Cranberries could have been missing at the Thanksgiving table this year, and it had nothing to do with supply chain issues or inflation.
Instead, the weather was the culprit, as the summer brought exceptionally hot temperatures this year, with Earth experiencing its sixth-hottest August of all time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
The impact of climate change jeopardized the fate of cranberry crops as a drought and heatwave swept Massachusetts, where nearly a third of all cranberries in the U.S. are harvested. When all goes as planned, cranberries are grown in flood fields with the help of fresh water — a system that faces issues when there's an exceptionally dry and hot season.
"The boom or bust scenario that climate change presents when it comes to precipitation events — the boom being the large precipitation event, the bust being long dry spells — that's not a good thing," Zachary Zobel, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, told Grist in September. Zobel went on to say that the current situation is a direct result of climate change.
To further complicate the pending availability of fresh cranberries, only about three percent of the berries are sold fresh, according to Modern Farmer. Cranberry farmers typically save a small portion of their harvest — usually the best in the batch — to be sold fresh, and the rest wind up in juices, cans or dried.
Source: Entrepeneur