* Economic Adaptation

Seven years ago, Jeff Hammer opened one of the Skagit Valley’s first wineries in south Mount Vernon and later began growing wine grapes on an adjoining two-acre strip of land.

Back then, the notion of producing wine with grapes grown in the north Puget Sound seemed far-fetched to all but a few.

Seven wineries and more than two-dozen local commercial grape growers later, the question now revolves around just how big a wine region this could become.

“I used to hear a lot of people say ‘I didn’t know you could grow grapes here,’” said Hammer, a former marketing manager and self-taught winemaker whose Carpenter Creek Winery is the result of a hobby gone out of control. “I don’t hear that anymore.”

While Hammer and others expect the industry here to double within the next decade or so, there’s mounting evidence that the grape-growing boom has the potential to be bigger than they realize.

Changes by degree

Over the past 50 years, nighttime temperatures in the north Puget Sound have inched upward to a place more conducive to wine grape production, scientists say. That slight shift helped make the county’s modest present-day industry possible, and it’s just the beginning.

If current warming trends hold, scientists project that the Puget Sound area could one day become one of North America’s premiere wine growing regions.

Of course, at $1 million in revenues per year, the local wine industry is a long way from becoming one of the county’s top crops, much less a prized wine destination. But the dramatic changes anticipated for wine growers here underscores how even subtle climactic shifts could create waves in the county’s $255 million per year agriculture industry.

Scientists at the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group are already projecting more winter rainfall, an earlier onset of spring and an average temperature increase of a half-degree each decade over the next 50 years.

Researchers have just begun considering how those factors may affect tulips, potatoes, vegetable seeds and other signature crops grown in the Skagit Valley.

So far, there are no easy answers.

“The bottom line is we don’t know a lot yet,” said Chad Kruger, a scientist at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources in Wenatchee, who’s leading a research project examining the issue.

One thing that’s certain is that the portfolio of crops Skagit Valley farmers grow will change.

A kaleidoscope of factors

In the next 50 years, Skagit Valley farmers could see the direct impacts of climate change through longer growing seasons, drier summers, wetter winters and changing behavior among pests, weeds and diseases.

While dikes may protect delta farmland from the prospect of rising sea levels, there’s also the possibility for saltwater intrusion into the water table.

The most potent impact could come indirectly through shifts in the global marketplace.

Just where that leaves Skagit Valley farmers remains an enormously complex question that scientists are only beginning to answer.

In the driest stretches of Eastern Washington, water availability could become an issue. But that’s less of a concern here, where only about 10,000 acres of farmland are irrigated each summer.

Climate change is most concerning for niche crops because the unique conditions that enable those crops to thrive here will be altered.

Change in Skagit crops?

Skagit County’s sunny, dry summers and cool nighttime temperatures are perfect for growing blueberries, according to Tom Walters, a small-fruit researcher at the WSU Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center.

Those conditions have enabled blueberries to become a $10 million crop here. But warmer nights would diminish the crop’s quality.

Other small fruits, such as raspberries, are susceptible to root rot during wet winters and would be less viable if rainfall increased during those months. Raspberries are also sensitive to daytime highs above 75 degrees.

Other prominent crops, such as spinach seed, experience significant drops in quality and yield when exposed to high amounts of heat.

There’s also potential trouble for the valley’s famed tulip fields.

Tulip bulbs need a period of chilling during winter to reproduce and grow, according to Don McMoran, an instructor at WSU’s Skagit Cooperative Extension. A 1- to 4-degree rise in winter temperatures wouldn’t be too worrisome. But a 10-degree swing would.

The biggest direct impact all growers could face stems from diseases, weeds and pests. Scientists figure that a slight increase in temperatures will create more favorable conditions for many plant pathogens.

One of the most alarming of those would be blight, which already poses significant risk to the valley’s $60 million potato industry.

“It can be very devastating in Western Washington,” said Lindsey du Toit, a seed pathologist at WSU’s Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center. “It explodes very easily.”

Ultimately, du Toit believes farmers here should be in good shape to adapt to different varieties or new crops altogether if needed. Thus, a lost opportunity for one crop should be an opportunity gained with another.

“What we’ll see if this continues is a shift in crops that are more prevalent here,” she said.

In the case of wine grapes, that shift has already begun.

Growers look north

Wine grape growing in this state used to be only an Eastern Washington endeavor.

These days, not a week goes by at the Carpenter Creek Winery where Hammer isn’t approached by landowners who want to sell him grapes they’ve grown in Skagit soil.

If the grapes are good, the answer is always yes.

In the not too distant past, this would have been unthinkable, according to Greg Jones, a wine climatologist at Southern Oregon University.

“If you went up to the Puget Sound 50 years ago and said ‘I want to grow wine grapes,’ people would have said you were nuts because the climate wasn’t conducive,” said Jones, who helped conduct a 2006 study on how extreme heat could shift some domestic wine production to cooler climates.

Jones’ research has shown that temperatures in the Western U.S. have not only warmed, but in places like the Puget Sound, there was more warming at night compared with the daytime, and the number of days with frost was reduced.

The same thing has happened in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Jones said, which now has a prominent Pinot Noir region.

Jones and other researchers have questioned the long-term viability of grape production in parts of California where climates are expected to exceed the upper tolerance range for certain varieties.

Experts disagree on whether places such as Oregon and Washington could supplant California’s wine industry, but they agree that acreage in the Pacific Northwest will likely increase this century.

Faced with the prospect of growing table grapes and raisins, some California wine producers are already looking at land in cooler climates near the California coast, Sierra Nevada Mountains and even Oregon.

Jones also expects those growers to begin investing in land in both Eastern and Western Washington.

Wine grapes aren’t the only crop that could migrate north.

Researchers say there’s a possibility that production in already parched farm regions in places such as Australia could diminish or even vanish and be absorbed by northern climates.

World impact

Most experts believe that shifts in the global marketplace appear more likely to significantly affect Washington farms than the direct impacts of changes in temperature and precipitation.

The potential ripple effects originating in the global marketplace have caught the attention of scientists, including Kruger at WSU.

“The real elephant in the room that no one’s talking about is with the global marketplace,” he said.

Kruger points to droughts in Australia and the Midwestern U.S. in recent years that have been a boon for wheat growers in Eastern Washington, who for years had struggled to even turn a profit. 

Whether those droughts are caused by climate change is beside the point, Kruger said. Instead it shows just how much farmers are affected by the global marketplace.

Assuming current projections hold and Washington as a whole doesn’t become much more susceptible to prolonged droughts, it’s possible that farmers here actually stand to gain.

Phil Wandschneider, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at WSU in Pullman, pointed out that farmers here are very adaptable.

In Western Washington, he said, farmers have 10 or so crops they can potentially grow. That fact won’t change if climates warm, but the exact selection of crops may shift.

“It’s doubtful we’re going to get aced out of something. It’s not a soy and corn economy. We can adjust a bit,” Wandschneider said. “Let’s put it this way: If I were a farmer in Western Washington, I would be hanging onto my land.”

Skagit Warming Series:
Skagit Warming Page
Climate change and the Skagit Valley
Temperatures rising, glaciers melting in Northwest
Nature’s Laboratory
Researchers explore effects of climate change on health
Warming’s impact on Skagit water
Climate change poses threat to regional icons
Warming shifts odds away from salmon survival
Cashing in on global warming
Warming: A rising tide
Tribe, La Conner on front lines
Green Power
Nuclear power unlikely alternative
Skagit Warming: Government action
Climate and You
What You Can Do
Why turn off the lights?
Skagit Warming: Tell us what you think

* Josh Lintereur can be reached at 360-416-2141 or at .