by MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) — Justin Ralph estimates he has made about 200 trips this year delivering grain from the fields he farms with his brother and uncle. They are accustomed to using his four trucks to bring the harvest of a total of about 800 acres each of corn, soybeans and wheat to market.
What they are not used to are the distances they have had to travel in recent years, a consequence of the bad weather that is expected to increase in their area as a result of climate change. They used to take advantage of a grain elevator in Mayfield, Kentucky, a massive facility that bought and stored millions of bushels of grain from farmers. But it was destroyed by the 2021 tornado outbreak that killed dozens of people and leveled entire parts of the city, and the company that ran it went out of business. Now, instead of driving ten minutes, they sometimes travel an hour or more.
“The changes in weather events that we have… are a little scary,” he said, especially for those with smaller farms. “If you have a larger farming operation, your acreage is spread over a larger area, so the risks are probably more minimized because they are more spread out.”
Farmers and experts echo Ralph and say larger farms have more ways to manage risk, but smaller and medium-sized farmers struggle when extreme weather hits. Human-caused climate change is only expected to amplify the number and intensity of these extreme events, from sudden droughts to increased rainfall. And as the planet warms, scientists say the country will see more storms that spawn tornadoes and hail, and those deadly events will occur more frequently in populated south-central states, a big problem for everyone who lives in those areas and especially for those trying to preserve small family farms.
This is already a reality in the area around Mayfield, which is located in a coastal plain region in the western part of the state and has been affected by extreme weather conditions in more ways than one. In addition to the 2021 tornado outbreak, this summer they were affected by flooding that exceeded 10 inches in some areas, submerging crops.
Keith Lowry, another farmer near Mayfield, woke up one morning this summer to eight inches of rain, and at dinnertime, when the deluge finally stopped, he knew he had a problem.
Lowry found cornfields half submerged, soybeans that had almost completely disappeared under the flood, and rapids gushing out of their spillway like a waterfall. Now, at harvest time, he estimates that they lost between five and 10% of their crop this year. In addition, they had to deal with debris that had reached their fields, a nuisance that hinders the passage of heavy machinery.
Lowry has a relatively large operation: 3,000 acres, primarily corn and soybeans, along with another 2,000 acres his son farms. Although he suffered some losses, he says he and other farmers are used to dealing with uncooperative weather. “That’s the nature of the beast,” he said.
But without the grain elevator or on-farm storage and with limited transportation options, Lowry explained his neighbors would have been stuck with soybeans in their fields. That’s why on a cloudy November day he found him helping out on a much smaller plot of land, raising a crop of about 250 acres.
While farmers and city residents have leaned on each other to be resilient, the combined effect of those natural disasters has had lasting impacts on a community where agriculture is at the heart of commerce.
“Because we have such a large county that is heavily populated with grain farmers, the loss (of the grain elevator) has forced them to move to surrounding counties, often 40 or 50 miles away to transport their grain,” said Miranda Rudolph, the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Agent for Graves County. She said fuel costs have increased, which has added to the tension.
Hans Schmitz, a conservation agronomist with Purdue’s extension agency, said large farms tend to have a broader range of options to balance their risk, including crop insurance, which often costs less per acre when applied to areas bigger.
Jed Clark, for example, who grows about 3,000 acres of grain near Mayfield, said he relies on crop insurance and also tries to strategically spread his crop rotations, betting that crops in a low-lying area will do well in a short time. dry year. and that crops on higher ground will last longer than those washed away by floods.
On smaller farms, if farmers are forced to put everything in a low-lying area that floods, an entire crop can be affected, Schmitz said. Therefore, farmers with less land sometimes turn to specialty crops like watermelon or tomatoes to try to increase profits with the acreage they have, but those crops are not as easy to secure.
Schmitz said he believes climate change is contributing to farmland consolidation, meaning large farms getting bigger. It’s relatively easy for a very small farm to get started, but harder to stay afloat. “What worries me is the void in the middle,” he said.
A smaller farm’s ability to survive also has to do with infrastructure, said Adam Kough, another Kentucky farmer who has 1,200 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat (plus two hog barns and 100 sheep) between Mayfield and Murray. . He believes the farmers who were hardest hit after the tornado were those who didn’t have grain storage on their land.
Kough said he has noticed changes in the climate over the years, but believes the corporate mentality has more to do with why big farms will always be bigger. “People have changed more than the weather,” she said. “Morals have changed in the last 20 years… I call it ruthless.”
Still, the climate impacts are undeniable. Schmitz, who also grows about 1,200 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat in Indiana, says he has seen increased summer humidity encourage diseases of wheat, barley and oats in the Midwest. He has observed that higher night temperatures induce more heat stress in most crops. And he said that while some farmers turn to irrigation to overcome sudden, intense droughts, he has seen those same irrigation pivots end up in standing water after intense, flash floods.
“It goes back to the old saying in the Midwest, ‘if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes.’ We certainly have always had the ability to undergo fairly significant climate changes in a short period of time,” he said. “But to see climate change exacerbate those potential extremes either way in a short period of time is disconcerting.”
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Associated Press writer Joshua Bickel contributed to this report.
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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
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