Extreme Weather Weakens Crops for Organic Farmers in Texas

Anyone who spent time in Texas this summer knows that this year’s weather has been extreme.  Texas summers can be brutal even in a normal year, but this year the heat just never let up.  It was officially the hottest summer on record in north Texas, beating out the summer of 1980, with an average temperature of over 90 degrees!  To make matters worse, we experienced an extreme drought at the same time, with many areas receiving little or no rain all summer.  Over 70% of the state is still in a severe drought, with 2011 shaping up to be the driest year in history.

I work closely with local farmers every week sourcing produce for the Denton market, so I’ve seen first-hand the effects of this year’s drought.  Many of the normal summer crops either were not available at all, or they ended early.  By September, I had a hard time sourcing anything at all.  Peppers and tomatoes withered and died in the heat, no matter how much farmers irrigated.  And late maturing crops, like winter squash and pumpkins became cost prohibitive to irrigate, and they were so weakened by the heat that they became infested with pests.

Tim McCullough at Wolf Creek Farm in Tioga, TX sees the drought as a signal of what is to come.   Many folks, including weather scientists, are saying that this may become a lot more common from now on, due to climate change.

“While drought will always be a part of the natural climate variability of the Southern Plains, the impacts of drought in a warming world are likely to become even more pronounced,” David P. Brown, a NOAA official based in Fort Worth said in a New York Times article published two weeks ago.

McCullough remembers a time when he didn’t have to irrigate crops like watermelon and cantaloupe at all.  He says the flavor of those rain-watered melons was far better too.  This year he would have lost his entire melon crop if he didn’t irrigate every week.  Luckily, he has a good well and makes efficient use of his water through drip irrigation.  Although the melons were slightly undersized, he did get a crop.

Another farmer in the area wasn’t so lucky.  He depends on a pond for his irrigation water.  This year he pumped it dry by early summer, and there were no rains to refill it.  His squash plants quickly began to suffer.  Weakened by lack of water and blistering heat, they succumbed to an infestation of squash bugs.  “It was the worst we’ve ever seen,” he said.  He lost his entire winter squash and pumpkin crop.  He was planning to invite families to pick pumpkins in October, but instead, he had to buy the pumpkins wholesale and resell them.

Basically, it makes production much more difficult, and much more expensive.  But it makes some fruit a lot sweeter.  Peaches, for example, get sweeter in dry years.  They don’t grow as large, but the flavor is better.

I sold local peaches through the summer and every other person at my market stall asked if they were apricots because they were so small.  My response was to offer them a sample.  And every time I did, they bought peaches.  “What they lack in size they make up for in flavor,” I said.