Claire O’Connor, NRDC’s director of water and agriculture, points out that from 2006 to 2010, the program cost an average of $5.1 billion a year. When wind, rain, heat, or drought ravage their crops, farmers who purchase a policy receive a payout. The Federal Crop Insurance Program exists to help farmers manage risks posed by extreme events. Such extremes also wreak havoc on the plants and animals that provide us with food and sustain rural economies. Heat indexes that high would be an immediate health concern for farmworkers (and anyone else without access to air-conditioning). Dubbed the “Extreme Heat Belt,” this large swath of the country stretches from northern Texas and Louisiana up through Illinois and Indiana and as far north as Wisconsin.
But over the next three decades, such heat is expected to occur in 1,023 counties, where, collectively, nearly 108 million people live. counties could experience heat indexes of 125 degrees Fahrenheit in 2023. A recent report published by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to quantifying and communicating climate risk, warns that 50 U.S. The National Weather Service classifies days with heat indexes of 125 degrees and above as “extreme danger,” or when the risk of heat strokes is highly likely. But researchers are also looking into how heat waves could sizzle crops.ĭaniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Extreme Heat Belt Longer droughts, along with deluges that inundate fields in shorter periods of time, can have devastating effects on agricultural yields. “But I think it's happened at a scale that nobody quite expected.” “I think everybody's been taken aback by the predictions that extreme events will become more common,” says Steve Long, a plant biologist at the University of Illinois. And the weird weather hasn’t let up since.Ĭlimatologists say that extreme weather events are already occurring more often than previously predicted, and that conditions like those experienced in the Midwest over the past decade will only repeat themselves with more frequency as the climate continues to warm. The impact hit nearly 80 percent of farmland in the region, strained livestock production, and raised food prices around the world. A decade ago, the Midwest experienced the worst drought and heat stress it had seen in 50 years. With higher temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, climate change has been affecting America’s Breadbasket for a while now. When it comes to weather, he says, “There is no normal anymore.” At the end of the month, 11 inches of rain fell on Jones’s farm in less than 24 hours, flooding his fields. In July, temperatures climbed above 90 degrees Fahrenheit for more than a week, with the heat index exceeding 100. But the past summer has been particularly hot, says the fourth-generation farmer, and that doesn’t bode well for this fall’s bounty. On Adam Jones’s 750-acre farm in central Missouri, corn is ripening and soybean pods are getting plump. Courtesy of Water Management Research Unit
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