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The State We’re In program

The State We’re In host Melanie Plenda is joined by Valley News Correspondent Patrick Adrian, Newport farmers Becky and Ben Nelson of Beaver Pond Farm, and state Commissioner on Agriculture Shawn Jasper, to talk about the impact of climate change on local farmers.

This content has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full interview on NH PBS's The State We’re In.

Melanie Plenda: Becky and Ben, let's start with you. Becky, your family has owned Beaver Pond Farms since the 1780s and, you said in the last 10 years, things have changed. What's changed and how has it changed in the farm? 

Becky Nelson: We're noticing a lot more chaotic weather. We go from extremes of lots of water to drought conditions, temperature fluctuations have been crazy, but we are really noticing a lot of change in our maple production and also in our crop production. Especially with the droughts, that's been a challenge trying to get enough water to the crops when they need them. We're also noticing a lot more pest pressure from things we never had to contend with before. 

Melanie Plenda: What does it look like on the farm in terms of maple production when there's drought conditions, what do you have to do to change that? 

Ben Nelson: The old timers would talk about starting at Town Meeting day in March and in my lifetime it gradually  moved up to starting in February, and it's not consistent. It will run in early February and then it will freeze up for four or five days and then it'll come back, and it's off-again-on-again. The longer the tree isn't running, the quicker it's gonna dry up. 

Becky Nelson: We've also noticed in the maple orchard itself that there's not as much tree regeneration. I'm not talking about growth of the tree, but we're not seeing many baby trees, which is a problem.

Melanie Plenda: We use the term climate change, but what does that really mean to you guys?

Becky Nelson: Climate change to us is trying to adapt, which is nothing new to a farmer. We're always adapting to some economic challenge or weather challenge, but now it's hard even to adapt. We've been seeing a lot more wind, a lot more strong storms, which can all affect the crops in the field with hail damage or wind damage. We're noticing a lot more droughty weather, but it's not consistent. Last summer we had trouble making hay because we had too much water. It would rain every other day so it was hard to get hay to dry in the field. Unpredictability is our only predictability at the moment.

Ben Nelson: Larger farmers have adapted and you see these big wrap bales, which is bailing so they can do that in a day or day and a half, and don't need the three days that dry hay needs, but we're not big enough to invest in that technology for the haying type stuff. For the maple, we in the industry are doing more vacuum, which means it'll run on marginal days and you don't get those gaps as much. It's just technology, but technology is expensive to adapt.

Melanie Plenda: Patrick, I would imagine this sounds familiar to you. For your story in the Valley News, originally you planned to focus on farmers' markets and then your story changed as you spoke with farmers in the region. Can you tell us more about that and what you were hearing from them? What did they say?

Patrick Adrian: They originally intended to ask the farmers about the growing season, particularly strawberries. I was aware that the spring had been predominantly cool with the exception of that one weekend so I wanted to find out from the farmers how their crops are going. I was curious whether some of the crops are going to be behind schedule but I was thinking strictly in terms of this season, and talking to the farmers really forced me to broaden my scope. The first farmer I interviewed was John Cohen who owns Deep Meadow Farm in Ascutney, Vermont. I just asked him my question,how's your growing season been so far, and he just starts to laugh. That really set the tone for me for the article, and every farmer I spoke to I heard the exact same descriptors: unpredictable, erratic, volatile extremes. The other thing that really struck me was they were speaking about this as the average, the new norm, something that they've been dealing with for 10 years. That's really when this article started to take shape.

It's not like a situation that we read about out west where there's a single defining issue, such as drought, in New England. We have all the needed weather and temperatures that crops need: we get the hot, we get the warm temperatures, the cool temperatures, we get the rain, and we get the dryness. For them, it's the extremes in which it comes. Like Ben and Becky were saying, you go 10 days or longer without a drop of rain and then when the rains do come, you get these heavy rains for about three days straight and now the farmers are worrying about about their fields flooding.

Melanie Plenda: Commissioner, let's talk about farming here in New Hampshire. When it comes to climate change and its impact on local farmers, what is the state doing or considering, and is there anything that the state can do to help?

Shawn Jasper: There's really not much that the state per se can be doing, but what I will say is that at the University of New Hampshire, an experiment station is working on all of these issues. They're trying to find different crops that can adapt to lengthen the growing season, new methods like high tunnel greenhouses are helpful in many areas. Some of it is actually an advantage to our agriculture, because the growing season to a large degree has been extended. The problem is also we're seeing more invasive pests in New Hampshire, which is certainly a problem. Because our winters haven't been as extreme as they used to be there's less likelihood that those invasive species, which are not native to here are, get killed off in those extreme long periods of of cold weather.

Melanie Plenda: What sort of invasive species are we seeing?

Shawn Jasper: We're seeing some that are dealing with the trees; we're seeing different types of trees being killed off. Specifically the Emerald Ash Borer is a real problem. We're seeing a lot of different types of bugs that are now coming up and getting into our crops so we're trying to deal with those things. Most of those come from foreign countries or are moving north and some of that is due to the fact that our climate is being a little bit more hospitable to them than it might have been 30 years ago.

Melanie Plenda: Becky and Ben talked a little bit about the cost of adapting and the cost of new technology. I'm not sure if you can answer this, but, at the state or federal level, are there programs that can help farmers with those costs or does the cost of creating their product and selling it have to be passed on to the consumers?

Shawn Jasper: The state conservation commission and the 10 districts around the state are helping some of the smaller farms by renting equipment out to smaller farms, such as no-till planters. While personally I like to see soil turned over, the reality is that the best thing for the soil is really to be using the no-till methods and that can be an expensive technology, but when you have the ability for the conservation districts to be purchasing those and renting them out, that can really help smaller farmers deal with that. We do look to that, but there's not a lot of money that goes directly to the farmers because that's supporting a private industry and particularly in New Hampshire, that's not something that we do, but there is help out there.

Melanie Plenda: Patrick, how are farmers adapting to the changes that they're already seeing?

Patrick Adrian: I did this article in the end of May so it's still relatively early in the growing season, but the adaptions that the farmers I spoke to were using are ones that they've used for decades or centuries. We had a lot of cooling temperatures and a lot of the farmers I spoke to were strawberry growers; putting down black plastics to warm up the soil when there's a lack of warm temperatures, and irrigation was mentioned a lot. The farmers I spoke to also said that they ideally would like to avoid having to turn on the water and irrigate. One of the farmers I spoke to had a lot of his plants that were still in the greenhouse that were not ready to come outside yet. He had to quickly put up white blankets and sheets just to block out some of the sunlight to keep the plants from stressing out. 

I think another piece is the farmers that put out a lot of produce have a lot more diversification of crops. They have crops that that will thrive in hot dry temperatures whereas others are going to when it's cold and wet. Some crops are going to struggle while others are going to do well. One adaptation that I heard was to try to plan for your season and they're really struggling with that.

Since I've written this now that we're June, I've already seen a couple reports in this last week that one farm in New Hampshire just announced they have to cancel their pick your own strawberries due to a crop failure. I'm not sure if that is climate related or not but I do know from a farm in Claremont that there’s going to be delays on their summer produce because of the cool temperatures and not getting enough heat. 

Melanie Plenda: Becky and Ben, what about you? What have you done to adapt to these changes at Beaver Pond?

Becky Nelson: I think some of the most important things we've done is put in more of the high tunnels. We have a little better control over the weather under the high tunnels, we can irrigate in them, we can protect from sun, we can keep them warm and it gets cold. That's great for a small or medium producer like ourselves, but it's hard on a big scale. As for planning, we are trying to plan for the unexpected changes. We may be putting in a little more irrigation here, drilling another well. We may put in solar to catch the extremes in sunlight, maybe even a windmill for these crazy windstorms we're having. We're just trying to adapt on the fly, but pretty much it just changes as we have to to survive.

Ben Nelson: Commissioner Jasper mentioned the state and conservation districts and extension service. The high tunnels was an idea that was brought from Asia by an extension educator 25 or 30 years ago and now the USDA has a lot of programs: they will cost share for cover cropping, they'll cost share high tunnels. It's not grants, but they will cost share for a lot of this stuff. The state does some and the feds do some, so it's a help, but it's still costly. New Hampshire, for better or worse, does less than some states. 

Becky Nelson: I also would add that having input from a lot of our grower associations has helped us to make some adaptations. One I can think of in particular is a weather forecasting service with stations at different farms around the state. We can all look at that data, and there are some pests that come under certain weather conditions, so we can predict when we should spray for these particular creatures according to the weather patterns and temperatures. As the commissioner mentioned the university and the extension service have been invaluable with their research and their suggestions for best practices. 

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.