The global pandemic has put a focus on essential workers, those we rely on for basic services. Workers who pick crops, from strawberries to apples to nuts, already face harsh conditions harvesting in fields during summer harvest months. Those conditions will worsen significantly over the coming decades.
A new study from the University of Washington and Stanford University, published online in Environmental Research Letters, looks at temperature increases in counties across the United States where crops are grown. It also looks at different strategies the industry could adopt to protect workers’ health.
“Studies of climate change and agriculture have traditionally focused on crop yield projections, especially staple crops like corn and wheat,” said lead author Michelle Tigchelaar, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who did the work while with the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences. “This study asks what global warming means for the health of agricultural workers picking fruits and vegetables.”
The average picker now experiences 21 days each year when the daily heat index — a mix of air temperature and humidity — would exceed workplace safety standards. Using projections from climate models, the study shows the number of unsafe days in crop-growing counties will jump to 39 days per season under 2 degrees Celsius warming, which is expected by 2050, and to 62 unsafe days under 4 degrees Celsius warming, which is expected by 2100.
“The climate science community has long been pointing to the global south, the developing countries, as places that will be disproportionately affected by climate change,” said co-author David Battisti, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. “This shows that you don’t have to go to the global south to find people who will get hurt with even modest amounts of global warming — you just have to look in our own backyard.”
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