which Little, Brown is releasing July 11. This essay is adapted from the book, his seventh.
And for the last hundred years or so, it has been magical. The Rio Grande Valley — which, in fact, isn’t much of a valley at all, just a big flat expanse of river-bottom land created over centuries by the ever-changing Rio Grande — is one of the most agriculturally productive regions in America, growing everything from watermelons for Fourth of July picnics to sorghum for animal feed to papaya for salads and smoothies.
The challenge the Valley faced was at once local and global. All over the world, extreme heat is hurting crop harvests and driving hunger. Since 2019, thanks in large part to global warming and the war in Ukraine, the number of people facing acute food insecurity has soared — from 135 million to 345 million. To meet the expected demand for food by midcentury alone, global agricultural output will have to rise by more than 50%.
Racelis lives in a 1960s suburban-style house with a big mesquite tree and a shaggy vegetable garden in the front yard. When I arrived at 7 a.m. one morning in early 2022, he was up and loading gear into his black Nissan Pathfinder. He’s 46. He was wearing a khaki shirt and well-worn work boots, and if you didn’t know who he was you would guess he was a farmer.
“If this heat keeps up,” he said, “broccoli and cauliflower is going to start bolting, which is a big problem.” Aloe has another, even more remarkable heat adaptation: if it gets too hot and dry for too long, the plant can put itself into what amounts to a temporary hibernation, slowing down its metabolism to the point that its water and CO2 needs are minimal. Then when it rains, or sufficiently cools down, the plant wakes up and comes back to life.
In struggling to keep his aloe alive, Cruz had already moved on from growing a crop that might have gone further to address global hunger: corn. The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension lists corn as one of the main field crops grown in the Rio Grande Valley. Farmers were growing it on more than 100,000 acres in the region in 2019. But of all the commercial food crops, corn may be the most vulnerable to heat.