In addition to torrential flooding rains, periods of severe drought, high humidity, and temperature extremes, farmers are dealing with unusually high winds from storms and moving weather systems. Storm damage from wind, flooding, and hail now accounts for billions of dollars of crop losses every year in the U. S.
Unfortunately, there is yet another weather-related insult our farmers must contend with. My friends at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration( NOAA) call it“ the persistence of the weather pattern,” where a system becomes parked over a large region for days or weeks.
In late September, 2024, D. C. measured rainfall on eleven consecutive days, the second longest stretch of rainy days in the D. C.-area weather records going back more than 100 years. Five weeks later, the Washington Post reported the end of a 35-day period of consecutive days with zero measurable rain— a new record for our area. So a record dry spell came immediately after a near-record wet spell. This too is climate change. Longer stretches of dry days bring drought, and at the time of this writing( February, 2026), all of Montgomery County is in severe drought. Longer stretches of wet weather bring flooded fields, weeds, humidity and crop disease, and soil that’ s too wet for planting or harvest.
Finding ways forward
Top: A wet spring in 2024 delayed soil preparation for the potato planting at Sandy Spring Gardens. But here the planting of that field is finished. The soil is loose and deep as it must be for potatoes. This is when the field is most vulnerable to damage from flooding rain.
Middle: At 1:00 am the very next morning, we received one inch of rain in 15 minutes. That is 12 times the rate defined by the National Weather Service as“ heavy rain.” The field was flooded, saturated and not in a healthy state. And there was erosion. Some soil had already washed off the field.
Bottom: This is the same potato field in late June. This is a climate-related situation where rainfall comes less frequently, and then often more heavily than normal. So we had to deal with both erosion, followed by water supplementation because of the early summer drought.
There is irony in the fact that as farmers strive to meet the challenges of a changing climate, we are told that agriculture has contributed over one-quarter of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. So what’ s a farmer to do in the face of these challenges?
There are two categories of response: Adaptation is implementing farming practices that make the farm more resilient in the face of changes in climate and weather; Mitigation is taking steps that not only reduce the contribution of agriculture to the global climate crisis but also sequester carbon in farm soils by drawing CO 2 from the atmosphere.
For each climate challenge, farmers are perfecting adaptations. In response to torrential-flooding rains, we reduce tillage to minimize erosion, maintain grassy waterways to filter run-off from fields, plant cover crops to protect soil, and for some crops we build raised beds to ensure a root zone for plants that is not saturated during extended periods of rain.
Some varieties of row crops( corn, soybeans, and
6 plenty I spring sowing 2026