NASHVILLE, Tenn. — No Mow May encourages homeowners to stash the lawn mower each spring and let flowers and grass grow for pollinators and water retention. If your neighbor's lawn already looks like a wildflower field most of the time, it could be more intentional than passersby might assume.
The movement has expanded to "Let It Bloom June" and the fall version: "Leave the leaves." Conservation and horticulture groups say year-round low-mowing while selectively leaving native plants to grow can save huge amounts of drinking water and lead to lasting and important ecological changes.
Amanda Beltramini Healan stands among the plants in her backyard May 19 in Nashville, Tenn., where she participates in No Mow Months to improve water retention and encourage pollinators.
When Amanda Beltramini Healan moved into her Nashville ranch house in 2016, the yard was manicured for sale: a walnut tree, roses from a home improvement store and short grass. So she experimented, first with a 10-by-10-foot patch where she dug up the grass and sowed native seeds. Then she planted goldenrods in the culvert near the street, and let more of her yard grow tall without mowing.
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Local authorities apparently didn't appreciate her natural look: "I got a letter from the city saying that I had to mow it," she said.
But then, a friend told her about No Mow Month signs, provided by the Cumberland River Compact, a local water conservation nonprofit. Soon she signaled to the city that she's no derelict, but a participant in an international movement.
Amanda Beltramini Healan grabs a mulberry from her backyard May 19 in Nashville, Tenn.
These days, every month is No Mow May in parts of her property. While she keeps the growth shorter near the culvert and street, her backyard is filled with native grasses and plants up to her knees or waist. There's a decomposing tree trunk where scores of skinks and bugs live, birds nest under her carport and she regularly finds fawns sleeping in the safety of the high grasses.
"I have a lot of insects and bugs and that's protein, so the birds and the bird's nests are everywhere. Cardinals and wrens and cowbirds and robins," she said. "I wake up to them, especially during spring migration right now. It's just a cacophony in the morning and in the evening, especially when the mulberries come in."
The movement is popularized by groups such as Plantlife, a conservation organization based in England.
American lawns, based on English and French traditions, are increasingly seen as a wasteful monoculture that encourages an overuse of pesticides, fertilizer and water. Outdoor spraying and irrigation account for over 30% of a U.S. household's total water consumption, and can be twice that in drier climates, according to the EPA.
Flowers and tall grass cover Amanda Beltramini Healan's lawn May 19 in Nashville, Tenn.
Some criticize No Mow campaigns as a fad that could invite invasive plants to spread unchecked without helping pollinators much, if only done for a month.
A guide outlining No Mow pros, cons and limitations, written by consumer horticulture extension specialist Aaron Steil at Iowa State University, says reducing mowing to every two weeks and replacing turf with plants that pollinate all year long can offer more benefits without risking a citation or complaints.
The No Mow effort encourages people to think more about biodiversity in their yards, and many local nature organizations advise provide guidance on picking noninvasive plants that fit each region's climate and precipitation levels.
Reducing mowing encourages longer-rooted native grasses and flowers to grow, which breaks up compacted soil and improves drainage, "meaning that when it rains, more water is going to be captured and stored in lawns versus being generated as a runoff and entering into our stormwater system," said Jason Sprouls, urban waters program manager for the Cumberland River Compact.
Amanda Beltramini Healan poses May 19 on a fallen log in her backyard in Nashville, Tenn.
Beltramini Healan isn't letting just anything grow — she learned which plants are invasive, non-native or not beneficial to the ecosystem and carefully prunes and weeds so the keepers have room to thrive.
Nashville homeowner Brandon Griffith said he was just tired of mowing when he decided years ago wait and see what comes up. Then he consciously added flowering plants to attract bees and bugs. Now he sees so many insects and pollinators all over his garden that the neighbors' kids come over to look for butterflies.
It's about giving them the time "to come out of their larva or their egg stage and be able to grow," said Griffith. He said he's never heard a complaint — in fact, some of his neighbors also stopped mowing for a month each spring. His four-year-old son catches lizards, digs for worms and hunts for bugs in the yard.
"I just enjoy coming out and walking around," said Griffith. "And looking at it, it's kind of peaceful. It's kinda relaxing."
Mango farms where? Climate change is scrambling where the world's food is grown.
Mango farms where? Climate change is scrambling where the world's food is grown.
Twelve years ago, Vincenzo Amata stumbled upon a plot of flowering trees while wandering the Sicilian countryside. Before long, he found a farmer tending the grove. As Amata asked one question after another, the stranger tugged a mango off a tree and offered it to him. He didn't know it, but his first bite of the bright yellow fruit would change his life.Ìý
"I can still taste it to this day," Amata said in Italian. The burst of sweet flavor, coupled with its smooth, velvety texture, was unlike anything he'd ever tasted. "I got chills, goosebumps all over my skin, it was so delicious."
Six months later, Amata left a lifelong career as a clothing salesman to launch his own mango farm. It put him "very out of my element. But I just fell in love with it." Amata has since grown six popular varieties of the tropical fruit on PapaMango, his 17-acre grove in Messina on the northeastern coast of Sicily, °ù±ð±è´Ç°ù³Ù²õ.Ìý
As climate change complicates growing the region's historically emblematic crops, like olives and lemons, Amata is seeing more farmers follow the same path. They are all "already starting to change from lemons to mangoes," he said.
Rising temperatures, shifting precipitation, and emerging diseases are among the mélange of climate impacts changing what's grown in breadbaskets around the world. As warming brings significant challenges to agriculture, growers are abandoning crops with dwindling yields or those threatened by pathogens and pests for those better suited to changing local conditions. Producers in pockets of Latin America and Asia are increasingly turning to highly adaptable instead of . Corn farmers across the Midwest are , while growers in Sub-Saharan Africa are embracing varieties of that require less water than other grains.ÌýÂ
This trend will only accelerate, radically redefining what different regions are known for. Before the end of the century, parts of the United Kingdom, for example, .
The mango, that beloved linchpin of cuisines and cultures around the world, typifies this trend. This juicy, flavorful fruit, which outsells most of its tropical counterparts, is grown in some 120 countries. But many leading producers face higher temperatures, greater aridity, and other challenges to raising a crop that requires very specific conditions to thrive. As it grows more popular—global production is next year—production is beginning to shift to new areas, making the mango a fitting emblem of yet another way climate change is reshaping global agriculture.
Mangoes, which have been cultivated for millennia, are well-adapted to sub-tropical and tropical areas. The trees, which can grow , generally favor temperatures in the and tend to be incredibly .Ìý
Much of Italy enjoys a Mediterranean climate marked by hot summers and mild winters, which provide ideal conditions for sub-tropical fruit. With drought and hotter conditions bringing , many Italian farmers are embracing new crops. This is particularly rife , where are giving way to a proliferation in money-making in Sicily, Puglia and Calabria.Ìý
In 2023, mango crops spanned nearly 3,000 acres throughout Italy, up from 1,235 acres in 2019 and just 24 in 2004, according to . , with Sicilian growers getting as much as 5.50 euros per kilo even as lemon growers earned as little as .Ìý
"The cost of the mango has gone up, so I'm doing well," said Amata, pictured below. He employs three people year-round at PapaMango, where they produce over 100,000 pounds of mangoes every year. "The cost has gone up because the demand is up because of these climate impacts in other places."
Climate Change Drives Shifts in Global Mango Production
Although India is the world's leading producer and consumer of the sweet fruit, most of the mangoes found in supermarkets come from Mexico—which —Brazil, and Peru. The three nations, which together produced nearly 5.5 million metric tons of mangoes, mangosteen, and guava (although botanically unrelated, the tropical fruits are often grouped together in international trade assessments) in 2023, saw production declines last year, a trend driven in no small part by climate change.Ìý
How large a decline remains to be seen, but the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, told Grist that preliminary trade data and industry sources suggest Mexico's exports dropped 2%, while Brazil saw an 8% decrease. Exports from Peru plunged a staggering 55%.Ìý
Other reports clearly attribute some of these declines to climate change. led to across Mexico. Excessive rainfall , while unusually warm temperatures compounding with the lasting effects from El Niño led to what .
These trends contributed to a 22% decrease in the compared to 2023. That led to higher retail prices than the year before. Imports rebounded by late summer and eventually surpassed 2023 levels, bringing down costs, but .
Still, global production remained strong because of yield increases elsewhere in the world and the expansion into new growing areas. Worldwide production of mangoes, mangosteen and guava has , a trend the FAO expects to continue.
But those numbers reflect national production around the world and could conceal declines within specific regions, said FAO economist Sabine Altendorf. Mangoes, like most tropical fruits, are typically grown in remote locales where cultivation is highly dependent on rainfall, prone to the effects of increasingly erratic weather, and reliant on less robust transport routes, she said.
"Generally, since mangoes are among the most fragile and perishable agricultural commodities, their production and trade are threatened by a multitude of factors, which can be both related to the effects of climate change and exacerbated by these effects," said Altendorf, who specializes in global value chains for agricultural products.Ìý
All of these compounding factors "are of dire concern to growers, as they can have devastating effects on crops, putting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers at risk."Â
Flowering mango trees can be found throughout the Mexican state of Chiapas. The country's southernmost region teems with the wildly popular golden Ataúlfo mango—one of Mexico's leading mango exports.Ìý
Luis Alberto Sumuano, who was born and raised in a farming family in Tapachula, Chiapas, studies Ataúlfo mango production. An agricultural economist at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, he that if Chiapas mango farmers aren't able to begin harvesting as early as December, to sell their fruit before March, they struggle to see a profit due to market dynamics and lower quality fruit. A box of Ataúlfo mangoes sold to a supplier in January typically earns the grower around $63, but that same box, if sold after March, could bring in as little as $2, he said.Ìý
Although Mexico saw overall production decline partly due to drought, another climate problem plagues farmers in Chiapas, where of increasingly volatile bouts of heavy rainfall have delayed flowering, shifting the entire production cycle. All that precipitation also spurs the and the growth of fungal diseases, all of which are becoming a .Ìý
"At the same time that you are fighting with the rain, you also have to increase the chemicals to try to reduce the fungus," he said. "It's two times more difficult."Â
Sumuano is afraid of what all of this may mean for mango production in southern Mexico. He is beginning to see a steady trickle of growers "leaving the trade" to raise other wares—namely livestock and palm oil—that don't face the same overt challenges.Ìý
But even as the fruit faces an uncertain future in Chiapas, it is thriving elsewhere in Mexico, underscoring how climate change can reshape agriculture within a relatively small geographic expanse. This is particularly true of Kent mango varieties, primarily grown in the Sinaloa region. The green-hued delicacy made up a 20% share of the country's mango exports to the U.S last year, nearly tripling its share from 2023, according to Empacadoras de Mango de Exportación A.C. shared with Grist. By contrast, Ataúlfo exports to the U.S. declined, dropping 4.5% from 2023. This is in part because not only are , but certain microclimates may be more suited to production, with growers that have adopted practices like developing disease- and pest-resistant cultivated varieties.
It's a paradox that can be seen unfolding elsewhere. In California, where mangoes have been grown in the southern region since the late 1800s, .Ìý
Florida is another promising hotspot. Even as warming and disease have eroded the Sunshine State's citrus , Alex Salazar said Florida's budding mango industry has experienced a coinciding boom. He runs Tropical Acres Farms, a seven-acre operation in West Palm Beach, where Salazar and his wife grow and sell fruit and trees. Business has flourished in the last five years—the biggest rate of expansion that they've seen since opening in 2011—as commercial demand for mango trees has increased in California, Arizona, and Texas.Ìý
"Not only is it easier to grow them now because of warmer temperatures and milder winters, but mangoes also don't require much," said Salazar. "They don't require the same nutritional demands as other tropical crops, such as avocados or bananas. There is a certain appeal to people that want to grow something and not have to do all of this overwhelming stuff to make them happy. That counts for a lot for people looking to grow alternative crops."
Demand has even ramped up in regions that surprised Salazar. "Areas of Florida that were previously too cold to grow mangoes, you can grow mangoes now," he said.Ìý
Jonathan Crane, tropical fruit crop specialist at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, has also noticed this trend. "People have tried to grow tropical crops like mangoes as far back as the 1800s, but it wasn't viable in most of the state," said Crane. In places like Central Florida, that's no longer the case. Climate change has progressively curbed the frequency of freezing events across the region. "In the past eight years, I've been getting contacted more and more by people looking to plant mangoes [there]," he said.
But Crane noted mango farming in the region faces its own challenges. Bouts of excessive heat, destructive hurricanes, and fewer but more erratic freezing events have all negatively impacted the trees' ability to flower and fruit in the last two years. Yet, none of these factors seem to be slowing the flood of interest in the fledgling industry.Ìý
While the planet continues to warm, more and more people are flocking to cultivate the celebrated fruit in new places. In an era when what farmers grow and how they grow it is in constant flux, the mango is as much a warning sign of the cascading effect of climate change as it is a beacon of resilience.ÌýÂ
Sara Ventimiglia assisted with translation.
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