“I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Farmers say this all around the Columbia Basin in Eastern Washington, an excellent region for growing a variety of crops. But extreme heat, low water supplies, catastrophic wildfires, sunburned crops, earlier harvests, and shifting crop-growing zones are impacting crops from our changing and unstable climate. As of this writing (August 28th), our region had 97 days without measurable precipitation (starting May 24).

Alan Schreiber, owner of Schreiber & Sons Farm, an 18-year-old organic vegetable and fruit farm in Eltopia, Washington also administrates the WA Blueberry Commission and directs the WA Asparagus Commission. He grows arugula, basil, beets, carrots, chard, cucumbers, dill, lettuce, melons, kale, asparagus, eggplant, onions, shallots, mixed and mustard greens, okra, watermelon, tomatoes, and peppers. He also grows water melons, cantaloupe, blueberries, and 14 varieties of melons.
Most of Alan’s crops were early this year. They started picking their third planting of melons at the time of year when usually they are just starting to pick their second planting.

Alan said, “The hot weather really hurt my peppers. And I had two other pepper growers come by to look at my peppers and theirs were in even worse shape than mine.”

Washington State blueberry yields were projected to be 110 million pounds but were revised down to 102 million due to the heat.

As an example of shifting growing zones, Alan said, “This year we are sending melons to California, because California is not producing melons to feed itself. That’s crazy! There are more melons grown in California than the rest of the country combined. But we’re shipping melons to them, which is not something that we would normally do.”

Eggplant, a heavy California crop, is doing very well in Alan’s fields. He’s already had his first planting picked as of this article and will be picking the second planting later this season.

He’s trying to determine what crops to grow to stay in business. Ten years ago, no one grew tomatoes on a commercial scale in this region. Now, he’s selling tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of tomatoes.

He says, “What I am personally experiencing gives me confidence to grow crops that weren’t historically widely grown here. We are basically looking at what crops grow well now and see what kind of niche do we have.”

Alan is double-cropping two acres of melons and kale. He worked some rented land and laid down plastic and drip tape for irrigation, put down dry fertilizer and used row covers to get off to an early start with kale. Once the kale was harvested, he planted melons. He hopes to make this a yearly practice, using the fact that kale is an early season crop and melon is a warm season one. This is a practice that would not have been thought was possible 20 years ago, but Schreiber seems to think that recent warmer weather allows him to attempt this new kind of a cropping system.

For crops like asparagus, it may be that they will switch varieties for ones suited to a warmer climate. Fortunately, asparagus harvest was over before the heat got really bad.  It did result in record early harvest and an early end of harvest.
“We dodged the bullet,” said Schreiber.

Kevin Archelpohl, who has farmed here for 18 years, grows conventional fruits on 35 acres at his K&C Farms in Mattawa. He said he’s never seen this kind of record heat. His cherry tomatoes have not set well this year and there was not much fruit.
“We got off to a pretty good start, as far as growing. There was no late frost. We put them in the ground early and the warm spring helped. But tomatoes don’t like to set during the hot weather. So they are not big enough and we had low yields during the heat wave. Now that weather has cooled off, we’re starting to see more fruit.”

“This heat lasted a long time this year. In June we had 100 degree plus weather. Then we had another heat wave in July but that was the longest. I feel like it’s getting warmer,” he said.

Indeed. a cherry grower in Yakima, Washington, told me he had to email 600 customers who come to his U-Pick Cherry Orchard and tell them not to come. With 111 degree temperatures, all his cherries were poached and inedible.

Tim Smith, professor emeritus at Washington State University Extension, who has spent 42 years in the agricultural industry here confirms what the farmers are experiencing.

“The weather is so unpredictable and we keep setting records of all sorts. What I think we are experiencing is screwed up weather because of climate change. We grow crops in this area because of our climate. If the climate changes, it’s not for the best. The trend we are seeing is unreliability.”

General Mills CEO Ken Powell said, “We think that human-caused greenhouse gas causes climate change and climate volatility and that’s going to stress the agricultural supply chain, which is very important to us.”

The food giant Cargill website states:
“Cargill sees climate change as a risk influencing our ability to create a more food-secure world. …In a period of accelerated climate change, the question is whether the food systems upon which we rely can adapt.”  … “A new report that evaluates the range of risks posed to the U.S. economy by climate change over the next century was issued …“Risky Business: Our Nation’s Economy at Risk from Climate Change.”

In addition to adaptation, we also need to mitigate climate change. Market-based options to address the risks and reduce our fossil fuel emissions include the Carbon Fee and Dividend legislative proposal. Information is available from the Citizens’ Climate Lobby website, https://citizensclimatelobby.org.

Farmers in Eastern Washington and around the country are facing the impacts of a warming world. But we can act now to stabilize our climate and farm productively well into the future, so we don’t have to keep dodging those bullets.

Alexandra Amonette is a vegetable grower in Richland, Washington, and a volunteer with Citizens Climate Lobby. She can be reached at abamonette@gmail.com.