On This Veterans Day

On this Veterans Day, we should all be thankful to those who have served in our armed forces and those who currently serve.

In all wars, soldiers sacrifice: time with their families; health and well-being; sleep and comfort; and far too often, their lives. But in wars past, there was a greater sense of shared sacrifice than there is today, with the family and community members left behind finding their own role in what was called the "war effort". 

During World War II, women were called to work for the war effort. They took on non-combat roles, they worked in the munitions factories, and they became heads of households as husbands and fathers were conscripted.

 But the war effort was bigger than the army and munitions plants during the world wars, both here and abroad. In both the US and England, food was a huge part of the war effort as massive armies require massive amounts of food. With men being pulled off the farms, not just out of the factories, women and children stepped in there, too.

Victory Gardens were encouraged to increase production of fresh vegetables. Women were urged to "can all you can" to provide winter food for the household. Victory Gardens were seen as a way to stretch ration cards, free up food supplies for the troops, and reduce the need to transport food by increasing local production, thereby saving fuel.

According to the National WWII Museum website (linked above), at the height of WWII, there were 20,000,000 Victory Gardens producing 40% of all fresh vegetables grown in the United States. Over the course of the war, that was the equivalent of more than a million tons of fresh produce.

The home front mentality, the sense that we are all part of the war effort, seems largely absent from our country during our current decade of war. Without the draft, fewer families have loved ones serving in the armed forces and there is no organized national effort to save or conserve resources in order to support our troops. Yet in a world where war is increasingly about shrinking resources -- oil, gas, and yes, food -- the war effort on the home front could radically decrease our dependence on foreign oil and imported foods. So today, thank a veteran, drive a little less, and start looking for a sunny spot in your yard for a spring Victory Garden. We can all be superheroes in this fight:

Frozen Cattle And The Ghost Food Truck

Earlier this fall, South Dakota experienced an early blizzard that caught ranchers off-guard. Three to four feet of snow fell overnight in the first week of October when cattle were still in unprotected summer pastures and had not yet grown winter coats. Between 15,000 and 30,000 cows died during the storm, with some ranchers losing the majority of their herds.

This snowfall broke previous records for the entire month of October and came after several days of warm weather. It's being called a freak storm, but just how freaky is it? Since 2005's Hurricane Katrina broke all records as the most-damaging and costliest hurricane in US history, there has been a string of "freak" weather events that devastate communities. As seen in South Dakota, these communities are often food producers, which means that these storms also impact our food supply.

With a few exceptions, most people now recognize that human activities are changing the world climate in ways scientists are working to fully understand. Weather patterns are changing, overall temperatures of land and water are rising, and all of this has consequences.

It is difficult to grasp exactly what climate change means for future weather patterns -- increased drought and heat in some places might be paired with more frequent floods in others -- but the best explanation I've ever heard uses rolling dice as an analogy.

With a normal pair of dice (the weather patterns humans have lived with for millennia), the extremes in terms of rolls are a two or a twelve. So if you're rolling the dice for how intense the hurricane season will be, you could get a mild two or a terrible twelve. Climate change, scientists say, change the rules in two ways. First, it loads the dice so that the higher numbers are more likely. Category 5 hurricanes, massive tornadoes, or devastating droughts will become more common. 

But the dice are changed in another way, too: Climate change adds dots. One of the dice gets an extra dot on each face. Now, the most mild weather we can hope for is a three, not a two, and at the other end, we can suddenly roll thirteens or fourteens.

We've seen some evidence of this in recent years. The northeast coast got slammed with two major hurricanes, Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2013, that damaged states like Vermont that don't usually have to worry about hurricanes. Irene was the seventh-costliest hurricane in United States history and Sandy was the second-costliest. Twenty-six people were killed by a single tornado in Moore, OK, earlier this year.

The problem is not confined to the US by any means. In 2010, severe droughts killed as much as 25% of Russia's wheat crop, leading the country to ban wheat exports that year. Wheat prices spiked around the world. 

Our food supply depends on predictable weather and we may not have that any more.

Two artists have been thinking about what foods might be lost altogether or become so scarce as to raise prices to luxury-good status. They are touring in what they call the Ghost Food truck, providing free tastes and smells of substitutes for chocolate milk, fried cod, and peanut butter. It's a bleak vision of the toll climate change could take on our food supply.