After Easter cold spell, US farmers tally losses

Already gone are 95 percent of South Carolina's $35 million peach crop and 90 percent of North Carolina's potential $25 million apple harvest.

from the April 11, 2007 edition

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It capped a "strange weather year" that had an early cold fall, a mild winter, a chilly February, and T-shirt temperatures in March, says Kevin Hardy, who owns the Hardy Berry Farm orchard in Anderson County, S.C. "The plants tried to bear fruit all winter long," he says. "Right now, we're picking strawberries during the day and doing frost protection at night."

In Nebraska, climatologists had to cull through data from the 1920s to find evidence of a similar event. Apple farmers in western North Carolina say the last time a spring cold snap destroyed nearly the entire harvest, as this one did, was in 1955. The heartland's "big chill" is the second freeze this year. In January, California had a four-day cold snap, and has since received $7.45 million in state and federal aid.

Extension specialists already urge farmers to plant varietals of the same crop instead of a single high-yielding variety to "spread the risk out," says Dr. Volenec. Hardier, later-blooming varieties, however, tend to have lower yields, and mean higher prices at the supermarket.

While foreign imports help insulate supermarkets from price hikes in case of a freeze, consumers this summer are likely to find more expensive food at local farmers' markets and fruit stands, if they can find fruit at all. In the broader market, wheat futures rose 30 cents Monday on fears of a damaged crop, especially in Kansas, before falling to an average increase of 9 cents for the day. Farmers reported much of the crop laying down and starting to smell from fermentation. Crop insurance usually only covers about 60 percent of the crop's value.

Still, many farmers sought to salvage their fields. A peach farmer in North Carolina set up giant fans around his orchard to increase circulation and raise the temperature while berry farmers turned on their watering systems to activate starch metabolism in the plants' roots.

But there was nothing Ms. Steele could do. In the 20 years she's owned the orchard, she had never seen her 2,000 apple trees and 300 peach trees look so lifeless. "An eerie feeling came over me that I'd never experienced before, seeing such a sad situation," she says.

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