Dear Idaho,
Let’s just start off by saying how happy we are that Maine can help out in your time of need.
We can only imagine what it’s like for the residents of the Spud State to find themselves with so few potatoes that it sought out millions of ours to fill the gap. It’s probably a little like when our Maine snowmobile trails are closed in the dead of winter because there’s not enough snow — isn’t snow our birthright?
We’re hearing now, though, that as rail cars full of Maine potatoes head west to your state, as well as Washington, that some farmers and processors out there may be a bit … embarrassed by the whole thing.
And we get it. If we had to take lobsters from Massachusetts to fill our summer rolls, we’d feel a bit sheepish about it too.
And Mainers know what it’s like to see your state’s potato supremacy threatened.
Once the potato capital of the country, built on the backs of the immigrants who worked the tough ground of Aroostook County, Maine is now only the eighth- or ninth-biggest spud-growing state. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Idaho Potato Commission makes a point to say the state “took the honors from Maine in 1957.”
So we won’t hold a grudge. And neither should you. The shortfall in Idaho and Washington crops last year were not caused by farmer error, but by the extreme heat that plagued the Pacific Northwest and inland last year.
The extreme heat is itself a symptom of the human-caused climate crisis, which is being made worse by our uninterrupted use of fossil fuels. The heat led to poor growing conditions, which reduced this year’s harvest by 9%, and led to the calls to Maine farms, which because of favorable weather, and other factors, had a bumper crop.
Here, too, we can sympathize. The warming waters off the coast of Maine, also caused by climate change, are threatening our own near-and-dear harvest. They are pushing the bulk of lobsters, so fond of colder water, up the coast, putting the most action in the Deer Isle-Stonington area when it used to be to the south, near Portland.
At the same time, the lobster catch has plummeted in Massachusetts, and has been erased altogether around Long Island.
Because our coast is very long, Maine’s annual lobster haul remains very high. But if nothing is done to keep temperatures down, the booming lobster industry may eventually move to Canada.
That’s not as bad as Massachusetts. But, still.
Fortunately for you, the extreme weather related to climate change doesn’t rise in a straight line, as water temperatures tend to. Instead, it’s up and down, so next year will probably show a rebound in Idaho’s crop. Maybe the use of the Caribou Russet varietal will help — created in Maine, it is tolerant of stressful weather, and their seeds have been part of our shipments west.
But agricultural science can only do so much. The climate crisis is disrupting animal and plant life like nothing we’ve seen before — and the extremes are only going to get more extreme. That’s as much a threat to Idaho’s $1.1 billion potato industry as it is to our $725 million lobster industry.
What we’re saying is, we’re all in this together. Everyone has something to lose through rising temperatures and extreme weather.
Will Congress do anything to stop it? We don’t know, but time is running out, and there’s no doubt that the climate crisis has come home.
Just look at Maine and Idaho, where two iconic industries, both so closely tied to the place they come from, have been upended by the climate crisis. Unfortunately, they are just the start.
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