Impact of 2016 drought on agriculture in New York documented in survey

Apr 11, 2017

Farmers said they wanted better long-range forecasting

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

A new report from Cornell University’s Institute for Climate Smart Solutions documented the impact of 2016’s drought on producers in New York.

Anatomy of a Rare Drought: Insights from New York Farmers, asked farmers how they were affected by the drought and if they had the resources to cope with drought risk.

According to the survey of more than 200 local farmers, more than 70 per cent of unirrigated crop and pasture acres suffered losses between 30 and 90 per cent.

And some farmers with the means to irrigate lacked enough water to satisfy their fields’ needs, resulting in crop losses of up to 35 percent.

Shannan Sweet
Photo: Cornell University

The USDA declared 15 counties in New York as disaster areas during the drought in 2016.

And growers want to know if another drought is on the horizon.

“New York’s farmers have asked if they should expect more dry summers like the one we had in 2016. The answer is: We don’t know,” Shannan Sweet, a NatureNet postdoctoral fellow with Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, told the Cornell Chronicle.

“Climate scientists forecast that the number of frost-free days will continue to increase and summers will be getting warmer, increasing water demand for crops.”

Farmers want weather uncertainty to become a thing of the past, according to the report.

“Most of the farmers surveyed said they would like better seasonal weather forecasting so they could begin taking steps earlier in the season to prepare for drought,” the report says.

Other items farmers would like to see more of, according to the report, include:

Financial assitance to cover drought losses,
On-farm courses, training and educational materials about agriculture and drought,
Rentable and leasable irrigation equipment, and
Cheaper county water for agricultural use.

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