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One of the West's iconic foods, New Mexico's Hatch green chile, is feeling the heat from climate change, water rights, and labor challenges. High Country News editorial fellow Wufei Yu reports that chile farmers are struggling with an uncertain future.
Fluctuating temperatures are the first challenge: Hatch chiles struggle below 60 degrees, can be killed by a light frost, and won't bear fruit above 95 degrees. And with climate change driving the current drought, irrigation districts are struggling to provide enough water to farmers.
“It’s crazy that all our water is gone,” said chile farmer Jesse Moreno. “My dad used to tell me that before these two decades, he could get water from the river from February till fall.” But this summer, Moreno had to use groundwater to irrigate his 9.5-acre leased chile field, costing him thousands of dollars.
Adding to the uncertainty, a years-long lawsuit between New Mexico and Texas over groundwater pumping could further limit the water available, and the saline concentration is increasing in some wells as pumping lowers the water table.
High Country News reports that labor shortages, driven by low wages and poor working conditions, have led farmers to switch to crops that are less labor-intensive but use much more water, such as pecans and alfalfa. Since 1992, chile harvesting acreage in New Mexico has dropped from 34,000 to around 8,000 acres today.
All eyes on methane
As President Biden prepares to go to the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, methane emissions are in the spotlight. With Senator Joe Manchin on a mission to remove climate-related measures from the budget bill, the president's last hope of taking real climate action to Glasgow may be the EPA, which is expected to release stringent new methane rules this week. E&E News reports that the draft rules would affect older facilities that leak much more methane than newer infrastructure.
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I learned how to suffer through all kinds of discomfort because what you get from it makes it worthwhile. It’s the same for anybody who wants to follow a path of bliss. There’s a lot of suffering. With climbing, you just have to deal. It’s not like you can say, ‘oh, it’s raining, let’s go back to the car’ when you’re 2,500 feet up. It’s such a privilege to be up there. Climbers get to go to the most unimaginable, beautiful, inspiring places, and the only way to experience them is to put in the hard work.”
