Chili peppers, coffee, wine: how the climate crisis is causing food shortages
Huy Fong Foods, the southern California company that produces 20m bottles of sriracha annually, has experienced a low inventory of red jalapeño chili peppers in recent years made worse by spring’s crop failure. The cause? Severe weather and drought conditions in Mexico. … California’s record-setting wildfires in 2020 severely affected harvest and the hazardous air quality threatened large portions of the state’s wine grape crop. Napa Valley winemakers are being forced to take extreme action, such as spraying sunscreen on grapes and irrigating with treated wastewater from toilets and sinks, in order to survive – and some vineyards won’t.