Farmers on edge as northeastern US drought puts crops in jeopardy

By Courtney Barrow, AccuWeather Staff Writer

October 26,2016; 10:46PM,EDT

 

The ongoing drought in the northeastern U.S. has left most of the region reeling as farmers have been forced to work with arid land.
Bill Baker of Baker Farm in Covington, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles from the southern New York border, said his family business has been hit hard by the lack of rain. Both his vegetable crops and his dairy operation have been affected.
"What do we do differently in a drought? You pray to God," Baker said.
His corn isn't nearly up to its normal yield, and the 28 cows are each producing six pounds under their normal amount of milk.
Part of the frustration with the drought was the spottiness of the rain. Baker said that there were days when neighboring farms were getting rain, but the Baker Farm wasn't as lucky.
"We could actually watch it rain on both sides of our farm and we wouldn't get anything," he said.
While the Northeastern drought has no official start date, much of the interior of New England and the mid-Atlantic had below average rainfall last year.
This year, conditions were much more dire and widespread. Extreme drought conditions were declared in New England and western New York in 2016.
Several states have widespread water bans. In Massachusetts, more than 180 towns are under water restrictions.
While some area farmers were unfortunate, others had all the luck.
(iStock/imsis270-127/Image Source Pink)
"I had neighbors who got nailed by the drought, but we weren't the one," Steve Wood, of Poverty Lane Orchards in Lebanon, New Hampshire, said.
Wood said that despite a dry July, his orchard had a soaking August and was saved from the harsh effects of the drought from which his neighbors suffered.
"[The rain] would miss you by 200 yards or so," Wood said.
While drought wasn't the major issue for Wood this year, he said there's a much larger issue at hand: climate change.
"What I think of as normal weather has become an anomaly," Wood said.
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Changing conditions have made it harder for a successful yield of apples.
"I selected varieties [of apples]...in the 80s that would be very well suited to our climate and soils," Wood said. "I don't know if I should be planting freaking papayas now."
Despite unfavorable weather conditions in recent years, farmers said there isn't much to do differently from year to year.
"Almost every year, we get one call from the press, ‘how is the drought affecting the apple crop?' and then we get another call from the press, ‘how is the flood affecting the apple crop?'" Wood said.
But to keep their livelihood going, Northeast farmers have to be resilient.
"We don't sit down and we don't cry about it," Baker said. "In a bad year, we just say, okay, what can we do to survive through the winter?"