A survey of more than 200 New York farmers late last summer – during the worst drought in two generations – found that more than 70 percent of unirrigated, rain-fed field crops and pasture acreage had losses between 30 and 90 percent, according to a new report published by the Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions.
For farmers all over the state, arid conditions were so pervasive that fruit and vegetable growers who had a capacity to irrigate, lacked water to keep up with the drought. Irrigated farms estimated crop losses of up to 35 percent, said Shannan Sweet, NatureNet postdoctoral science fellow with Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and The Nature Conservancy.
Fruit growers in western New York lost about 52 percent of their crop, due to the drought, as grape growers in that region lost 26 percent. Western berry producers lost 96 percent, while the state’s eastern berry growers lost about 75 percent, according to the survey.
source: news.cornell.edu
