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Hot Sauce Shortage
MARVIN TOLENTINO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
LOW SUPPLY: Starting in April 2022, Huy Fung Foods paused production of its most popular condiment, sriracha.
This past summer, hot sauce lovers may have noticed a shortage of a popular spicy condiment: sriracha. The hot sauce is made with red chili peppers grown in Mexico. Unfortunately, an ongoing drought—a period of abnormally low rainfall—caused this year’s chili harvest to fail.
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
POPULAR PEPPER: Normally, Huy Fung Foods goes through 100 million pounds of chilis each year.
“This current drought is the worst in the past 1,200 years,” says Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, an environmental anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego. This type of extreme weather event is becoming more common because of climate change. Shifting weather patterns around the world pose a threat to all food—not just sriracha, says d’Alpoim Guedes.
Since late 2020, the United States has been facing a prolonged period of unusually hot and dry weather. This line graph shows the percentage of the continental U.S. experiencing some level of drought conditions over the past four years. At the start of September 2022, about what percentage of the country was experiencing drought?
SOURCE: U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR BY USDA