What foods could disappear from your dinner plate as the planet changes?
It's very hard to predict how climate change will interact with the complexities of food systems exactly, but these five foods are vulnerable.
Almonds: A high-risk crop in California: they require lots of water, but also can't be fallowed one year and replanted the next, so demand continual watering to survive. During the superhot summer of 2021, media reports abounded of farmers ripping out their almond trees.
Avocados: Similarly, a very water-intensive crop to grow. Mexico, the world's biggest producer of avocados and another major importer of fruits and vegetables to Canada, is also struggling with drought: in March, the Mexican government announced a controversial cloud-seeding" plan, an unproven strategy to induce rainfall by dispersing particles into the sky.
Beef: Meat from cows is one of the most emissions-intensive and land-gobbling food sources that exists. To meet the global greenhouse gas targets, our food systems will have to be overhauled, report after report shows. How beef is produced can radically change its emissions profile, but replacing red meats is usually the first suggestion for making your diet more sustainable.
Rice: One of the world's most important foods: half the global population relies on rice as a staple. But rice is vulnerable for a variety of reasons: it's often grown in deltas, which are at risk from sea level rise, and in hot regions already experiencing climate stress. One 2018 study found that hotter temperatures could reduce global rice yields by 40 per cent by the end of this century.
What's inside: An overlooked risk of climate change's impact on food systems, experts say, is that rising carbon dioxide levels can interfere with the chemistry of plants and make food crops like wheat, corn, rice and soy less nutritious - a major health risk in parts of the world that already don't get enough essential nutrients.
Kate Allen is a Toronto-based reporter covering climate change for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @katecallen