subsistence agriculture

From invasive pests and drought to longer growing seasons and floods, climate change is reshuffling our system of agriculture, reports The New York Times in a piece that summarizes how these new realities are affecting 11 crops. 

In Central America's Dry Corridor, a historically drought-prone region that stretches from Mexico to Panama and is home to 10.5 million people, climate change is producing longer and more frequent dry spells and forcing a growing number of farmers to attempt to migrate to the U.S., according to FERN's latest story, published with The Weather Channel. (No paywall)

Some 1.4 million people in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, require food assistance because of widespread damage by Hurricane Matthew to supplies and crops in large swaths of the country, according to a survey by UN and Haitian agencies. In Haiti's Department of Grande-Anse, "agriculture has been virtually wiped out," says the UN, and "losses of subsistence crops in the Department of Sud have been nearly total."

In the first U.S. communities to experience climate change firsthand, warmer weather and shifting weather patterns have hampered the ability of Alaska Native families to harvest the caribou, walrus and other subsistence foods they have relied on for more than a millennium, reports NPR’s The Salt. “The debate here isn't over whether climate change is happening. For these rural communities, the question is whether they can continue to survive there,” the story says.