What's with the weather?

If any more rain falls on my garden this summer, I’ll have to convert to rice production.
Rather than throwing a paddy, I’m enjoying the experience of living in a rainforest and practising a blend of aquaculture and horticulture in my vegetable garden. Who’d have thought watercress would be the main crop this summer. The sopping skies have got me thinking though, about climate change. There’s something in the air, isn’t there. This isn’t natural, all this rain and cloud. Say what you will, the climate’s changing, not just here, but across the globe. And it’s not so simple as saying that it’s warming everywhere. Some places are experiencing colder than usual seasons. The scientists who predicted and continue to report on climate change described how patterns of weather across the world would become less stable, more unpredictable and less comfortable for all. It seems to be happening just as they said it would and Southland’s weather this summer certainly fits the pattern of greater unsettledness. It’s predicted to get worse, swing more widely and roughen up. People living in drought-prone areas will be really worried and will be looking for wetter areas to relocate to. Southland is one of those increasingly attractive areas where water, or rather, lack of water, isn’t a problem.
If there’s going to be greater need, and I believe there is, for well rained-on areas to grow food for hungry people in arid regions, we should prepare ourselves to do just that. Southlanders know agriculture, have lots of land and , as of this summer, more rain than we can shake a barely-tanned fist at.
Our good soils and our rain grow good crops: grains, vegetables and fruits and given a bit more of that ‘global warming’ we’ve been warned about, fields of rice.