CLIMATE COCKTAIL:
La Lima Final
Agriculture Disruption

_{©Drink the Change}

BARTENDER NOTES

La Lima Final is styled after the basic flavor components of a Margarita, with a little flair to make up for not having actual limes in the glass, and a little heat as the mystery ingredient driving this whole thing.

Q:What do you call it when worms take over the world?

A:Global Worming

AGRICULTURE
DISRUPTION

Snowstorms in April, heavy rains during typically dry seasons, record-breaking heat waves in October, 100-year floods occurring every five years, or even more frequently - spring is coming sooner every year.

Public acceptance that global warming is real has surged in recent years as stark changes in historical weather patterns have become impossible to ignore.

GROWING FOOD

Agricultural disruption is due to become the next climate change impact that that will get everyone to sit up and take notice.

Our warming planet is starting to affect the quality, availability and access to FOOD, which is bad news for us and for our nation's economy, of which agriculture (crops, livestock and fisheries) comprises a hefty $300 billion chunk ($750 billion if you include all food-service and agriculture-related industries).¹

Farming has always been a temperamental business because healthy crops depend on a reliable climate. But hotter or colder temperatures at the wrong time in a crop's growing cycle, more variable precipitation patterns and extreme weather events like droughts and flooding can do all sorts of damage: any of these factors can harm yields, reduce nutritional value of crops or even wipe out crops altogether.

Introducing crop management and improved irrigation practices can mitigate some of the problems climate change is creating for agriculture. But unless and until more of us return to growing our own food, as our ancestors did, we have to fight looming , climate-caused food insecurity by rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work of eliminating fossil fuel use from our lives.

Q:How do you know you're a master gardener?

A:You have a decorative container of compost on your kitchen counter.

La Lima Final

Limes tell a tale of vulnerability when it comes to weather. In the early 1990’s the US had a solid and profitable lime crop at the southern tip of Florida. Then in 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit Dade Country Florida and one storm wiped out half of the commercial lime groves.

In the following years, the threat of citrus canker disease swept the region and the remaining crop was pulled out. New groves were banned for years by the larger more powerful orange growing association. Now, in the 2019 USDA Florida citrus production summary of the $900 million dollar crop, the word lime doesn’t event appear on the page.²

So now, when America wants a lime for its cocktail, it mostly turns to Mexico. As far as the lime consumer is concerned, there are limes at hand when the sun crosses the yardarm. But as the climate heats and shifts, so does the fact that one big storm wiped out an entire crop, to remind us that weather and agriculture are inextricably entwined.

Q:Why was the potato crying over his vodka and tonic?

A:They were his cousins.

Soil Sequestration to the Rescue?

We all descend from farmers. Our ancestors had to grow food to survive. One legacy from that fact is that playing with soil imparts a lot of health benefits for modern humans.

When we play in the dirt, we absorb through our skin and inhale microbes and bacteria that boost our mood, makes us smarter and even improves our immune systems³.

But going one better, one of the most hopeful solutions for fighting climate change is using soil sequestration to remove huge amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Bare soil oxidizes carbon in the soil, while plants protects soil carbon from being released through erosion—a major cause of soil carbon depletion—traps more of it through photosynthesis, and increases healthy soil organisms. Basically, we need to reduce bare soils wherever we can, because every time soil is exposed through tilling, letting fields fall fallow and leaving space between row crops, carbon escapes back into the atmosphere.

In 2015, France launched the audacious 4 Per 1000 initiative which proposes that increasing the amount of carbon held in the soil by .4% per year (or 4 parts per 1000) in the top 12-16 inches of soil worldwide could, as a complement to other CO₂ mitigation efforts, stop the increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere and ensure the supply of sufficient food for all people.

For it to work, policies to reduce deforestation and encourage ecological farming must be adopted. And the 530 farms and 3 billion rural citizens throughout the world must be engaged to help restore crops, pastures, grasslands and degraded forests, plant trees and legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil, plant cover crops and reduce instances of bare soils and erosion.

The Healthy Farm, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2013

The Healthy Farm, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2013

STRAIGHT UP CLIMATE

Carbon sequestration
is the long-term storage of carbon
in oceans, soils, vegetation (especially forests),
and geologic formations.

Although oceans store most of the Earth’s carbon,
soils contain approximately 75%
of the carbon pool on land —
3x more than the amount stored
in living plants and animals.

Therefore, soils play a major role
in maintaining a balanced global carbon cycle.

^{_{Ecological Society of America. Retrieved from https://www.esa.org/esa/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/carbonsequestrationinsoils.pdf}}

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

Compostaphile and Compostaphobe

To rot - or - not to rot

Robin's kitchen scraps worm bin

CLIMATE COCKTAIL RECIPE
La Lima Final
Glass: Collins

Batched and carbonated, ready to pour on draft. This is a sour with faux lime juice, modeled on a margarita, but carbonated as a long drink over ice. The lime is manufactured ala cocktail lab, portending the demise of the affordable lime.

The relative ease of producing “lime” juice using acids, water and lime essential oil, as compared to manually juicing, is lost on producing a single drink and measure out acids, though the “lime” can be made by the liter and used as lime to serve La Lima Final without a draft system.

FOR 5 GALLON CORNI KEG
184 oz. El Tesoro Blanco
46 oz. Cointreau 69 oz.
“Faux Lime” 4 oz.
Scrappy’s Hellfire Bitters
23 oz. Tamarind powder
275 oz. Quality water

69 “FAUX LIME”
65 oz. Quality water
2.72 oz. Citric acid
1.36 oz. Malic acid
.68 oz. Lime oil

To serve:
Fill Corni Keg, leaving adequate headspace to carbonate Dispense 6.5 oz to Collins glass
Fill with ice, add lime wheel

SINGLE BUILD
2 oz. El Tesoro Blanco
.5 oz. Cointreau
.75 oz. “Faux Lime”
2 dash Scrappy's Hellfire bitters
.25 oz. Tamarind powder dissolved 3 oz. Soda water

"FAUX LIME"
By weight:
.7 Quality water
.037 Citric acid
.015 Malic acid
.0075 Lime oil

Build in Collins glass
Top with Soda
Fill Ice

FEATURING

**El Tesoro tequila**

**El Tesoro tequila**

_REFERENCES
¹ _{US EPA. Climate Impacts on Agriculture and Food Supply. Retrieved from}_{https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-agriculture-and-food-supply_.html}

²_{USDA Florida Citrus Crop Summary}_{https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Florida/Publications/Citrus/Citrus_Summary/Citrus_Summary_Prelim/cit82819.pdf}