‘Nimble and creative’: How small farmers feed NC between drought and rainfall extremes
During the worst of the drought and sweltering June heat, Ethan Lineberger was awake and working at 5 a.m.
Before sitting down for breakfast, he walked to the crop fields to start the water pumps. His family’s 100-acre property, Lineberger’s Farm, in Dallas, N.C., can’t send water to all crops at the same time. So, he switched valves and pumps, keeping track of which crops were watered.
Even with an irrigation system, Lineberger’s farm in Gaston County wasn’t safe from the heat and drought. Some of the blackberries and tomatoes shriveled from a lack of water.
Then Lineberger last week anxiously anticipated Hurricane Debby’s rain and flooding. He was most concerned about his jack-o-lantern pumpkin crop, which thrives in dry conditions but could be wiped out with more than a few inches of heavy rain. Several inches of rain won’t revive dried and dying crops , but instead, it creates new challenges for North Carolina market growers like Lineberger.
“Heavy rain always has the potential to be worse,” Lineberger said. “You can always lose your whole crop to flooding, and I mean, things that have been flooded are not edible.”
Small growers like Lineberger told the Observer they’re doing their best to manage harsh conditions and remain a competitive grocery option for their communities as the weather jumped from drought to record rain.
At the greatest extent of the drought this summer, more than two-thirds of North Carolina counties found themselves in moderate drought or worse. Then, last week, Debby set rainfall records across the region. Among them: Charlotte’s airport logged 4.09 inches of rain Thursday, breaking the previous record of 1.37 inches for Aug. 8.
For farmers, waiting for weather to cooperate means risking more extreme conditions.
Drought and severe heat effects
Lineberger’s experience with summer heat is common.
William McGahee’s 1-acre farm about an hour north of Charlotte in Claremont lost its celery – his favorite crop – and peppers, which typically grow well in the heat. Eric McCall’s Hot Pepper Herb Farm in Chester County, S.C. lost 75% of its blueberry crop.
Tanya and Clarence Dubois in May began to notice the impact of the dry weather on their farm in Rockingham. They were watering their crops for hours, but the ground still looked dusty, Tanya said.
The solution to drought conditions is often an irrigation system. Michael Fine, who runs Seven Sisters Farm about an hour east ofCharlotte in Denton, said the drip irrigation system is efficient and keeps the farm resistant to environmental pressures.
But irrigation means higher electricity bills, and it’s not possible for growers like McCall to spend money on higher water bills or another well.
“There’s just not enough water to go around,” McCall said.
Water also only eases drought, not the summer heat, many growers told The Charlotte Observer. Some crops, like tomatoes and pumpkins, can’t even pollinate in temperatures above 90 degrees.
Severe heat is also hard on growers.
“When you’re standing out in the sun in the middle of a field, and the sun is beaming down on you for seven hours, it’ll make you rethink what you’re doing,” said McGahee, manager of Crouching Hippo Farm.
Rainy conditions are worse, Fine said.
“I can add water, but I can’t take it away,” he said.
Heavy rain and hurricane effects
Instead of soaking into the ground and hydrating the crops, heavy rains cause erosion, flooding and can wipe out the topsoil, multiple growers told the Observer.
And strategies used by farmers like cover crops, which preserve soil health and may not be harvested to sell, and plastic mulch can only help so much against flooding, Lineberger said. In fact, every time McGahee’s farm sees heavy rain, his back fields are flooded.
Lineberger said before the storm if Debby delivered 6-8 inches of rain, flooding around his pumpkins could create a breeding ground for diseases and insects as well as a loss of $30,000 - $40,000. Parts of Gaston County, where his farm sits, saw about 4 inches of rain.
Besides flooding, tornadoes can easily shred farm buildings. And there are power outages, which affect freezers Lineberger uses to hold berries for jams and other products.
“You don’t get paid for it as a farmer until you get it to harvest and you can get it sold,” Lineberger said.
Farming solutions to NC weather
So, can small growers with limited resources find a solution to North Carolina’s volatile summer weather?
The growers who spoke to the Observer, who tend to anywhere from 1 to 100 acres, stay afloat by producing a variety of crops, while larger corporations might have hundreds of single-crop acres.
“We grow so much variety that we have more resistance to environmental pressure, because our investment is spread across the board,” Fine said. “So I have some crops that do really well in heat and dry, while I may have other crops that don’t.”
And Lineberger’s Farm, like other small growers, use their crop variety to their advantage when selling subscription boxes in the wintertime to customers. The boxes usually sell produce by total value, not individual crops. And growers sell what they have even when some crops are wiped out.
More broadly, good farmers are usually savvy business people, too, said North Carolina Department of Agriculture marketing specialist Kevin Hardison.
“He’s got to have a sharp pencil. He’s got to be able to make good decisions, and he’s got to have a vision for the future,” Hardison told the Observer.
Some growers, like Clarence Dubois, are already planning what heat-tolerant crops to plant next year. Others, like Fine, work on farm improvement projects, such as investing in new equipment, during a slow summer.
“You’ve gotta get really nimble and creative on how to recover,” Fine said.
The best way for community members to support small farmers is to buy from them, Hardison told The Observer.
“Looking for those growers that are close to you as a consumer is not just taking care of and supporting local agriculture,” he said. “You’re also supporting your local neighbor.”
