When David Marchant looked at the weather forecast in early July, he had a bad feeling. His 50-acre farm sits in the bend of the meandering Lamoille River in northern Vermont. He watched its banks warily as a steady downpour soaked the landscape. Soon, the river began to rise. By 7:30 the next morning, he and his crew were out in the mud, trying to harvest all they could save.
Two months’ of rain fell in two days. Despite their efforts, Marchant’s River Berry Farm quickly lost upward of 10 acres of crops, with lettuce and summer squash suddenly swimming in the flooded fields. He estimates the torrents cost him around $150,000 in just 48 hours.
The storm wiped out roads and bridges and inundated homes across the state. The catastrophe came at a particularly hard time of year for farmers to face disaster: In early summer, many are heavily invested in their season, but not yet able to harvest. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets estimates that the state’s food producers lost over $16 million as a result — somewhere between one-third and one-half of all the state’s yield.
As the climate changes, American farmers face a slew of new threats to their harvests and business models. More frequent floods and droughts can wipe out months of work overnight. Rising temperatures are expected to slow plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere within the next decade, while higher carbon dioxide levels reduce the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables. Altogether, a recent NASA study found that some yields could decrease 24 percent by as soon as 2030.
Research from the American Farm Bureau Federation suggests that nationwide, natural disasters caused $21.5 billion in agricultural losses last year. Only about half of those were protected by insurance, the majority of which is sold through federally-backed programs. Their payouts to farmers have increased over 500 percent in the last two decades.
Back in 2007, a report from the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, called climate change a looming threat to insurance markets, and pointedly noted that while large private insurers were already incorporating it into their risk management, the two major federal insurance programs — for flooding and agriculture — ”have done little.”
Source: investigatemidwest.org
Photo Credit: pexels-pixabay
Categories: Wisconsin, Weather