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Specialty farmers adapt harvests, protect crops in face of extreme heat
Farmers are harvesting earlier and using shade, fans and high tunnels as heat shortens windows and raises disease risk, growers said.
- Amid intense heat, specialty farmers like Annie Woods of Brooksville, Kentucky, are adjusting harvest schedules on her 50-acre farm to preserve crop quality and worker safety.
- Climate change-driven weather patterns include prolonged, intense heat, flooding, and drought, creating shorter planting windows and potential crop losses for farmers nationwide.
- In central Iowa, Paul Rasch, who owns fruit orchards, forced his crew of eight workers to accelerate raspberry harvesting, stating, "We're scrambling to pick as many as we can" before noon heat becomes unsafe.
- Specialty farmers often lack the safety nets available to commodity producers; Duncan Orlander, a policy specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, noted these complex federal programs are frequently underutilized.
- Woods utilizes crop diversity and greenhouse management to build resilience, observing that "You're always gonna have something that will thrive while other things might be more challenged.
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Annie Woods harvests pumpkins of the Eight Ball variety at sunset on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, on her farm in Brooksville, Kentucky, USA. Joshua A. Bickel/AP Even when the sun begins to set, the heat of the day still remains in the air as Annie Woods returns to her farm to harvest pumpkins and pumpkins on her farm. Intense and prolonged heat waves are part of a pattern of extreme weather events driven by climate change, which have also caused dro…
·Brazil
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'They’re not freak occurrences': Farmers grapple with protecting crops as heat waves and extreme weather become more frequent
Specialty farmers are dealing with the extreme weather events that are driving prolonged drought in some states and intense flooding in others.
·New York, United States
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Coverage Details
Total News Sources45
Leaning Left8Leaning Right8Center28Last UpdatedBias Distribution64% Center
Bias Distribution
- 64% of the sources are Center
64% Center
L 18%
C 64%
R 18%
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