It's not a long-standing joke: climate change is raising sea levels (even more than expected). This causes damage to human structures, but also to activities such as agricultural ones. Salt water invades the land, and the salinity makes it unsuitable for cultivation.
A research team from seven North European countries (Sweden, Germany, Holland, Belgium, UK, Denmark and Norway) is participating in an EU-funded project: SalFar (which stands for Sal IslandINE Fatherming), this is its name, aims to understand how soils can adapt to producing food even after climate change.
Protect and select
The research behind Salfar points to two distinct directions: first, to protect current plants and make them more resistant to an increase in salinity in the soil. Second, select and identify species suitable for these new scenarios.
The first attempts date back to May 2018: Different varieties of oats and beetroot were tested on the Dutch island of Texel. Other tests followed on Danish islands (potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and more).
“Saline” agriculture, a versatile tool
Agriculture is a method, a modus agendi of human society. A generalized mechanism which, however, won by taking into account the disastrous factors of the land. Growing rice in paddies. Grow wheat in suitable soil. Then, slowly, try to find a mediation between us and nature.
If we wanted to "pull our ears" to human beings we would have to consider the period of the last 50 years, too focused on bending nature to their will, transforming agriculture into an instrument of torture for the planet.
Today, with projects like Salfar and others (I think of those developed in Singapore), adaptation to nature, or its abuse, become matters of secondary importance. Identifying solutions and species best suited to the scenarios means recovering lands otherwise rendered unusable by climate change. It means above all preserving (or even increasing) the possibility of nourishment for the population.
And they will lead to new dishes
One of the effects of Salfer will be the emergence of different dishes and perhaps different eating habits. Prof Pier Wellinga of the Wadden Academy explains that varieties suitable for growing in saline environments have a sweeter taste (perhaps by contrast) than usual and a different aroma.
