Farmers are on the frontline of climate change

Originally published in the opinion section of the Bangor Daily News, July 20, 2023
Colleen Hanlon-Smith is the co-owner of Daybreak Growers Alliance and owner of Peak Season foodservice distribution, both based in Unity. Through her work, she markets and distributes products from more than 100 Maine farmers and food producers.

Here in Maine the summer crop is coming in earnest after a deluge in May and June. This only to put the word “deluge” in stark contrast to the flash floods fellow farmers in VT, MA and NY experienced this past week.

The first bites of tomatoes, the first arrival of raspberries, a cadre of summer crops joining what was an especially impressive (and well watered!) array of greens, shoots and herbs that sustained us in spring before harvest season came to full bloom.

 In the past week, a few hundred miles away in Vermont, at many farms, the whole season’s crop was lost to flash floods, rivers bursting at the banks and fertile valley fields filled with crops flooded right as peak season hits. Roads impassable for dairy trucks and distributors. The list goes on. How easily this could have been Maine. 

A ring of smoke from Canadian wildfires circled us in spring, a flood took our fellow farmers’ crop this July, there will likely be no stone fruit in Maine this year due to arctic blasts that disrupted the trees’ dormancy in February. 

My mind goes back to the disbelief and grief of the winter before last when farming friends and neighbors in Maine were the first to learn of farmland PFAS contamination. (An issue that persists globally that Maine has been at the forefront of confronting head on.) Most (but not all) Maine farmers were able to pivot and make the necessary adjustments to their farms to ensure they were able to keep farming and provide PFAS-free foods moving forward. Equally resilient, I’m hopeful Vermont farmers will recover from this. 

As we as a population collectively mistreat and misuse our planet, farmers that practice regenerative agriculture have dedicated their lives to not only feed us but also to mitigate the effects of the changing climate. 

Farmers here and globally are at the frontlines of climate change and literally weathering the storm to ensure we are fed. They are feeling the effects of our collective misuse of our planet first. Their jobs have been hard. They will increasingly get harder. 

I am deeply thankful to each of you who are supporting our farmers in all the ways you are, through thick and thin. Please consider doubling down on your efforts to support Maine farmers and food producers right now and ongoing. It’s looking like a solid harvest season but with variable weather becoming more common, it's more crucial than ever that our farmers can "make hay when the sun shines" and put away money for inevitable “rainy days” to come.