Climate change is hitting menus, from disappearing salmon to dying chickens and smoky wines

Food Network favorite Viet Pham knows what rising temperatures do to chickens. The birds are smaller, their feed is more expensive, they’re more susceptible to avian flu and more of them die. 

As the owner of Salt Lake City’s Pretty Bird Hot Chicken, home to a Nashville-style hot chicken, he needs a steady supply of birds throughout the year. The thighs he buys for around $2.25 a pound in the winter can cost $4.50 a pound in the summer and he has no choice but to pay the difference.

Climate change has a spot on his menu along with the fried chicken, crinkle-cut fries and Mexican street corn salad.

“It’s something that all of us should be concerned about,” he said. “It’s scary.”

Global warming is affecting the foods we eat, from the deaths of lobsters off Cape Cod and the destruction of oranges during Florida’s hurricanes to the droughts and wildfires afflicting vineyards in California’s Sonoma and Napa counties.

The taste of beer is expected to change as hops encounter new pathogens. Salmon is giving way to warmer-water squid and sardines on menus in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Michigan is losing cherry crops.

Explore the interactive menu below to see which of your dinner favorites could disappear, and when, due to climate change. Story continues below.

Noreen O'Donnell and Nina Lin / NBC

Michael Hoffmann, a professor emeritus at Cornell University, has focused on examining climate change through food. His book “Our Changing Menu,” written with two others, spells out the ways that climate change is affecting everything we eat, from salads through main courses and side dishes to desserts and drinks. 

”You look at a plant. It needs air, carbon dioxide, the right temperature, water and soil and sunlight,” Hoffmann said. “Everything is changing but sunlight.”

As particular foods become scarcer, prices likely will increase. Ketchup, tomato sauce and salsa may all be more expensive this summer after rain flooded California's tomato fields. If the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere keeps rising, some food will become less nutritious. Researchers at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Heath found that when crops such as wheat, corn, rice and soy are exposed to carbon dioxide at levels predicted for 2050, they lose up to 10% of their zinc, 8% of their protein and 5% of their iron.

Finally animals and plants may go extinct. A 2022 report in Science, “Avoiding Ocean Mass Extinction From Climate Warming” warned that unchecked growth of greenhouse gases would trigger mass extinctions of ocean species by 2300.

A companion website to Hoffmann’s book, created by students at Cornell University, offers a database of ingredients that begins with abalone — threatened by warmer, more acidic oceans — and ends with zucchini — susceptible to a powdery mildew whose severity is driven by warmer temperatures and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

About 8% of farms market locally in the United States, OurChangingMenu.com notes. But other foods travel across the world to American plates, for example kiwis from Peru, tree nuts from Vietnam, chocolate from Western Africa and cod from the Bering Sea.

“This complex globally interdependent food system is under increasing threat from climate change,” they write. 

Droughts, floods, heatwaves and wildfires

When the American Farmland Trust asked farmers how climate change was already threatening them, Sheryl Hagen-Zakarison, an owner of a 600-acre grain and livestock operation in Pullman, Washington, told the trust that a 2021 heatwave and drought had destroyed 90% of the harvest. Raspberry farmers lost 30% of their crop that year, according to the Washington Red Raspberry Commission.

The year before was equally devastating after wildfires swept across California’s Sonoma and Napa counties. The Sonoma County Winegrowers reported that 40% of the wine grapes were damaged by fire, smoke and drought and in all growers reported losing an estimated $600 million worth of grapes. (The grapes are robust this year after record winter rain but cool weather could slow their ripening and again leave them at risk of wildfires in the fall.)

Those accounts and others are included in an American Farmland Trust report called “Building Climate Resilience with State and Federal Farm Policy.” 

“In an industry where success is governed by weather, the realities of the warming climate are all too real for our nation’s farmers and ranchers,” the report says. “Producers across the nation are contending with multi-year droughts; unexpected floods; extended heatwaves; raging wildfires; new invasive species; and novel pests and diseases that disrupt their lives and livelihoods all while they work to keep their communities and families fed.”

Another of the trust's reports, “Farms Under Threat 2040: Projected Climate Impacts on the Growing Conditions for Rainfed Agriculture in the Contiguous United States” estimated that that only 30% of the acres used to grow corn and 50% of those used for winter wheat will remain highly productive and that 80% of cropland production in the U.S. will be at risk from climate change by 2040.

To counter the effects of climate change, Hoffman, his students and his co-authors champion work that is being done by farmers and scientists. Coffee plants are kept cool under shade crops, less water is used in rice paddies to reduce the emission of methane, and computer software helps ensure the best deployment of irrigation water. Scientists, meanwhile, are developing more resilient crops through genetic engineering, a field that is often controversial.

As for everyday people, one of the biggest changes they can make is to switch their diet.

“The greatest impact we can have with our food choices is to transition to meals that are more plant-based,” the students write. “In the US, where protein and nutrients are available, treating red meat as a delicacy rather than a staple would help enormously.”

"It's very, very real"

Pham's parents fled Vietnam in a boat in 1978. He was born in a refugee camp on an island off the east coast of Malaysia, Pulau Bidong, before his family came to the United States. In 2008, he moved to Salt Lake City from northern California to open Forage with another chef, Bowman Brown. They were both named to Food & Wine magazine's list of Best New Chefs in 2011, and the restaurant was described as serving "ingenious modernist food."

Pham said when he first began shopping at Salt Lake City's farmers markets, they opened in May with a bounty of produce and fruits. For Forage, he looked for turnips, beets, greens, fruits, stone fruits and anything else that seemed interesting.

"You see a farmers market that is lush with all these food and fruits, vegetables, and then over the years, it’s become scarcer and scarcer," he said.

The markets now begin later in the year, the quality has dropped and prices are higher. Pham buys much less produce for Pretty Bird Chicken, mostly cabbage, cucumbers, spring onions, cilantro and lemon, but even there, prices have risen tenfold in five years, he said.

Utah is in the midst of the multi-year drought affecting the western United States. Much of the state is currently classified as abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

"Chefs in general, we’re very busy," Pham said. "We’re busy day to day dealing with not just our menu and the food and the techniques or the customers -- we get so caught up into it. Oftentimes when you think about climate change, it’s kind of like an afterthought. But it's very, very real."

"It really needs to be at the top of our priorities," he said.