A mid-October Wednesday at Soergel Orchards looked a lot like what you might imagine for a perfect autumn day on a Pennsylvania farm: Rows of shaggy-headed flowering plants lined up and ready, a picturesque barn store packed with homey goods, a hearty patch of pumpkins glowing orange up the hill.
But one thing was missing. At the largest apple orchard in Allegheny County, in the peak of apple-picking season, no one was picking apples.
Soergel’s has reduced an activity that typically draws visitors seven days a week to a weekend-only event, not for lack of interest, but for lack of product. Pennsylvania, along with other states in prime Mid-Atlantic fruit growing territory, saw catastrophic losses in yield this year due to a late-season frost. In the state that’s the country’s fourth-largest producer of apples, this year’s yield could measure just 10% of the average.
Peaches saw almost zero production, pears fell short 60-80%, cherries, grapes and strawberries all were affected.
Shan Kumar is an assistant professor of tree fruit at Penn State Extension, part of the College of Agricultural Sciences. “Everywhere we have seen historic new trends,” he said. “It’s harder to do agriculture because of climate change, that’s just a fact that we’re all living with.” This spring it was the combination of early warmth, late freeze, no moisture to protect small buds, and cold air that settled low and long that was devastating.
The costs are both economic and social, and if there are solutions to the difficulties of farming amid climate change they may come from both science and culture.
Blemished apples and the IG factor
Adam Voll is part of the extended family who have run Soergels since 1850, which now includes his parents (his mother is a Soergel), brothers, sisters, cousins, brother-in-law. His role is “basically anything outside the building.”
Voll said the Franklin Park orchard lost about 60% of its apple crop, along with all the peaches and most of the cherries. This doesn’t just mean low fruit yields. It means the curtailment of adjacent activities like apple picking, and the business that follows. “If you’re not offering, they’re not coming, and if they’re not coming, they’re not buying.”
It also means a significant chunk of the crop had to be moved to cider. Of the apples produced, many were not viable for consumer sales due to frost ring, a blemish that can appear on the fruit’s skin. “It’s not marketable,” he said, “but there’s nothing wrong with the inside.”
Appearances matter. What’s the point of picking apples if you can’t put it on Instagram? Voll, who charges for the product rather than the process, has observed a rise in groups who pick for pics then discard their plunder, posting on social media without posting up at the cash register.
While squandered fruit is the result, Voll doesn’t see malice aforethought. It’s more symptomatic of our disconnection from the basic processes that keep us alive.
The tours and programs the farm offers serve not only as a source of income, but, and maybe more importantly, as a way to educate people on what it takes for what’s on their plates to get there. “People don’t realize how delicate our food system really is,” Voll said. “They don’t understand seasonality and where things come from because you can go to a grocery store and see tomatoes in January.”
Freeze fund takes the bite out of winter loss
While this year’s frost was an anomaly, adversity at the mercy of the weather is not. Voll’s most-watched show is The Weather Channel and he checks the app obsessively. “There is no guarantee on anything until it’s harvested into a bin,” he said. “We are a 30-second storm away from losing everything.”
The scope of the damage this year was so great that the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture created the PA Fruit Grower Freeze Disaster Assistance Recovery Fund, allocating $10 million to aid growers impacted by the frost. The agency has previously provided grants to farmers for multiple reasons including crisis situations. One such initiative, the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Recovery Reimbursement Fund, serves as the freeze fund model. This is the first time funds have been diverted into a grant program to address shrinkage resulting from weather.
Voll did not apply. His diversity of products allowed him to pivot and minimize financial loss. “I’ll let that go to someone who really needs it,” he said.
Growers devoted to tree fruit are those who need it most. Aaron Sturges, of Sturges Orchards in Beaver County, is one. Apples, peaches, pears, plums and cherries are his concentration. Specifically, he’s devoted to heirloom and rare varietal apples.
Some of his land sits at an elevation, which he credits for what yield he was able to generate this year. Even so, in apples he only returned about 40% of his average. He has a little bit of space in Tennessee from which he was able to pull some peaches; good thing, because locally he grew about 10% of his usual. He saw no pears.
“It’s nice to see Pennsylvania step up for growers,” said Sturges. He applied for the grant, but hasn’t yet received notification of a determination. Federal low-interest loans are available as well, but those he hasn’t pursued, citing the slow process as well as the need for repayment.
As a farmers market vendor who frequently mans his own table, he’s had to raise prices. There hasn’t been much grumbling, he said. When there is, though, he says he understands.
Read more: Pittsburgh-area farmers markets map
Can science perfect fruitification?
As climate change brings more erratic weather to Western Pennsylvania, researchers are looking for ways to protect crops.
Kumar said that the scale of the spring frost’s damage wasn’t apparent until after the fact, though foreknowledge would currently offer little help. Science fiction fantasies and passionate conspiracies theories aside, we cannot control the weather or force the temperature or immediate environment to cooperate with the needs and demands of fruit.
But research is underway that could eventually put the ability for action into the hands of the farmers who need it. Kumar has been investigating how to regulate the process of fruitification, and after this April, he said, “we got into high gear.”
“The products would just give signals. Slow down, go back to sleep, sleep longer.”
Shan kumar
Essentially, the products in development would prompt trees to modulate their growth, keeping them from progressing too early and avoiding frost risk. “The products would just give signals,” he said. “Slow down, go back to sleep, sleep longer.” It would rely primarily on plant hormones, meaning no negative consequences to the quality of the fruit itself.
It looks like an ideal solution, if it works. But the investigation is just beginning, and testing is dependent on real, seasonal growing cycles. “We only started last year, and you get one chance a year,” he said.
There is one potential win. Due to the current dearth, next year’s apple season could be prolific. For some fruits, heavy harvests naturally follow light ones. But the year after that could be meager again, Kumar said. And so on.
If it comes, what do we do with overabundance?
Voll said taking advantage of availability used to be a common pursuit. “Maximizing in-season and storing for winter by freezing and canning used to be something everyone did, not just farmers,” he said.
This has been largely lost, but a resurgence could be on the way. Classes and workshops in food preservation are well-attended, and while the draw might be learning a new skill or a novel social activity, the ability to stretch our budget can’t hurt. We’re not too many generations away from understanding how our food supply can be changed and how we need to be prepared for it. Increasing changes to weather might make us seek that knowledge again.
Lissa Brennan is a Pittsburgh-based writer and theater artist and can be reached at lissabrennan.lb@gmail.com.
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