Fighting Food Insecurity in the Face of Climate Chaos

As climate chaos increasingly ravages the planet, producing sufficient, high-quality, and local food is becoming more precarious. Soaring temperatures, droughts, and flooding are taking farmland out of production and causing both food shortages and food prices to rise. Food insecurity and hunger are global crises. According to the “2025 Global Report on Food Crises,” more than 295 million people suffered from acute food insecurity around the world in 2024.

On April 8 the Washington State Department of Ecology announced a drought emergency due to dismal snowpack in the mountains this past winter. In seven of the past ten years, parts of, or all of, the state have suffered drought conditions. This has reduced the quantity of food produced, lowered the quality in some cases, and increased food prices.

I want to share with you a couple of examples of how some have adapted to help address part of the problem.

The Atlas Mountains

In March, my wife Becki and I stayed with a Berber family in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. The Imlil valley sits at about 6,000 feet and is the gateway to Mount Toubkal, the highest mountain in northern Africa.

Berber settlements in the high Atlas date back to prehistoric times. Rock engravings reveal a culture that developed an agrarian society in this rugged terrain. The river valley and terraces carved into the lower third of the mountains supported an abundance of vegetables, e.g., carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, turnips, and radishes. Their dwellings were constructed with red clay, stone, and the wood from cedar, juniper, and pine trees.

Over the past twenty years, climate change has dramatically reduced the amount of snow pack and water available for irrigation. Instead of growing vegetables on the terraced mountain sides, fruit trees that require less water and less frequent watering have been planted.

After thousands of years, they can no longer produce all the vegetables that they need in the high Atlas Mountains. They now grow apples, cherries, plums, and quince to sell in other parts of the country and Africa, and import vegetables to supplement what they can no longer grow. A partial solution for now.

San Juan Island

Living on a small island creates opportunities. Four years ago, I volunteered to be on the Board of the Farmers Market. Shortly thereafter, I was drafted to be its president. A lesson learned, be careful what you volunteer for in a small community.

Small scale farming on an island in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and increasingly impacted by climate change, can be hard. Living on an island that is largely dependent on its food from the mainland, has a housing shortage, and not enough family wage jobs, can be hard.

Over the past three years we have created various strategies to help community members in need. Small-scale organic farmers deal with the vagaries of agriculture in a climate-changing world and food insufficiency.

The first strategy was to create a grant program for farmers to increase regenerative agricultural practices to improve the health of the soil, conserve water, and produce higher quality food. Through our Agricultural Guild, we give out small grants to farmers for things like cover cropping, rotational grazing, no-till soil preparation, composting, reducing artificial fertilizers, and increasing plant diversity.

A second strategy was creating the Fresh Bucks program. We raise private dollars and then give individuals ($20) and families ($40) on each farmers market day (every Saturday, April-November, and two Saturdays a month, December-March), to purchase organic fruit and vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and seeds to eat. Fresh Bucks go to individuals/families earning less than 200% of the poverty level by family size, and then are used to make purchases from local farmers. In 2024, we distributed $28,000 in four months. In 2025 we distributed $55,000 in seven months. This year we expect to distribute $75,000 for the entire year. The Fresh Bucks program helps two vulnerable island communities and helps decrease food insecurity.

Finally, we have created a co-op table at the farmers market where market staff sell the produce of backyard gardeners and small farmers who don’t have either enough produce or the ability to staff a table at the market. This gets more food into the hands of community members year-round, and, through Fresh Bucks, helps reduce food insecurity and raises the income for small farmers.