Climate change is bringing warmer night temperatures to berry growing regions around the world. This is bad news for growers. Retail prices are substantially lower for smaller-sized fruit, as consumers (allegedly) prefer the larger strawberries. And as smaller fruit is more time-consuming to pick, smaller berries raise harvesting costs significantly. Though work is underway to breed strawberries better adapted to higher temperatures, this could take a decade to flow on to commercial strawberry farms. For now, growers will need to plant earlier in the season to get larger strawberries at harvest time.
In the future, we could use climate-controlled growing facilities to circumvent higher outdoor temperatures, provided solutions can be found to automate harvesting and lower energy costs.
Read the full story at ABC Rural.
Source: Climate change means smaller strawberries, higher costs for farmers I ABC Rural