What we eat is as much a part of our identity as the way we dress, the music we listen to or the car we drive. We are what we eat. If this statement is true at the individual level, it is no less true at the community level. The gastronomy of each country is a feature of its national identity. You just have to think about the nicknames we give to each other based on what we eat. We call Italians spaghettis, due to their love of pasta, and Germans in English are called krauts (cabbage), a word registered as an insult since the First World War. In Spain, we are horrified when someone puts chorizo in paella, for example.
All this can change, as explained in the report Increasing resilience to climate change through sustainable practices prepared by the European Institute for Environmental Policy (IEEP).
Climate change threatens, if measures are not taken, some of the agricultural productions that make up some of these recipes and products that are part of the gastronomic identity of European countries.
Specifically, the report warns that the cultivation of potatoes, olive oil, carnaroli rice and wheat are seriously affected by episodes of drought, increased temperatures, torrential rains and floods. In West Africa, a virus is reducing the cocoa harvest, of which Europe is its main consumer.
To avoid all this, the IEPP proposes that there be more sustainable agricultural practices such as increasing crop rotations, which can have a positive impact on soil organic carbon, improve nutrient cycling and reduce the prevalence of pests and diseases, the mulching the fields, covering the soil with special films whose objective is to defend them from atmospheric agents; or use cover crops to protect the main crop in the case of olive trees, among other actions
