It's been a difficult growing season, to say the least. Climate change is here, and it's directly impacting farmer's health, their livelihoods, and their ability to grow certain varieties of produce. Intense periods of drought, floods, and heat waves have become the new norm, and farmers are having to constantly adapt and adjust to these destructive changes.
We started this spring with an unusually late frost toward the end of May, which wiped out water-loving veggie starts that had been transplanted from our greenhouses into the fields (think cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, and summer squash). This was closely followed by a record-breaking heat wave that stretched throughout the first week of June, which decimated more young plant starts. Throw in this summer's extreme drought throughout Minnesota, days of haze and poor air quality due to wildfire smoke drifts from Canada and the Boundary Waters, and an abundance of pests destroying crops, on top of on-going COVID concerns, and it's easy to see why this has been one of the busiest, trickiest seasons yet at Big River Farms.
Luckily, your CSA membership softens the blow by providing financial resources for BRF farmers up front to support their efforts. Similarly, your participation in our aggregated CSA provides sustainable market access for farmers in our education program to sell their organic produce.
We greatly appreciate the trust you place in us, and do our absolute best to ensure you receive an abundant, customized box of fresh veggies each week throughout the season. However, the increasingly destructive impacts of climate change have added a whole host of uncertainties to the existing variables that make organic farming difficult (i.e., bad weather, pests, disease, chemical pesticide and herbicide drifts from conventional farms, etc.) We hope you'll continue showing your support for BIPOC, female, and New American farmers by joining us for future CSA seasons!
Learn more about climate change impacting small, local farmers in the following articles featuring BRF grad Mhonpaj Lee and our friends at Hmong American Farmers Association and The Good Acre.
Star Tribune - "Drought hits Minnesota's Hmong farmers hard"
Minnesota Public Radio News - "Micro-farmers face drought without safety net"
