‘A whole other level of stress’: How climate change is harming Pennsylvania farmers

When Hugh McPherson’s great-great-grandfather John McPherson started his York County farm in the mid-1800s, the first crops he planted were fruit trees to feed his family.

The space ultimately grew into what’s now known as Maple Lawn Farms in south central Pennsylvania, a place where Hugh McPherson’s grandfather specialized in growing potatoes and string beans and raising chickens before the family moved on to corn, soybeans and wheat. 

In more than a century and a half, the McPherson farm weathered the Great Depression, two world wars, and major changes in the market — such as large grocery corporations often refusing to take produce shipments from smaller family farms beginning in the 1990s.

It has survived, while thousands of other family farms in Pennsylvania have not in recent years. These days, there are fewer potatoes and chickens on the farm, and, instead, it has returned to its roots: fruit.

Maple Lawn now draws people from throughout the region to pick their own apples, blueberries, peaches, pumpkins, and other produce. McPherson, who attended Penn State to learn plane design before getting into his family’s farming business, has helped lead that transition to what’s known as agritourism, which he says has made the farm able not only to survive but to flourish. 

Surviving in the age of climate change, however, is no easy feat. 

As a result of rising temperatures caused by climate change, the McPhersons had to pull out the Macintosh apple trees that had grown on their farm for decades and replace them with varieties that originally were bred for places farther south. 

“It used to get hot, but it didn’t get hot for this many weeks in the summertime,” said McPherson, who works at Maple Lawn with his father. “And we used to have a lot more snow cover. When I was a kid, it would snow around December, and we’d see the ground again sometime in late February. Now, snow hardly ever lasts more than a day or two, and sometimes it takes forever for the ground to freeze.” 

McPherson is hopeful about the future despite these changes, noting that farms can implement more sustainable farming techniques and technologies to adapt to a warming world where extreme weather events such as droughts, fires and flooding are on the rise. But there’s a cost to this adaptation. For example, establishing a new apple orchard, as the McPhersons have had to do, costs about $10,000 an acre — and then the farmer has to wait three years before there are any apples.

“There’s a period of time where we thought, Well, maybe next year the Macintoshes will be all right, but they just weren’t,” McPherson said. 

“People talk a lot about drought affecting beef price,” he continued. “If you can’t feed the cows, you’re going to have fewer cows next year. And for two years, you’ll have a lower output for beef. And beef prices are going to go up, and you can’t turn that around in a single year, in one growing cycle because the steers take two years to grow out. So these kind of environmental effects will take years to fix.”

‘Not doing anything is absolutely not an option’

Climate change is causing rising temperatures, devastating flooding, a record number of wildfires, and more drought in Pennsylvania — and those problems will worsen in the years to come, the state Department of Environmental Protection reported.

In the past century, temperatures in Pennsylvania increased by 1.8 degrees. By 2050, Pennsylvania is expected to warm by another 5.9 degrees, according to the DEP, which noted that such temperatures result in more heat-related deaths, deteriorating air quality, and increased amounts of disease and pests.

These changes are posing significant problems for farmers, including the family operations that make up the majority of Pennsylvania’s farms.

“Farms are already experiencing consequences of climate change such as direct crop damage from increasingly intense precipitation events,” the state DEP wrote. “Heat stress may lead to declines in dairy production and summer flowering crop yields.”

For farmers, climate change can lead to soil erosion due to increased rainfall and flooding, air pollution that damages crops, wildfires that can destroy farmland, and heat that endangers agricultural workers,the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes.

“Extreme precipitation events are increasing,” said Suat Irmak, a Penn State professor who heads the university’s department of agricultural and biological engineering and is an expert on climate change. “For example, 2-inch-per-day precipitation could be historically very rare. Now, 3, 4 inches per day is becoming very common. That means more precipitation per unit area in a much shorter time, which is going to create huge runoff issues. And then, in agricultural fields especially, runoff of different chemicals, fertilizers to surface and groundwater resources. So that is a big issue.

“We are having this issue, absolutely we do, and it is a growing issue in Pennsylvania,” Irmak said.

Rising temperatures, drought and other environmental problems caused by climate change make it increasingly difficult for farmers as they plan when and what to plant, said Adrienne Nelson, a bean farmer in the Pittsburgh area and the northern Appalachia regional organizing manager for the National Young Farmers Coalition.

“When I learned how to farm and learned how to crop plan, it was possible to rely on seasonality and that this part of the farm season happens at this time of year, and seeding happens at this time of year, and planting happens in April and May,” Nelson said. “And the last, I would say, eight years have all been so different that there’s this new unpredictability that makes it a lot harder to actually plan ahead.

“I see this on my friends’ farms, and I see this for myself, and I think that unpredictability just brings a whole other level of stress, not knowing if we’ll be able to get into the fields early if it’s been a really rainy spring, which we’ve had in the last eight years,” Nelson continued. “”We’ve had a couple of springs that have held people back. We’ve had frosts that are incredibly early followed by periods of almost springtime warmth.”

As farmers struggle, it’s crucial that they get help — and now is the time to act, Irmak said. He called for state and federal officials, farmers, researchers and educators, social workers, and others to gather and figure out a way forward when it comes to climate change’s impact on farmers. Such a plan, a version of which Irmak led while working at the University of Nebraska, entails researchers and farmers working together on implementing sustainable agricultural practices, farmers being able to access sustainable agriculture grants, and social workers helping farmers, who are at a higher risk for suicide than the general population, among other issues related to climate change.

“Not doing anything is not an option,” Irmak said. “Our soils are being eroded. Our water quality degradation has been increasing. Drought has been increasing. Trust me, if we have this conversation in a few years from now, we are going to hear many, many people complaining about drought: What do I do? What do I do? I cannot grow corn. I cannot grow soybeans. I cannot grow grapes. I cannot grow apples.”

Simply put, Irmak said, if there’s no action on climate change, the results will be disastrous — for farmers, and for everyone. 

“If you don’t do anything with climate change’s impact on agricultural systems, then our water quality in Chesapeake Bay and other water resources are going to get much, much worse; there’s no doubt about that,” Irmak said. “As you have less productive soils, then your commodity production is going to decrease significantly. Well, that’s going to have significant economic implication to Pennsylvania. It can be a disaster. So there’s a huge socio-economic implication as well. Not doing anything is absolutely not an option.”

Tackling climate change in a divided Legislature 

With the incoming Trump administration vowing to roll back climate change programs championed by President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, farmers and environmental advocates in Pennsylvania said it will fall to state lawmakers to act.

“I think, just as during the last Trump administration, it’s an opportunity to dig back into state policy and see what kind of change and support we can get there,” Nelson said.

Nelson said she hopes to see more state and federal dollars going to sustainable farming efforts, such as low-till farming or rotational grazing, agricultural practices that the U.S. Department of Agriculture explains reduce greenhouse gas emissions and soil erosion.

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration has invested millions of dollars in sustainable farming programs, including tax credits for farmers who are working to improve their soil and water quality.

Other Democratic leaders have also worked to secure funding for sustainable farming in Pennsylvania. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat who in November lost his reelection bid to Republican Dave McCormick, in October announced $40 million in federal funds for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve water quality on more than 50 farms across Pennsylvania.

Democratic state Rep. Emily Kinkead, who serves on Pennsylvania’s House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, said she’s hopeful that lawmakers will be able to pass climate change legislation in a divided Legislature. Democrats have a majority in the state House, while Republicans control the state Senate. 

Kinkead said she believes if Democrats can frame climate change bills more as pro-farming legislation, they’ll be more likely to pass the Republican Senate.

“It’s one of those things where if you sell it in one way, it’s not going to get support,” Kinkead said. “If you sell it in another way, it’s going to get overwhelming bipartisan support. If you look at votes in the Agriculture Committee in particular, almost all of our votes are broadly bipartisan, if not unanimous. So there’s not a lot of controversy because people are looking at this as, We need to protect our farms. We need to protect our food supply.”

Kinkead said she’d like to see lawmakers pass bills that would encourage farmers to implement no-till farming and set up grant programs that would help to protect the land from erosion while offering farmers economic support.

Nelson would also like to see financial support for expanding land access in the farm bill that Congress is expected to pass under the new administration. The National Young Farmers Coalition, Nelson said, is pushing for the farm bill to include funding for local governments, nonprofits and others dedicated to improving land access to purchase land and redistribute it to farmers. That would address economic barriers younger farmers can face when attempting to break into agriculture, and it could also help to encourage sustainable farming practices, Nelson said. 

“Farmers are caring for soil and putting a lot of effort into building soil quality that also helps our environment thrive, and they’re not being compensated for that,” Nelson said. “If they’re leasing land, if your lease ends, you have to walk away from all of that input and kind of start over as far as building soil quality.”