Iriel Edwards is a first-generation farmer from Louisiana. In her short tenure as a farmer, Edwards, 25, has already seen extreme drought, freezes, flooding and excessive heat.
Edwards, along with thousands of other growers across the country, faces a conundrum nearly every growing season: how to stay afloat when shifting weather patterns caused by climate change keep wrecking their crops?
“Last year was difficult, especially with the drought,” she recalled while attending a January summit for small farmers struggling with climate change in southern Louisiana’s Cajun Country. “This year we’ve had large downpours. We're still in a drought, but the rain is coming all at once. (The crops) will flood really easily. Or they don’t grow because they’re waterlogged.”
The last two years have been some of the most costly for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which paid more than $16 billion to farmers who lost crops due to drought, excessive heat and other extreme weather.
While the overall agricultural sector continues to grow rapidly in the United States, the number of small farms has steadily dwindled. Those small producers who do remain say the feds aren’t doing enough to help them stay in business.
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Categories: Pennsylvania, Business, Crops, Weather