[Warmer winters, late freezes and wildly variable rainfall have
formed a perfect storm to wreck the one of the region’s favorite
fruits]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

AFTER TWO CLIMATE-DECIMATED HARVESTS, SOUTHERN PEACH FARMERS WONDER
HOW TO REGROUP  
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Katie Jane Fernelius
August 29, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Warmer winters, late freezes and wildly variable rainfall have
formed a perfect storm to wreck the one of the region’s favorite
fruits _

Peaches are notoriously difficult to farm, both labor-intensive and
sensitive to minor fluctuations in weather. ,
jeannetteferrary.photoshelter.com

 

Farming is inherently risky, a profession that always involves an
expectation of loss and damage. But among many farmers, peaches are
considered an unpredictable crop, with high risks and high rewards.

“Farming peaches is like gambling in a casino,” said 44-year-old
Robert Jackson II, of Lyman, South Carolina. The fruit bruises easily
and is vulnerable to weather changes, but can earn handsome profits.

He and his 70-year-old father, also named Robert Jackson, live and
work on a 33-acre farm where peaches are their main revenue stream.
“One day, everything could be fine, and then the next day, you could
have nothing.”

That’s been the case for many South Carolina growers, who produce
more of the fruit than the neighboring “Peach State”, Georgia.
This year, a late freeze destroyed about 70% of the state’s harvest.
This year’s disaster followed the previous year’s disruption,
another freeze that put a major dent in peach growers’ pockets and
prospects.

As southern peach season draws to a close, farmers worry that climate
change threatens the long-term survival of an industry that is an
economic powerhouse and deeply tied to regional identity. What apple
pie is to America, the peach has arguably become to many people in the
south. From Charleston to Greenville, South Carolina, roadside stands
advertise peach ice cream, and small Gaffney, South Carolina, has a
135ft peach-shaped water tower.

But this year, peaches have been scarce. At an Asheville, North
Carolina, farmers’ market where most of the peaches come from South
Carolina, fewer peaches were on offer. When they were available, they
were more expensive: a half-bushel could cost as much as $60.
“Still, every peach sold in a blink of an eye,” said Ellerslie
McCue, marketing coordinator for the WNC Farmers Market.

In 2022, Jackson Farms picked 2,200 half bushels of peaches. This
year, it only yielded 110 half bushels. Typically, the farm would have
enough peaches to sell wholesale, as many peach farmers do with excess
crop. This year it only produced enough to sell at the family’s
roadside stand and local farmers’ markets.

“We didn’t think the temperature was going to drop as cold as it
did,” he said. “But 2 or 3 degrees is the difference between
success and failure with peaches.”

Peaches are notoriously difficult to farm, both labor-intensive and
sensitive to minor fluctuations in weather. During the fall and
winter, peach trees enter a dormant period. Depending on the variety,
the tree needs a specific number of “chilling” hours during this
time – basically, hours spent at temperatures between 32 and 45F.
During this season, peach trees are pretty hardy and resilient to
freezes. Once the weather warms, the trees begin flowering and
eventually producing fruit. But, at that point, the tree and its
fruits are a lot more vulnerable to cold and destructive weather, such
as hail.

“This year is probably the worst year in my 38 years of working,”
said Dr Gregory Rieghard, professor of horticulture and member of the
Peach Breeding Lab at Clemson University. He estimated that Georgia
lost even more of its crop than South Carolina, keeping only 5% of its
peaches.

Rieghard said climate change is jeopardizing peach growing.

“What people don’t realize is that when you have warmer
temperatures in the Pacific, that warmth moves towards the Arctic and
displaces the cold air that is there and pushes it down into North
America. So we have an increased risk of these late freezes due to
polar vortexes.”

Frequent late spring freezes combine with warmer winters and irregular
rainfall to make a perfect storm for crop destruction. As global
temperatures rise, peach trees are not always getting those necessary
“chilling” hours. Warmer air also holds more moisture. It might
rain less frequently, but when it does rain, there often is a lot more
of it. Both drought and torrential downpours can wreck a season.

Rachel McCormick’s family has owned McLeod Farms in McBee, South
Carolina, for five generations and currently plants 1,000 acres of
peaches. Her father, Kemp McLeod, “calls the National Weather
[Service] phone number all the time. I think they have him on caller
ID,” she said.

The period of regular freezes this year was a “long three weeks”
for the family. But they fared better than many farmers, retaining
most of their crop. Some of it was the luck of geography. McBee,
situated in the state’s Sandhills region, didn’t get as intense of
a freeze as more southern and western parts of the state.

McLeod Farms also invested heavily in protecting its peaches. Workers
burned bales of straw around the periphery of the farm at night and
ran dozens of wind machines, circulating warm air around the trees.

Wind machines are among a handful of tools that can protect peaches in
the face of a freeze. Rieghard’s lab at Clemson is also working on
breeding new varieties of peaches that bloom later in the spring at
higher temperatures. For the farmers themselves, there is crop
insurance, which can provide some financial protection. Jackson
didn’t get crop insurance until after the 2017 freeze when the US
Department of Agriculture provided disaster relief to peach farmers.
That vital cash subsidized the cost of crop insurance, which can be
prohibitively expensive.

Despite this, many peach farmers remain steadfast in their commitment
to growing peaches. Risk sometimes comes with gain. Rieghard noted
peaches often return higher investment than row crops; in South
Carolina, 15,500 acres of peaches generate over $98m, to the tune of
more than $6,000 an acre.

“Honestly, if 100% of our crop came, we wouldn’t know what to
do,” joked McCormick. Her family farm expects to lose at least 20%
of its crop per season. As it stands, she’s currently filling out
the paperwork to bring the usual cohort of migrant workers over
through H-2A visas to work 2024’s crop. She doesn’t expect the
more frequent freezes will change her family’s commitment to
peaches.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the peach industry this year
because we were hit so hard, but I hope it has brought awareness to
how this supply chain works and how environmental and economic
elements can affect an industry,” she said.

For Jackson, the peach failure is a loss, but his family balances that
part of their business with off-farm jobs and other crops.

“We still have the vegetables and watermelon and blackberries to
save us. My dad says if you ever lose a blackberry crop, then
there’s not gonna be anything because blackberries are the most
resilient.” For now, the blackberries are fine.

But as they look ahead to the next year, Jackson said the family will
plant more peach trees, as well as looking at investing in a wind
machine. They also will prepare to burn frost-preventing “smudge
pots” if another freeze occurs. “If you save one crop of peaches,
it pays for itself,” Jackson said.

Besides, the work is also a payoff. “I love what I am doing, and I
like the lifestyle of farming,” said Jackson.

His father originally owned a farm in South Carolina in the 1980s.
After three freezes in a row, the elder Jackson declared bankruptcy
and moved to Connecticut to work on an apple orchard, then a vegetable
operation. But working for others dissatisfied him, and he returned to
South Carolina and bought land to begin farming again.

Today, the younger Jackson’s kids roam the farm and pick fruits at
will, just like he did as a youngster. So even if the peach industry
is risky, it feels worthwhile to him.

“Everyone needs to taste the fruits grown right next to where they
live, then they’ll understand.”

Still, he said, most people would do better putting their money into
the stock market instead of a peach farm.

* farming
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* farming methods
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* peaches
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