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Abandoning the practice that defined most of her days, she now sets off to the river in the pitch dark to chase what fish are also awake before dawn. It\u2019s taken a toll on her catch, and her life. But it\u2019s the only way she can continue her work in the face of increasingly dangerous temperatures.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our fishing communities have shifted to fishing in the nighttime,\u201d said Pinto da Costa, who advocates nationally for fisherfolk communities like hers through the Movimento de Pescadores e Pescadoras Artesanais do Brasil, or the Movement of Artisanal Fishermen and Fisherwomen of Brazil.<\/p>\n
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How farmers are adapting to Phoenix’s rising temperatures to keep growing food.<\/p>\n
Moving from daytime to overnight work is often presented as the most practical solution for agricultural laborers struggling with rising temperatures as a result of climate change. But it is no longer simply a proposal: This shift is already underway among many of the communities that catch, grow, and harvest the world\u2019s food supply, from Brazil to India to the United States. Studies show the most common means of adapting to rising temperatures in most crop-growing regions has been to start working when it\u2019s still dark out, or even to shift to a fully overnight schedule.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe obvious piece of advice that you\u2019ll see given is, \u2018Work at night. Give workers head torches,\u2019 and so on,\u201d said Zia Mehrabi, a food security and climate researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. \u201cBut the reality is, that can lead to other rights violations, other negative impacts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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That\u2019s been the case for Pinto da Costa and her fishing community in Brazil. Nighttime work has been an additional hardship for a community already struggling with the impacts of climate change. The region has experienced decades of severe drought conditions, causing fish to die off and physically isolating people as waterways dried up.<\/p>\n
Photography via Shuttertock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Research shows that regularly working during the night is physically and mentally disruptive and can lead to long-term health complications. Nighttime fishing is also threatening social and communal routines among the fisherfolk. A daytime sleep schedule can curb quality time spent with loved ones, as well as limit when wares can be sold or traded in local markets.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s also impacting their ability to support themselves and their families through a generations-old trade. \u201cWe\u2019ve actually been working more hours with less food, with less production,\u201d said Pinto da Costa, noting that working at night has made their work less efficient and led them to find less fish. \u201cThis is across all regions of Brazil,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
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The impact of a shift to nighttime hours is an understudied piece of the puzzle of how climate change and rising temperatures threaten the world\u2019s food supply and its workforce. But for many experts, and those on the front lines, one thing is clear: Overnight work is far from a straightforward solution.<\/p>\n
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\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very scary time for us,\u201d said Pinto da Costa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Outdoor workers, with their typical midday hours and limited access to shade, face some of the most perilous health risks during periods of extreme heat. A forthcoming analysis \u2014\u00a0previewed exclusively by Grist \u2014 found that, on average, the amount of time considered unsafe to work outside during a typical 9-to-5 workday will increase 8 percent by 2050, assuming greenhouse gas emissions stay on their current trajectory.<\/p>\n
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Led by Naia Ormaza Zulueta, a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Mehrabi, the analysis measures the number of extreme heat days by geographic region, and then breaks down daily and hourly temperatures by the estimated amount of population exposed. The research reveals that an estimated 21 percent of the global population already faces dangerous levels of heat stress during typical workday hours for more than a third of the year. By 2050, without cuts to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions (known as the \u201cbusiness-as-usual\u201d scenario), that portion will jump to 39 percent.<\/p>\n
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\nOpinion: As the heat rises, we must do better at protecting agricultural workers.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cThe number of days that people will experience a violation of their rights to a safe climate is going to substantially increase, but then also the number of possible working hours in a season, and productivity, is going to be substantially reduced,\u201d said Mehrabi. \u201cIt\u2019s a massive lose-lose situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their analysis finds that outdoor agricultural workers will encounter the largest health-related risks, with laborers in some areas being hit harder than others.<\/p>\n
Photography via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n India, in particular, is projected to be one of the countries whose workforce will be most exposed to heat stress under the business-as-usual climate scenario. There are roughly 260 million agricultural workers in India. By 2050, 94 percent of the country\u2019s population could face more than 100 days in a year when at least one daytime working hour exceeds a wet-bulb temperature of 28 degrees Celsius, or 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit \u2014\u00a0a conservative threshold of what is considered safe for acclimatized workers experiencing moderate rates of work. (Unacclimatized workers, or those unaccustomed to working in such environments, will face greater levels of heat risk at the same temperature and amount of work.)<\/p>\n
In Brazil, another of the world\u2019s top agricultural suppliers, heat risk is not as dire, but still poses a substantial risk for outdoor workers, including Pinto da Costa\u2019s community of fisherfolk. By 2050, roughly 41 percent of the country\u2019s population could experience more than 100 days a year when wet-bulb temperatures exceed the recommended threshold for at least one hour a day, according to the Boulder team\u2019s analysis.<\/p>\n
Mary Jo Dudley, the director of Cornell University\u2019s Farmworker Program and the chair of the U.S. National Advisory Council of Migrant Health, said that the analysis is significant for what it reveals about the human health consequences of extreme heat, particularly as it relates to the world\u2019s agricultural laborers. She\u2019s seeing more and more outdoor agricultural workers in the U.S. adopt overnight schedules, which is only adding to the burdens and inequities the wider workforce already suffers from. This is poised to get worse. Zulueta and Mehrabi found that 35 percent of the total U.S. population will experience more than 100 days of wet-bulb temperatures exceeding 28 degrees C, or 82.4 degrees F, for at least one hour a day every year by 2050.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis transition to a nighttime schedule pushes an extremely vulnerable population into more difficult work conditions that have significant mental and physical health impacts,\u201d said Dudley.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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Rebuking the human body\u2019s circadian rhythms \u2014 that 24-hour internal clock that regulates when you sleep and wake \u2014 ramps up a person\u2019s risk of health complications, such as cardiovascular disease and types of cancer, and diminishes their body\u2019s ability to handle injury and stress. Working untraditional hours also can reduce a person\u2019s ability to socialize or participate in cultural, communal activities, which are associated with positive impacts on brain and body health.<\/p>\n
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Women are particularly vulnerable to the social and economic impacts of transitioning to nighttime schedules. Despite making up nearly 45 percent of artisanal fishers in Brazil, women receive lower pay than their male counterparts. That means that when harvests decline with nighttime fishing, their margins are even smaller.<\/p>\n
Photography via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n In the Brazilian state of Bahia, tens of thousands of women fishers work to collect shellfish en masse, while in Maranh\u00e3o, women fisherfolk herd shrimp to the shore using small nets. Clam harvesting in Brazil\u2019s northeast is also dominated by women. Because these jobs traditionally happened during the day and close to home, they allowed women to balance cultural or gendered family roles, including managing the household and being the caregiver to children. Shifting to evening hours to avoid extreme heat \u201cposes a fundamental challenge,\u201d said Mehrabi. \u201cWhen you talk about changing working hours, you talk about disrupting families.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Overnight work comes with other risks too. In many areas of Brazil, nighttime work is \u201ceither impossible\u201d or \u201cvery complicated\u201d because there are procedures and regulations as to when fisherfolk in different regions can fish, said Pinto da Costa. Nighttime fishing is regulated in some parts of Brazil \u2014 measures that have been shown to disproportionately impact artisanal fishers.<\/p>\n
Even so, says Pinto da Costa, many are braving the risks \u201cjust to reduce the amount of exposure to the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, when I saw that this was accepted in the literature, that people were giving this advice of changing their working shifts to the night, I was shocked,\u201d said Zulueta, the author of the Boulder study, citing a paper published earlier this year where overnight work is recommended as an adaptation tool to reduce agricultural productivity losses to heat exposure. Under a policy of \u201cavoiding unsafe working hours,\u201d shifting those hours to the nighttime \u201cis not a universally applicable solution,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\nCan the heat from running computers help grow our food? It’s complicated.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nGrowing up a pastoralist in Ahmedabad, India, Bhavana Rabari has spent much of her life helping tend to her family\u2019s herd of buffalo. Although she now spends her days advocating for pastoralists across the Indian state of Gujarat, the routine of her childhood is still ingrained in her: Wake up, feed and milk the herd, and then tend to the fields that surround their home.<\/p>\n
But extreme heat threatens to change that, as well as the preservation of her community. When temperatures soar past 90 degrees F in Ahmedabad \u2014\u00a0now a regular occurrence \u2014\u00a0Rabari worries about her mom, who hand-collects feed for their buffalo to graze on. Other pastoralists are nomadic, walking at least 10 miles a day herding cattle from region to region in the hunt for pastureland.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf we lose our livestock, we lose our culture, our dignity,\u201d said Rabari. \u201cIf we continue our occupations, then we are dignified. We live with the dignity of our work.\u201d<\/p>\n
But rapidly rising temperatures are making it hard to hold on to that dignity of work. \u201cThe heat affects every life, every thing,\u201d said Rabari.<\/p>\n
Photography via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Working overnight is a tactic Rabari has heard of other agricultural workers trying. But the idea of tending to the herd in the dark isn\u2019t something she sees as safe or accessible for either her family or other pastoralists in her community. It\u2019s less efficient and more dangerous to work outdoors with animals in the dark, and it would require them to overhaul daily lives and traditions.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are not working at night,\u201d said Rabari. But what the family is already doing is waking up at 5 a.m. to beat the heat, collecting milk from their buffalo and preparing products to sell in the market during the dusky hours of the morning.<\/p>\n
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Rabari\u2019s family and other pastoralists across Gujarat are increasingly in an untenable position. Hotter temperatures have already caused pastureland to wither, meaning animals are grazing less and producing less milk. More unsafe working hours means lost work time on top of that, which, in turn, changes how much income pastoralist families are able to take home.<\/p>\n
The result has been not adaptation, but an exodus. Most pastoralists Rabari knows, particularly younger generations, are leaving the trade, seeking employment instead as drivers or cleaners in Ahmedabad. Rabari, who organizes for women pastoralists through the Maldhari Mahila Sangathan, or the Pastoral Women Alliance, says women are most often the ones left behind to tend to the herds.<\/p>\n
They \u201chave to take care of their children, they have to take care of the food, and they have to take care of the water,\u201d she said. \u201cThey face the heat, they face the floods, or the excess rain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photography via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Halfway across the world, April Hemmes is facing off against unrelenting bouts of heat amid verdant fields of soybeans and corn in Hampton, north-central Iowa. A fourth-generation small Midwestern farmer, Hemmes works more than 900 acres entirely on her own \u2014 year in and year out.<\/p>\n
The Midwest is the largest agricultural area in the United States, as well as one of the leading agricultural producers in the world. It\u2019s also an area that has been battered by human-caused climate change. In fact, scientists just recently declared an end to the drought that had devastated the region for a whopping 203 weeks. The conditions impacted crop yields, livestock, the transportation of goods, and the larger supply chain.<\/p>\n
Hemmes has the luxury of not having to face the same degree of heat stress that Rabari and Pinto da Costa are confronting elsewhere in the world, per the Boulder analysis. When compared to India and Brazil, the U.S. is on the lowest end of the worker health impact scale for extreme heat. And yet, heat is also already the deadliest extreme weather event in the U.S., responsible for more deaths every year than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined.<\/p>\n
A few years back, while building a fence on her farmland, Hemmes suffered her first bout of on-the-job heat exhaustion. Suddenly, her heart started to race and her body felt as if it began to boil from within, forcing her to abandon her task and head indoors, away from the menacing heat. It was a wake-up call: Ever since, she\u2019s been hyper-cautious with how she feels when tending to her fields.<\/p>\n
Photography via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n This past summer, the heat index repeatedly soared past 100 degrees in Hemmes\u2019 corner of Iowa. She found herself needing to be extra careful, not only pacing herself while working and taking more frequent breaks, but also making sure to get the bulk of the day\u2019s work done in the morning. She even began starting her day in the fields an hour or so earlier to avoid searing temperatures compounding with brutal humidity throughout the afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis [farm] has been in my family for over 125 years,\u201d she said. \u201cI do everything from banking to planting to spraying, everything. So it\u2019s all on me, and it\u2019s my family farm. I\u2019m very proud of that.\u201d In 1993, her dad and grandfather both retired, and she took over operations. She\u2019s been more or less \u201ca one-woman show\u201d since. Keeping her farm well-managed is a responsibility she doesn\u2019t take lightly. \u201cYou do what\u2019s best for the soil. Because that\u2019s the inheritance of future generations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When Hemmes looks at how to prepare for a future with hotter working conditions, she knows one thing: Nighttime work is out of the question.<\/p>\n
Not only are summertime mosquitoes in Iowa \u201cterrible after dark,\u201d but Hemmes says some of the chemicals she uses are regulated, restricting her from spraying them during the nighttime. In addition, she would need to get lights installed throughout the fields to alleviate the risk of injury when she uses equipment, and she would be even more fearful of that equipment breaking down.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt would take more energy to work at night,\u201d said Hemmes. \u201cI think it would be far more dangerous \u2026 to work after the daylight was gone.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Like Pinto da Costa and Rabari, Hemmes is involved in advocacy for her community. With the United Soybean Board, Hemmes advocates for women in agriculture. With more resources at her disposal than Pinto da Costa and Rabari, Hemmes is focused on how to ensure solo-farming operations like hers have access to the technology they need to overcome heat spells \u2014\u00a0and never have to seriously consider an overnight harvest schedule.<\/p>\n
On her own farm, she\u2019s invested in \u201cexpensive\u201d autonomous agriculture technology that allows her to take breaks when she needs to from the blistering sun. And she would like to see more precision technology and autonomous agriculture tools readily applied and accessible for farmers. She currently uses a tractor with an automatic steering system that improves planting and plowing efficiency and requires much less work, which she credits as one of the pivotal reasons she\u2019s able to successfully manage her hundreds of acres of fields on her own.<\/p>\n
Photography via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n She also hopes to see farmers tapping into their inherent flexibility. \u201cWhat farmers are is adaptable,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t have an orchard on my farm, but if I did, and I saw this thing [climate change] coming, you know, maybe you look at tearing the trees out and starting to plant what I can in those fields. Maybe the Corn Belt will move up to North Dakota. Who knows, if this keeps progressing?\u201d<\/p>\n
In Gujarat, Rabari and the Maldhari Mahila Sangathan are working to secure better representation for pastoralists in policymakers\u2019 decisions about land use. The hope is for these communities to inform policies that would allow pastoralists job security and financial safety nets as climbing temperatures make it difficult to work and turn a profit.<\/p>\n
Women pastoralists in particular are entirely left out of these policy spaces, said Rabari, which isn\u2019t just an issue of exclusion but means their unique ecological knowledge is lost, too. \u201cWe have a traditional knowledge of which grass is good for our animals, which grass they need to eat so we get the most meals, how [they] can be used for medical treatment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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