Farmers in North Carolina are facing an uphill battle this spring as a severe drought combined with unseasonable heat has stunted early-season specialty crops from brassicas to berries.
As of early May, North Carolina was experiencing severe agricultural distress, with approximately 67 counties under extreme drought conditions and record-breaking dryness impacting 96% of the Southeast.
“These conditions are becoming quite apparent on our farms, with retention ponds getting extremely low, cracks in the soil, difficulty preparing land for summer production, and reduced yields on many spring crops,” says Taylor Holenbeck, grower services coordinator for the Durham, N.C.-based Happy Dirt, a farmer-owned distributor of organic produce, specializing in connecting Southeast regional farmers with retailers and food hubs.
Spring greens have been hit particularly hard, says Holenbeck.
“Our spring greens crops have been the most impacted so far,” he says. “One farm is seeing half the average yield on their broccolini crop, while others are seeing extremely slow growth on kales, collards, cabbage and other brassicas.”
In the eastern part of the state, drought conditions and unseasonably hot temperatures that repeatedly reached the 90s during April, have increased pest pressures in the area.
“Without the rain to help wash pest eggs off the crops, this has led to large hatchings of diamond back moths, compromising many of the tender spring greens,” he says.
Holenbeck says a number of Happy Dirt farms are behind on their spring plantings, with some delayed by at least two weeks due to dry conditions.
And it’s not only what’s already in the ground that struggles in drought conditions, says Holenbeck, who notes that preparing new beds when soil is extremely dry, is also a challenge.
“Some farms are having to overhead water their land just to be able to prep beds, which is not how you want to be using your precious water resources in a drought,” he says.
‘Fast and Furious’ Strawberries
Weather conditions have also impacted the state’s strawberry production.
“Our strawberry season has been stunted as well, although this is due to not only drought, but the large swings in temperature this spring, causing the plants to be more vegetative rather than producing a lot of fruit consistently,” says Holenbeck.
Austin Hirsch, a strawberry farmer in Catawba, N.C., told AgDay’s Haley Bickelhaupt that while ripening usually takes a few weeks, in this year’s drought, it’s been “fast and furious.”
“The biggest challenge is trying to keep up with harvest,” says Hirsch of Bumble Berry Farms. The first-generation farmer says a hard winter followed by a warm week in early April accelerated picking of the farm’s early season variety, which began on April 8.
“We went out there maybe five or six days later, and the whole field was red…I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Hirch.
Bumble Berry Farms grows five varieties of strawberries, all of which have been impacted by drought, he says.
But one silver lining for Hirsch has been sweeter berries.
“The conditions raise the sugar levels,” he says.
Bumble Berry Farms estimates it strawberry crop yields were about 50% of normal this season and is now turning its attention to its blackberry crop.
But Happy Dirt’s Holenbeck remains optimistic that there’s still time for some North Carolina strawberries.
“We still have the month of May to have a great strawberry season,” he says. “And so far, the sweet corn and summer squash crops are doing okay but will need rain soon.”
Blueberries in the Balance
Altar Cross Farms, a family-run organic blueberry farm in Ivanhoe, N.C., which tends more than 100 acres of certified organic blueberries between its own 40 acres and a lease on an additional 65 acres, says it’s managing the unusually dry conditions through strategic irrigation and a watchful eye on the weather.
“This has been a particularly dry start to the season, which is a change from what we typically see this time of year,” says Morgan Sykes, sales and packing manager for Altar Cross Farms and daughter of the farm’s owners Roy and Donna Kykes. “We have been having to use our irrigation a lot more this year starting with the spring freezes to now this extreme dry weather.
“We are very blessed to have the irrigation system that we do but nothing is as good as the natural rain,” she adds.
On the family’s 40 acres, they conserve as much water as possible using a ditching system connected to catch basins at the end of each row to flow the water back into its pond.
“Even with that, our pond is about four feet lower than what it should be,” she says.
On the farm’s leased acres, the pond system requires they pump water from a well into the pond, which costs more because it has to be hooked up to a generator, she says.
But a dryer blueberry growing season does have some benefits, says Sykes.
“The quality of blueberries on a dryish year are a little better because you really don’t have to worry as much about soft fruit,” she says. “It will impact the size of the berry; they will maybe not be as big. That is where we will be utilizing our irrigation to try and plump them up.”
Overall, Sykes says things are shaping up to be a “really good year.”
“We packed the highest number of berries we ever had last year,” she says. “This year we are hoping to do even more, [as] we have a few more fields that are just coming into production now.”
Sykes says this time of year usually presents the opposite weather problem — too much precipitation. To address this, Altar Cross Farms has planted varieties that can tolerate more water and still remain firm.
“We have some O’Neals that are drought tolerant, but if they get a little rain, they are bad about splitting,” she says.
While the family had been planning to move away from the variety as a result, this year, it looks as though they’ll be able to pack more of them.
“All of our other berries we are just having to keep an eye on and irrigate them to help the berries grow and size up,” she says. “We are praying for rain. We just don’t want it all at one time.”
Rising Input Costs vs. Market Realities
In North Carolina, the dust is rising just as fast as the overhead. While drought conditions have forced farmers to rely heavily on irrigation, global conflicts have driven diesel prices up by nearly 50%, making the cost of watering particularly steep.
Holenbeck says while irrigation methods vary widely from farm to farm in North Carolina, those that use diesel, “are definitely feeling the effects of high prices.”
Soaring prices, not only for farms to run their irrigation pumps, but to operate tractors and on shipping costs for fertilizers and packaging, are putting a squeeze on the season.
“Higher fuel costs impact everything, down to the cost of the petroleum-based plastic used for mulch and clamshells that we pack small fruit into,” he says. “Unfortunately, our farmers are beholden to market pricing, so we are looking at the high-end of pricing on each crop, but have to balance being too high, otherwise sales slow, and that’s worse for the farms.
“Just because there is a drought here, doesn’t mean that the market isn’t low in other regions, so it’s a tricky balance,” he continues.
Farming for North Carolina’s Future
In the face of these soaring operational costs and a volatile climate, North Carolina’s specialty crop growers are no longer just reacting to the weather — they’re striving to outsmart it. By shifting toward heat-tolerant varieties they aim to transform drought from a seasonal crisis into a catalyst for long-term agricultural innovation.
“[The development of drought-resistant varieties] should be top of mind for both farmers and consumers, and there are some great initiatives in our region working toward more drought-resistant crops,” says Holenback, who says he’s never had more farmers ask him if they could grow okra for Happy Dirt than this year.
“Okra is a great example of a drought-tolerant crop, but unfortunately the market demand doesn’t match its utility for the farmers — yet, he says. “Happy Dirt sees it as part of our work to help educate customers on what crops thrive in our increasingly warm climate in the South, and why it’s important for consumers to learn how to integrate those fruits and vegetables into their diets.”
Holenbeck says Happy Dirt is looking to seed breeders to help Southeastern growers with more heat-tolerant varieties of vegetables.
“From lettuce to tomatoes, there are more and more heat-tolerant varieties available, which is giving our farmers the ability to stretch seasons and grow more of what eaters want locally,” he says. “This year we are implementing broccoli trials on two of our farms to observe which varieties do best in our quickly warming springs, and so far, despite the drought, we have seen some great results, and plan to scale broccoli production if the varieties continue to perform.”
Happy Dirt says it has also conducted some smaller trials with regionally adapted varieties of butternut squash from Common Wealth Seed Growers and okra from Utopian Seed Project. This year it is also trialing and saving seeds from a specific okra variety grown by the Freed Seed Federation.
“All this seed work is important for farmers to be able to adapt over time and focus on what grows well here,” says Holenbeck. “We also see increased customer demand for the organic small fruit category, many of which are grown perennially, such as Asian persimmons, blackberries, figs, muscadines, and blueberries to name a few. Due to the perennial nature of these crops, they can provide more resiliency to extreme weather and are a category that we plan to grow more of with our farmers.”
And when it comes to preventive measures, Holenbeck says one of the best things farmers can do is keep their soil consistently covered with cash and cover crops to help retain moisture and reduce erosion when there’s heavy rain.
“This effort pays off slowly, but as we face more erratic weather patterns, these types of practices become increasingly important,” he says. “We can’t fight nature, but we can try to learn from it and mimic it.”
