Researchers warn pantry staples may soon be in short supply as farmers battle poor conditions: 'The ground is almost like cement'
Farmers in Ohio County, West Virginia, are expected to face a significant shortage of crop yields due to drought conditions, the Intelligencer Wheeling News-Register reported .
What's happening?
A "prolonged shortage of rainfall" led West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice to declare a state of emergency in all of the state's 55 counties. For the state's farmers, the damage has already likely been done.
"The corn is only half as tall as it should be, and the drought has kind of wiped out all the green beans," farmer Eric Freeland said . "It looks like the pumpkin crop will not make it, and the potato crop yielded less than half that it should have. Overall, it's going to be quite a bad year."
Freeland said that he had been forced to use public water to irrigate his land, taking his water bill from around $100 per month to $1,000.
"The ground is almost like cement because of the dry conditions," National Weather Service Pittsburgh Lead Meteorologist Shannon Hefferan said . "Farmers are going to get some rain in the next couple of days, which is a good thing because if they get too much rain in a short amount of time, it just goes right to flooding."
Why are droughts concerning?
Droughts are becoming more frequent and more prolonged as a result of changes to the climate, a consequence of the ongoing overheating of our planet caused by air pollution from dirty energy sources.
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In addition to the effects of rising global temperatures, poor water management in many areas has exacerbated the problem.
One major issue with droughts is that once their effects are felt, it is too late to mitigate them — drought prevention and mitigation efforts must be proactive rather than reactive. In West Virginia, Freeland told the Intelligencer that he began noticing the effects of the drought a full six weeks before the state's Republican governor declared an emergency.
What's being done about droughts?
It is not clear what Ohio County plans to do about the drought that has already struck — but to prevent future prolonged droughts and the other effects of our changing climate, we must move beyond polluting dirty energy sources such as gas and oil. Instead, we should switch to clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.
In addition, one strategy for dealing with the threat to food supplies that droughts already present has been for scientists to genetically engineer crops to make them more resilient to harsh conditions.
