Effects of Climate Change on Farmers
Climate change has steadily increased in the past couple of decades and U.S. farmers are starting to feel the affects. Climate change and ozone depletion can cause extreme weather. This extreme weather cause cause floods, droughts, changing growing seasons, and increased damaging pests and weeds. Climate change is also affecting our ability to produce enough food to feed the world. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “The crops, livestock, and seafood produced in the United States contribute more than $300 billion to the economy each year.” When food service and agricultural industries are included, we are talking about $750 billion being added to the economy each year. Clearly this industry is incredibly important.
Last year, the National Climate assembly released a 1,600 page report that claimed, among other things, that, “Expected increases in challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality, and changes in extreme events in the United States and abroad threaten rural livelihoods, sustainable food security, and price stability.”
A recent article in The Guardian describes the challenges these U.S. farmers are facing. People like Richard Oswald, a 68-year old farmer who lives on 2,500 acres of land in the Mississippi River Valley are experiencing destruction to crop yield because of unpredictable weather patterns that are causing such issues as flooding. These types of issues have caused the price of grain to surge and have forced farmers like Oswald to farm differently in order to combat the unpredictable season. In an interview Oswald explained how the weather has changed within his lifetime, “When I was a kid, my dad would say an inch of rain was a good rain. That’s just what we needed. Now we get four inches, five inches, six inches in one sustained wet spell that lasts two or three days.” He also explains how the rain has raised the water table so that even if the river has not flooded onto his land, everything is still continually mud-ridden. Even when the rain water dries up, everything below the topsoil is muddy because the river level is as high as the groundwater, which means that the soil cannot absorb the water. Heavy rainfall and mud doesn’t just delay one of Oswald’s growing seasons, sometimes the rain will delay the corn harvest which then means that the soybeans have to be planted late. Oswald explained that in the spring and summer the timing of when he planted crops used to vary by a few days, but now it varies by weeks.
Before the 2011 flood that essentially ruined Oswald’s harvest, he was skeptical about climate change, but now the seasons and weather are nothing like what they were when he was a child. Oswald describes the way he has to combat climate change as something that he is constantly struggling with “There’s so much unknown about the weather now that it’s pretty hard to do much about it.” In order to properly adapt to the changing climate, farmers will need to spend billions of dollars. Farming is hard enough already, but the sporadic climate patterns have caused a very serious challenge for the future of farming.
By Noah Finley