt to this new normal.
And we can help our neighbors,
our communities, and our planet
if we manage the transition
to the new normal
using science-based solutions.
Climate change is impacting
nearly every single agricultural system
on the planet.
Everyone at some point will have to adapt,
so why not be on the cutting edge
of climate change adaptation?
We are already building these maps
of saltwater intrusion
to understand where it is
and where it’s headed,
and we are already working together
as researchers, as farmers
and as policy makers
to design these science-based solutions.
And we have the opportunity
to make changes now
that can help prevent climate change
in the long term.
We could farm carbon and not corn.
And what’s remarkable to me
is that the state of Maryland
could actually be a global leader
in climate change adaptation,
especially when it comes to sea level rise
and saltwater intrusion.
We are already building the tools we need,
and we are already working together
towards this goal.
So, I’d say, let’s do it.