- This is a huckleberry, an iconic Oregon fruit.

And this is a map that shows where huckleberries grow now and where they're likely to grow in the future.

But this migration north and up isn't unique to huckleberries.

As Oregon warms and weather changes, our food systems are changing too.

Here's how Oregon is divided into nine eco regions, each with its own unique climate, animals, and plants.

From the glacial cut Gorges in the Blue Mountains, known for their beef to the lava shaped landscape of the Columbia plateau, a beacon of grain production to the fertile soil and abundant rainfall of the Willamette Valley, one of the most agriculturally diverse regions in the world.

The food we love is directly tied to the land and each region's unique climate.

Op b's Alejandro Figueroa caught up with some experts around the state.

Here's a look at three of the biggest climate impacts likely to challenge food systems in Oregon.

First, let's look at temperature.

Oregon's annual average temperature has already warmed by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century since 1895, and is projected to warm another 7.6 degrees by 2100.

So what does this mean for our food?

Well, plants react to a set of environmental factors like temperature, sunlight, and water that dictate where they thrive.

As temperature increases, suitable habitat moves often north and up in elevation.

Take the huckleberry.

It's a good example of how shifting climates are impacting plants.

First foods like the huckleberry respond directly to the conditions of the land without farmer intervention.

- If we are looking at huckleberry habitat specifically, we might be losing areas of the blue mountains that are suitable for huckleberries, but we might be gaining suitability in the owas as things start to warm where they were previously, like glaciers - In agriculture, farmers grow crops suited to the climate they farm in.

It's all intrinsically connected.

- Every crop is a Goldilocks.

You know, it has, I don't like this, I don't like that.

This is just Right.

- Climate and agriculture really linked, right.

I mean, the whole reason we grow soft white wheat here is because of the climate we have.

- Or take wine grapes, for example.

- Pinot noir grapes, from what I understand of wine grapes, you know, they generally do well in kind of cooler conditions.

So maybe Oregon isn't gonna be a hundred years from now as known for its pinot as say it's known for, for, I don't know, maybe Syrah or something like that.

But you know, you can still have a thriving wine grape industry.

It just might be a different type of grape.

- And while people expect the climate to get hotter and drier, that's not the whole story.

Water is vital for all life, and as things warm up, it's going to become harder to access and store.

It's counterintuitive, but warmer temperatures actually mean more potential evapotranspiration.

Okay, quick science lesson.

Science evapotranspiration is the combination of two processes, evaporation when water evaporates off the ground or a body of water and transpiration when plants release water in the form of vapor through tiny openings in their leaves.

That combination could make certain regions wetter during different parts of the year.

And while there might be slightly more rain in certain parts of Oregon during the Cold Seasons, that extra water also comes with trade-offs.

50% less snowfall, drier summers more frequent and intense bouts of rain and shifts in the seasonal availability of water.

- Are we gonna go, you know, into a future where it is not snow enough, it does not rain enough?

- So there's two ways to think about it.

One is how much precipitation do you get?

And total precipitation statewide is likely to stay fairly consistent or maybe increase a little bit, even if the total amount of precipitation that you receive stays fairly stable because temperatures are increasing.

Water availability decreases.

- This all means soil health and water saving practices will become increasingly important when the moisture comes.

- It's all about getting it into the soil and keeping it there and then letting the plant utilize it through the year.

Make sure the plant doesn't have any reason that it can't root deep enough.

We're looking at residue from previous crops here.

This had a sunflower crop two years ago, so this isn't a good example, but you know, out in the field there's some big coarse chunks of residue out here that you wouldn't find elsewhere.

- How far in the field?

- Well, let's just go see if we can find some.

Okay.

Never know where you're gonna find it.

So this is a sunflower residue here, so it's breaking down.

Right.

- And how is that helpful for the soil?

- Well, the, the, like - That ssue, - Any residue on top of soil protects it from the raindrop that can liquefy soil and then get it moving.

We don't want that.

We want it to break up that force of the raindrop.

If you do get water moving after snow melt or something, it just slows it down and gives us a chance to, to percolate into the soil.

We've, we've tried to leave the root channels from the previous crop undisturbed, so, you know, any, any moisture can infiltrate in those, you know, after 30 years of, of no-till, it, it, it goes down through the soil profile really well.

So I actually didn't probe deeper than four feet this spring, but it was wet all the way down and I had consistent moisture through all four feet, which is a good thing.

The deeper we get it down there, as long as the roots can get to it, you know, the less likelihood we're gonna lose it out the top too.

A day like this where it's going the wrong way, - Hover crops can protect soil and act as a fertilizer that feeds fungal networks and helps maintain moisture and utilizing no or low till practices can help preserve those fungal networks.

- There's a myline layer, six to eight inches below the surface.

That's how first foods are able to thrive during drought.

That's how they're adapted to this area.

So when we go and we till and we dig, we're tearing up those layers that, that have been the foundation of the first foods.

- The fungus that are living in the soil will scavenge water.

They'll actually make associations with certain plants and then they'll amplify the amount of water that a plant has access to by making an association at the root with a, a fungal network.

- I like to remind folks that concepts like permaculture and sustainable agriculture and regenerative agriculture are really just indigenous knowledge with kind of a new packaging on top of them.

- Okay, now let's talk about the unpredictable extremes like the heat dome in 2021 or the ice storm in 2024.

How are the stewards of our foods responding to these challenges?

- You know, no organism responds to averages.

Every organism, you know, what you respond to is the extremes.

- What we're dealing with is extremes that feel like someone flipped a switch and you go from two wet to suddenly two dry - Back in 2020, we had a 500 year flood event where I think 20% of our annual precipitation fell in two days.

- Yeah, there's stories of huge snowfall events that I've never seen in, in my lifetime.

We had some silly high temperatures a couple years ago, and we don't have any control of that.

All we can control is how our land is able to handle that.

- Diversity increases a farmer's ability to weather storms, literally.

- I think it's trying to come up with a resilient system where we can capture the water and then, you know, balance a rotation that is diverse enough that if it's hot at just the wrong time for this crop, it's not your only crop.

Right?

Or if you get a hailstorm, you know, at just the wrong time, you've got multiple crops, you know, basically we're trying to spread our planting and our harvest windows out, and that's all part of risk management - At the Sun Boat Produce Farm.

Nate and Bee also focus on growing regionally adapted plants and saving seeds from more resilient varieties.

We're in partnership - With the plants that we grow, and so over time we adapt their needs and the plants adapt to ours.

- Shifting seasons and extreme weather might also change when we eat what foods.

- Several years in a row, we had celery that kept volunteering in the winter, so we decided to save the seed from the celery that, so like a abundantly wanted to grow at a time of year where you wouldn't think to plant celery and now we have the most delicious winter celery.

It is, it grows this tall.

It is robust.

I mean, it is incredible.

- We've always let the land and the resources be, and that's a new concept I think for this society.

You get out of the way of the river and you give the animals the space they need.

And that's just a ongoing foreign concept in modern times.

- So food systems and people have survived and adapted through millennia, and while agriculture might look a little different in the future, it's going to stick around, but - It's, it's not always enough to say, well, you can eat this instead.

It's not always that simple.

I mean, in terms of just survival, it's that simple.

But it's not necessarily that simple in terms of what people value, in terms of quality of life.

There probably are some things, this is my best guess.

Some things that are grown now in the agricultural parts of California may become more viable in Oregon, but it's not simply a matter of of climate.

There are other human factors.

- We can't predict human behavior and there are a range of changes to our food systems that can also be harder to predict, like impacts to pollinators, problems with invasive species, and even whether farmers will have the right tools to adapt.

- What you're talking about, I mean, these are, there are some of these other indirect consequences or impacts to the agriculture industry.

Are they prepared or flexible enough to deal with some of these changes?

- The point you're hitting on is it's not as simple as, well, you know, I'm gonna plant peppers instead of tomatoes or what have you.

But it's sort of, okay, well what do you need in terms of, of harvest timing?

When do you need workers?

What do you need those workers to be doing?

What kind of equipment do you need for, for planting and harvesting?

Many of those things need to adapt.

- Maybe we will grow more tomatoes or wine grape varieties that can tolerate drought or apples that can survive in early freeze.

But we are not going to become the Sacramento Valley.

We are unique.

- I mean, none of this is a surprise to, to people who have some growing experience in the region.

- We are literally, our boots are on the ground.

We have, you know, the practice, just the daily observation of what's happening.

We have to check the weather before we can get to work.

- Tribal people have always changed tribal people in their relationship to First foods have lasted thousands of years that have included things like the Missoula floods that carved the path of the Columbia River to the ocean, the eruption of Mount Mazama that blanketed the region in Ash.

These relationships have withstood natural changes in climate in all of this time.

- I mean, agriculture's always adapted to change.

I mean, we can do our best here, but all along the way, everyone's gonna have to try to make these adjustments so that we can head off.

At the past the, the worst problems - And every year is different.

So we're, we're well versed in handling the unknown.

You know, I think that change is constant, right.

And I've got a lot of faith in our ability to adapt to change over time.

- Super curious site note, are those roots edible or are they too fibrous?

- They're pretty fibrous, yeah.

I think if we had animals we'd be able to feed it to them, but - Okay, - That's not bad.

- No, it's so closely related to a beat.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- Yeah, that's not bad actually.