When it comes to adapting to/preparing for global warming, resilience is key. It’s absolutely worth finding ways to increase our resistance to climate disasters, but being able to recover quickly will matter much more.  There’s no roadmap for how the next few decades are going to go – we’ve got good general guesses, but those don’t allow us to predict what’s going to happen where. We can prepare for some things – ensure access to air conditioning and reliable potable water during heatwaves, for one example – but the ability to take an unexpected hit without collapsing is key.

Resilience, in my view, is best achieved through diversity. Diversity of strengths, diversity of thought, diversity of experience, diversity of species – I make no secret of my interest in ecology, or of my belief that we should see ourselves as part of the ecosystems around us. In ecosystems, biodiversity is key to resilience. The more species you have living in a given area, the less damage will be done by removing any one of those species. There are a lot of ways in which I think this concept applies fractally. At the level of a local community, a diversity of people makes it more likely that whatever problem arises, someone will have some idea of what to do about it. A diversity in diet – in types and sources of food – means that if one kind of crop fails, there are other kinds of food available. Zoom out to the national or global scale, and the same remains true.

That’s why it’s such a problem that so much of our population depends on so few species. Even leaving aside the disease and pest risks of monoculture farming, relying on a small number of crops means depending on a narrow range of growing conditions. At risk of stating the obvious, growing conditions are changing worldwide. I maintain that our first priority should be investing heavily in indoor food production, but in the interest of diversity and resilience, I think there’s real value in exploring other options.

Enter the breadfruit.

While researchers predict that climate change will have an adverse effect on most staple crops, including rice, corn and soybeans, a new Northwestern University study finds that breadfruit — a starchy tree fruit native to the Pacific islands — will be relatively unaffected.

Because breadfruit is resilient to predicted climate change and particularly well-suited to growing in areas that experience high levels of food insecurity, the Northwestern team believes breadfruit could be part of the solution to the worsening global hunger crisis.

The study was published today (Aug. 17) in the journal PLOS Climate.

“Breadfruit is a neglected and underutilized species that happens to be relatively resilient in our climate change projections,” said Northwestern’s Daniel Horton, a senior author on the study. “This is good news because several other staples that we rely on are not so resilient. In really hot conditions, some of those staple crops struggle and yields decrease. As we implement strategies to adapt to climate change, breadfruit should be considered in food security adaptation strategies.”

[…]

Despite having “fruit” in its name, breadfruit is starchy and seedless, playing a culinary role more like a potato. Closely related to jackfruit, the nutrient-rich food is high in fiber, vitamins and minerals. In tropical parts of the world, people have been eating breadfruit for thousands of years — whether steamed, roasted, fried or fermented. Breadfruit also can be turned into flour, in order to lengthen its shelf life and be exported.

“Breadfruit trees can live for decades and provide a large amount of fruits each year,” said Zerega, a conservation scientist with the Negaunee Institute for Plant Conservation Science and Action at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “In some cultures, there is a tradition to plant a breadfruit tree when a child is born to ensure the child will have food for the rest of their life.”

This sounds like something worth looking into, doesn’t it? As ever, this needs to come with systemic economic and political change – there’s no point to  increasing consumption of breadfruit if it’s just rich countries buying it from the people who currently rely on it, and forcing those people to then buy food on the international market. Fortunately, it seems likely that the number of places capable of growing breadfruit will go up as the temperature rises, particularly compared to current staples like wheat.

To conduct the study, the researchers first determined the climate conditions required to cultivate breadfruit. Then, they looked at how these conditions are predicted to change in the future (between the years 2060 and 2080). For future climate projections, they looked at two scenarios: an unlikely scenario that reflects high greenhouse-gas emissions and a more likely scenario in which emissions stabilize.

I love the optimism of their likely/unlikely labeling. I hope history proves them right about that.

In both scenarios, areas suitable for breadfruit cultivation remained mostly unaffected. In the tropics and subtropics, the suitable area for growing breadfruit decreased by a modest 4.4 to 4.5%. The researchers also found suitable territory where growing breadfruit trees could expand — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where breadfruit trees are not traditionally grown but could provide an important and stable source of food.

“Despite the fact that climate will drastically change in the tropics, climate is not projected to move outside the window where breadfruit is comfortable,” Yang said. “From a climate perspective, we can already grow breadfruit in sub-Saharan Africa. There is a huge swath of Africa, where breadfruit can grow to various degrees. It just has not been broadly introduced there yet. And, luckily enough, most varieties of breadfruit are seedless and have little-to-no likelihood of becoming invasive.”

According to Zerega, once established, a breadfruit tree can withstand heat and drought much longer than other staple crops. But the benefits don’t end there. Because it’s a perennial crop, it also requires less energy input (including water and fertilizer) than crops that need to be replanted every year, and, like other trees, it sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the tree’s lifetime.

“A lot of places where breadfruit can grow have high levels of food insecurity,” Yang said. “Oftentimes, they combat food insecurity by importing staple crops like wheat or rice, and that comes with a high environmental cost and carbon footprint. With breadfruit, however, these communities can produce food more locally.”

This brings us back to the need for systemic change. There’s a long history of rich nations using their wealth and power to undermine efforts at self-sufficiency in poor nations. Forcing a country to remain dependent on imports means that they have to put all their resources into generating cash crops to sell on the international market. That benefits capitalists, but it’s terrible for the kind of resilience we need. This is yet another example where we have what looks to be a good solution to part of the climate problem, but it’s unlikely to be implemented in any useful capacity without revolutionary political change.

It’s also worth underlining that there’s very little chance of the plant becoming invasive if grown in new locations. I’ve talked before about the damage that invasive species can do, and now is not the time to be adding more burdens to already-crumbling ecosystems.

The scale of change that we need is daunting, to say the least. I don’t think humanity has ever undertaken a task of this size and complexity. The upside is that “humanity” is also big and complex, and we’ve learned how break down big problems into more manageable parts. For climate change, one of those parts is changing our food system. Some of that change will just be differences in proportion – maybe we’ll have less wheat and corn, and more rice breadfruit, for example. I find it helps to remember that there are thousands of teams like the one behind this breadfruit research. More than that, there are millions of people not just doing research, but also taking direct action, and working out how to do more.

I no longer think climate change is just the result of all of us being collectively irresponsible – that would ignore how power works, and how our system is designed. That said, we are collectively living through it. You are not alone, and even if it’s not your day, your week, your month, or even your year, there are countless others out there working.

To grow breadfruit.

The image shows two breadfruits close to the camera. They’re green, oblong, and seem to be covered in small scales. The leaves behind them are very big, and toothed. Other breadfruits can be seen out of focus in the background.

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