Northeast farmers face new challenges with severe drought

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Vermont farmer Brian Kemp is used to seeing the grasses at Mountain Meadows Farm grow more slowly during the hot late summer, but this year the grass is at a standstill.

That’s “very stressful” when you have 600 to 700 head of cattle, said Kemp, who runs an organic beef farm in Sudbury. He describes the weather lately as inconsistent and shocking, which he attributes to changing weather.

“I think there’s nothing normal anymore,” Kemp said.

The impacts of climate change have been felt throughout the northeastern US with rising sea levels, heavy precipitation, and storm surges causing flooding and coastal erosion. But this summer has brought another extreme: a severe drought that is leaving grasses crusty and has farmers begging for steady rain. The short, heavy rain that the occasional thunderstorm brings tends to run off, not soak into the ground.

Water supplies are low or dry, and many communities are restricting non-essential outdoor water use. Fire departments are fighting more wildfires and crops are growing poorly.

Providence, Rhode Island, had less than a half-inch of rain in the third-driest July on record, and Boston had six-tenths of an inch in the fourth-driest July on record, according to the National Weather Service office in Norton, Massachusetts. Rhode Island’s governor issued a statewide drought advisory Tuesday with recommendations to reduce water use. The north end of Hoppin Hill Reservoir in Massachusetts is dry, forcing local water restrictions.

Officials in Maine said drought conditions really started there in 2020, with occasional improvements in areas since then. In Auburn, Maine, local firefighters helped a dairy farmer fill a water tank for his cows when his well got too low in late July and temperatures reached 90 degrees. good poll.

The continuing trend toward drier summers in the Northeast can certainly be attributed to the impact of climate change, as warmer temperatures lead to more evaporation and drying of soils, climatologist Michael Mann said. But, he said, dry weather can be interrupted by extreme rainfall events, since a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture; when conditions are right for rain, there is more in short bursts.

Mann said his research at Pennsylvania State University shows evidence that climate change is leading to a “stagnant jet stream” pattern. That means the huge meanders of the jet stream, or air current, get stuck in place, blocking out extreme weather events that can alternately be associated with extreme heat and drought in one place and extreme rain in another, a pattern that has become developed this summer. with heat and drought in the Northeast and extreme flooding in parts of the Midwest, Mann added.

Most of New England is experiencing drought. The US Drought Monitor issued a new map Thursday showing areas of eastern Massachusetts outside of Cape Cod and much of southern and eastern Rhode Island now in extreme, rather than severe, drought.

New England has experienced severe summer droughts before, but experts say it’s unusual to have droughts in fairly quick succession since 2016. Massachusetts experienced droughts in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021 and 2022, which is likely due to climate change, he said. Vandana. Rao, director of water policy in Massachusetts.

“We’re hoping that this is perhaps a peak drought period and that we’ll be back for many more years of normal rainfall,” he said. “But it could just be the start of a longer trend.”

Rao and other New England water experts expect the current drought to last several more months.

“I think we’ll probably be in this for a while and it’s going to take a long time,” said Ted Diers, deputy director of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ water division. “What we really expect is a wet fall followed by a very snowy winter to really recharge aquifers and groundwater.”

Rhode Island’s Chief Ranger, Ben Arnold, is worried about a drought that extends into the fall. That’s when people garden more, burn bushes, use fireplaces, and spend time in the woods, increasing the risk of wildfires. This summer’s fires have been relatively small, but it takes a lot of time and effort to extinguish them because they are burning dry land, Arnold said.

Hay farmer Milan Adams said one of the fields he is tilling in Exeter, Rhode Island, is dusty a foot deep. In previous years it rained in spring. This year, he said, the drought started in March and April was so dry that he was nervous about his first hay cut.

“The height of the hay was there, but it had no volume. From there, it rained a little bit in early May and that shot it up,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything since then.”

Farmers are battling more than just drought: Inflation is driving up the cost of everything from diesel and equipment parts to fertilizer and pesticides, Adams added.

“Everything is through the roof right now,” he said. “This is just adding salt to a wound.”

Hay yield and quality have also declined in Vermont, meaning there won’t be as much for cows in the winter, Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts said. The state has approximately 600 dairy farms, a $2 billion per year industry. Like Adams, Tebbetts said inflation is driving up prices, which will hurt farmers who will have to buy food.

Kemp, the president of the Champlain Valley Farmers Coalition, is grateful to have supplemental feed from last year, but he knows other farmers who don’t have land to set up a stockpile and aren’t well-stocked. The coalition is trying to help farmers evolve and learn new practices. They added “climate-smart agriculture” to their mission statement in the spring.

“Agriculture is challenging,” Kemp said, “and it’s getting even more challenging as climate change sets in.”

SHARE: