Deepak Palakshappa became a pediatrician to give poor kids access to good medical care. Still, back in his residency days, the now-associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem was shocked to discover that a patient caring for two young grandchildren was food insecure. “Our clinic had set up one of those food drive boxes, and near the end of a visit, she asked if she could have any of the cans because she didn’t have food for the holidays,” he recalls.

Thirteen years later, Palakshappa’s clinic team now asks two simple questions of every patient to ascertain whether they’ll run out of food in a given month. But there are some critical questions they don’t ask: Do you drink your tap water? Is it potable and ample? Can you cook food with it, and use it to mix infant formula and cereal? Such questions could uncover some of the millions of Americans who are water insecure — a circumstance directly connected to food insecurity.

There’s no health care screener for water insecurity. The issue is not even on most public health professionals’ radar, although recent water disasters in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, are starting to change that. Clinicians who are aware of water insecurity “are thinking, ‘If I screen for this, what am I going to do about it?’” says Palakshappa, noting the dearth of resources available to mitigate it.

Researchers know water insecurity isn’t confined to one region or population. But “we don’t know how big of a problem it is,” says Sera Young, an associate professor of anthropology and health at Northwestern University. “And it’s going to keep biting us in the ass because we’re not measuring these things correctly.” Public health researchers talk about food and nutrition, while water researchers are siloed in infrastructure circles, and it’s rare for the two worlds to overlap. Says Young, “We need to build a bridge between those two disciplines.”

The Link Between Food Insecurity and Water Insecurity

Most estimates put US water insecurity at 2.2 million residents. Asher Rosinger, director of the Water, Health, and Nutrition Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, says this is probably a “huge” undercount, and the actual number might be closer to 60 million. There are no official estimates of combined food and water insecurity, which makes it tough to understand the scope of the problem, let alone to propose solutions.

“We’re measuring water by how many cubic meters there are and dividing it across the land,” says Northwestern’s Young. “Or we’re measuring infrastructure, which is like, ‘Where do you get your drinking water from? Is it from a tap? Is it from a well? Is it from a borehole?’ But you can imagine 99 scenarios where you have a tap, but you can’t pay for water to flow through it, or you don’t trust the water that comes out of it, or the infrastructure upstream of the tap has gone to shit. There are lots of reasons why measuring physical availability or infrastructure only gives you a pinhole peek of what the real problem is.”

The only way to truly understand water insecurity, Young says, is to consider people’s lived experiences as clinicians have learned to do with food access.

Accurate data is essential to closing the water gap because food insecurity increases the probability of water insecurity. In a study published last July in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Young, Rosinger, and a third coauthor tracked 13 years’ worth of tap water avoidance among more than 31,000 US residents. They found that people who didn’t drink their tap water had 21% greater odds of also being food insecure than those who did. “Efforts to mitigate food insecurity should simultaneously address water insecurity issues, including tap water availability and quality,” the researchers concluded.

Addressing Water Poverty

As with hunger, there are myriad reasons a person might be water insecure — some financial, some structural, and others having to do with quality and access. Still others are short-term predicaments brought on by disaster or a failure of local government.

You might think access to ample potable water is a basic human right. Legally, in the US, it isn’t (although California has taken a stab at making it so). Still, many Americans spend more than 12% of their income on water and sewer service. Others have lead pipes that contaminate tap water (Newark), or have bacteria seeping into wells (Iowa), or have sewage backing up into pipes during storms (Milwaukee), or nitrates running off farm fields (Las Vegas). A storm may knock out the electricity that pumps water (Puerto Rico), or knock out the pump itself (Jackson). Residents of the Navajo Nation lack basic water infrastructure. Then there are regions where aquifers are running dry, such as in California’s Central Valley.

Water poverty has a lot to do with health beyond the primary need to drink a couple of liters a day. Perhaps most consequentially, research shows that children exposed to lead can suffer developmental delays and brain damage. Rosinger also found that people who avoid tap water are more likely to drink sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs, in public health parlance). This alternative increases their risk for obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases, with the implications most long-lasting for children.

Prioritizing Water Access for Public Health

SSBs are one of the few issues that public health researchers track that combines both food and water insecurity. Christina Hecht, a senior policy adviser at the University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute, helped found the National Drinking Water Alliance in 2015, with a mission to improve access to potable water and educate people on the importance of drinking water instead of sugary drinks. “We discussed whether we needed to prioritize making sure that tap water was safe, but in 2015, we really didn’t think that that was a big issue,” she says. “Then Flint happened.”

Flint is just one in a long line of high-poverty communities now recognized for catastrophically unsafe water infrastructure. The city has a 29% food insecurity rate among its majority-Black population. In rural McDowell County, West Virginia, which will receive federal assistance to pilot wastewater infrastructure improvements, almost 32% of its (majority white) residents live below the federal poverty line. Century-old pipes, in some cases made of wood, bring in water so foul that residents capture creek water and store it in tanks. The most requested item at a local food bank? Bottled water.

The consequences ripple out from here. Someone who is water insecure can’t prepare food. Says Rosinger, “If your tap is dry, your water has been shut off, or you’re just avoiding it because you think it’s dangerous, you’re more likely to go out to eat. And research shows you consume a greater number of calories and have a lack of dietary diversity. So, it’s nutrition insecurity, too.”

Examining Tap Water Avoidance

Spending money on bottled water, which Rosinger says is “orders of magnitude more expensive than tap water,” might eat up $100 of a monthly food budget. For context, the maximum monthly SNAP benefits are $835 for a family of four. A water-insecure mother might pay for bottled water to mix infant formula or cereal; women inclined to breastfeed might skimp on their own hydration.

A colleague of Palakshappa’s, Dr. Kimberly Montez, recently met with a food-insecure mother from Latin America whose baby was failing to gain weight. She didn’t trust the tap water enough to drink it, so she was under-hydrated, which made breastfeeding difficult. Instead, she turned to formula, but that presented problems, too, because she thought she had to buy expensive bottled water to make it, says Montez.

If researchers can understand why people avoid their taps, they might better address fears and educate about the need for water over soda.

Young says questions about water trust and SSBs are a great start. “But don’t forget about cooking food. People are afraid of boiling pasta, so we should be asking, Are you drinking your water? Are you cooking with your water? Are you bathing with your water? And are you pissed about your water situation?” There’s some legislative interest in requiring the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which collects data on things like the prevalence of diabetes and fruit and vegetable consumption, to add questions about water insecurity. “If we want humans to be healthy, we need to realize that’s a product of a lot of things, and water is generally not on that list,” she says.

Water Is a Lifeline for Hunger and Hydration

As to the question of how clinicians can assist people identified as water insecure, there are a few initiatives in the works. SNAP recipients can already use benefits to purchase bottled water, although it comes out of their broader food allotment. Nourish California, an anti-hunger nonprofit, ran a pilot this year to see what happens when water-insecure households get extra SNAP bucks to cover half their monthly water expenditures. The results are still being analyzed. “We know we got to fix the welds, and we got to fix the pipes, but in the meantime, let’s not have people going hungry,” says Jared Call, a senior advocate at the organization.

The Environmental Protection Agency offers grants to help disadvantaged communities fund drinking water projects, test for lead, and conduct remediation in schools. Some states, like New York, offer assistance in paying overdue water bills.

Meanwhile, Young and her colleagues devised the Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, which prompts researchers to ask questions about water availability, access, and reliability for domestic use. It’s similar to the Food Insecurity Experience Scale, which asks about access to nutritious food. Young says WISE provides common language to the food and water insecurity camps since they rely on common measures and indicators.

“Evidence is growing — and plus it just makes sense — that water security underpins food security, so when you ‘fix’ water, a major driver of food insecurity is handled,” Young says. “By giving people the language to talk across the aisle, the beautiful thing is, this can be a win-win.”

Tell us in the comments:

• What do you think can be done to address food and water insecurity issues?
• Do you think water access should be a right for all?
• Do you drink your tap water?

Featured Image: iStock.com/PhilAugustavo

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• Food Insecurity Is A Problem for Almost 16 Million Americans — But See What Individuals and Organizations Are Doing and What You Can Do to Take Action

The post Why America’s Food Security Crisis Is a Water Security Crisis, Too appeared first on Food Revolution Network.

In 2002, Deirdre Birmingham and her husband, John Biondi, bought a 166-acre farm in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless region. On a portion of that land — once used to raise cattle and grow feed crops like corn, soybeans, and alfalfa — they planted apple and pear trees to make fermented ciders.

On a larger, spring-fed portion, abutting the orchard and en route to meadow and oak forest, they seeded in Indian and June and bluestem grasses, echinacea and bergamot, spiderwort and blazing stars, restoring a portion of the region’s native prairie. They knew this would benefit beleaguered wild bees, but they weren’t fully aware how this decision to rewild their landscape would help the farm, too.

Two decades later, on June 14, 2022, the weather turned unseasonably hot. After tedious cold and wet weeks, temperatures swelled throughout the morning until they hit the high of 90°F.

“We had this record-breaking heat and the trees just fast-forwarded into blossom, and dandelions and so many other things also went into bloom,” Birmingham said. “I could see wild bees on our pears, and I thought, they just have tons of work to do, and a lot of choices” of flowers to visit. She worried they’d skip her orchard’s 16,000 trees, which, like many food plants, rely on pollinators to produce a crop. Honeybees, which are trucked in to perform this task on orchards around the nation, were nowhere to be found — her beekeeper neighbor’s shipment was late.

To her surprise, though, local wild pollinators like bumble, sweat, and mason bees, nesting in the restored prairie, did all the pollination work. The result: a bountiful apple crop. “The wild will do it for you,” Birmingham said.

A Refugium for Pollinators

There’s plenty of research that supports Birmingham’s experience of wild bees’ relevance in pollinating crops like tree fruits, blueberries, and cranberries, and the role diverse plantings play in giving bees a needed forage and habitat boost. That’s why USDA and conservation nonprofits like the Xerces Society encourage farmers to plant buffers like pollinator strips — wide swaths of flowering plants adjacent to crop fields. (Birmingham got help from both.)

But there may be more going on between Birmingham’s plants and bees in this era of climate change. Her property, with its multifaceted landscape of forest and crop trees, hedgerows, and prairie, has the hallmarks of a refugium.

Refugia (from the Latin for shelter and first used in biology in the 1940s) are viewed as “relatively buffered” from climate change and a haven for vulnerable species. A refugium might be found in a sheltered valley along a river, with plenty of cover from trees. As extreme heat and drought wither plants, obliterate pollen, dry up water sources and make it harder for bees to function or find food — not to mention, threaten the human food supply — a refugium’s cooler, damper microclimate could help all manner of species survive.

In fact, refugia have played a critical role in protecting species before. During the last Ice Age, the woodland ringlet butterfly, common European viper, brown bear, black hellebore, and mountain ash hunkered down in warmer microclimates to survive the cycle of extreme cold. When things warmed up, they reemerged and repopulated parts of the planet.

Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms to Combat Climate Change

Researchers are now looking at ways this might work in our age of rising temperatures, and the role that farms might play in enhancing biodiversity. The UN Environment Program found that food and agriculture currently drive 70% of species loss, through deforestation, grassland conversion, chemical use, and other changes to the landscape. But farms like Birmingham’s might help counter that trend at a time when climate change is accelerating the threat to species.

For example, in a “complex landscape structure” like Birmingham’s, tree canopy provides cooling shade; densely planted trees and woody shrubs (i.e., hedgerows) block wind to prevent the land from drying out; soil covered with low-lying cover crops retain moisture; and flora move moisture into the air to lower the surrounding temperature. All of this helps bees, birds, and the plants themselves.

At Dru Rivers’ Full Belly organic farm in California’s northern Capay Valley — about a 90-minute drive from the Bay Area — she and her partners planted hedgerows over 30 years ago, including some that yield crops, like pomegranates and olives. The farm’s 400 acres also produce about 100 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, through which they rotate cover crops.

All of those choices enhanced the soil. So when torrential rains from the state’s unprecedented atmospheric river hit this past January, the porous soil managed to absorb all the water rather than flooding the farm. And, said Rivers, “We have the firm belief that our healthy soil helped in the drought” that hammered California over the last three years. “We still have really vibrant orchards.”

As Full Belly’s plant life has survived extremes, so, too, has extensive wildlife. Studies found that Full Belly provides so much welcoming habitat that they virtually “grow[s] their own [wild] bees,” making honeybee pollination unnecessary.

Full Belly also supports a vast amount of birdlife, including wood ducks, western bluebirds, and red-shouldered hawks. Although researchers haven’t recorded temperatures in the farm’s microclimate, it bears the hallmarks of a refugium, and “the greenness of it is comforting, even for people habitat,” Rivers says.

The UN Environment Program found that food and agriculture currently drive 70% of species loss, through deforestation, grassland conversion, chemical use, and other changes to the landscape.

Data show that the best climate-mitigating effect comes from a mosaic of landscape types, with more greenery producing greater benefits. These “dampen the impact of extreme weather events, be it high temperature, extreme drought, extreme precipitation,” wrote Jonas Lembrechts, an ecologist at the University of Antwerp, in an email. “Such ‘green solutions’ can certainly be highlighted as one of the better climate adaption scenarios a person can do.”

Conservation for Species Survival

These habitats are plentiful in nature, too. Scientists around the world have been locating existing refugia and tallying their various soil types, water availability, and slope direction, all of which play a role in creating nurturing microclimates.

One meadow refugium in a Sierra Nevada, California valley was found to be 18 degrees cooler than surrounding mountainsides; researchers identified 400 plant and 100 bird species on just 800 acres. “Especially at night, the cooling effect of nature reserves can reach to 2 kilometers (nearly one mile),” Lembrechts wrote, expanding a refugium’s reach.

These protective reserves are critical for the future of species. Refugia, in general, “harbor large amounts of genetic diversity, so I guess that gives some hope,” said biologist Matthew Koski at Clemson University, because the species that survive in these microclimates can potentially evolve. “So conserving these regions is extremely important.”

One challenge: “What if these refugia are kept to very small, protected areas and then developed around? That’s going to be totally problematic because it’s likely that those population sizes will decline,” he said — unless some connectivity between microhabitats can be established. Work is already underway in the US to address those problems, with solutions like pollinator corridors in rural and urban areas.

The Importance of Microclimates

A recent study pointed out that even a farm that supports a monoculture like wheat is often scattered with less-productive tracts suitable for habitat. Ilona Naujokaitis-Lewis, a landscape ecologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada at Canada’s National Wildlife Research Centre has been studying 30 agricultural landscapes in Ontario. She sees particular promise in hedgerows, under which she’s found summer temperatures to be “remarkably” cooler than on adjacent crop fields, sometimes by nearly 15°F. (Lembrechts found a similar scenario in Flemish gardens.) The more trees, the more cooling effects from direct shading and wind movement patterns.

Treed hedgerows, in particular “can maximize biodiversity of beneficial insects and provide co-benefits for climate mitigation,” concluded research co-conducted by Naujokaitis-Lewis.

That doesn’t mean refugia are immune to the stresses of extreme weather. “Microclimates that are a few degrees cooler might be enough to weather a short period of extreme heat or drought, but eventually pollinators need to leave their relative safety to forage for food,” said Grant Duffy, an ecologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

And plants will eventually succumb to persistent scorch and lack of water, even if your “soil sponge,” as Lembrechts calls it, helps out for a while.

Nevertheless, a range of plants that bloom across the span of a bee’s life might allow it to stay put in a protected oasis longer. “Anything that adds more habitat complexity is going to create more microclimate variability [to give] pollinators… a better range of options when temperatures are especially warm (or cold), so they can avoid the worst of those extremes,” Duffy said.

Anything that adds more habitat complexity is going to create more microclimate variability [to give] pollinators… a better range of options when temperatures are especially warm (or cold), so they can avoid the worst of those extremes.

Grant Duffy, University of Otago

In other words, refugia could buy species some time: first to adapt, then to wend their way toward more comfortable areas. “All animals can survive within certain critical thermal limits — the lower and higher temperatures at which they die — which they achieve by something we call plasticity, or acclimation,” said Hester Weaving, an entomologist at the University of Bristol. Insects can adapt to heat by producing heat shock proteins, for example.

“You can imagine that this process could be really useful for climate change, because, different from evolution, which is occurring over many generations and might be too slow, acclimation can happen within hours.” How plastic are insects, including bees? Not very, a recent study of Weaving’s revealed. “That’s when you know these microclimates are going to be really important for [their] survival,” she said.

Hope for the Future of Pollinators

Agricultural landscapes with a robust array of plants will likely become even more important as temperatures warm. “When we create pollinator-friendly habitat, we create larger populations of pollinators that are going to have a better capacity to adapt to future changes,” said biologist Jessica Forrest of the University of Ottawa, who studies how climate change affects plant-pollinator interactions. The bigger those populations are, “the more chance there is that one individual’s got a mutation that allows it to tolerate whatever new environmental condition is coming along.”

Sadly, those benefits aren’t recognized often enough. Naujokaitis-Lewis, for example, has encountered farmers bent on removing hedgerows from their property to keep them from toppling onto fields in intensifying storms, fully unaware of the climatic advantages of keeping them intact. Birmingham, meanwhile, has experienced these advantages firsthand. Two years ago, her landscape proved its greater worth. “We had a drought year that didn’t faze our prairie because these plants are so deep-rooted,” she said. Not only did her fruit trees get pollinated; her wild bees survived and thrived in their habitat.

Tell us in the comments:

• Do you know of any local farms working to restore pollinator habitats?

• Have you observed any changes in the number of bees and other pollinators in your area?

• How can you create more pollinator-friendly habitats within your community or in your backyard?

Featured Image: iStock.com/oltrelautostrada

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• Why the Global “Insect Apocalypse” is Concerning & What You Can Do About It
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The post A Chilling Effect: How Farms Can Help Pollinators Survive the Stress of Climate Change appeared first on Food Revolution Network.