Remember those scorching summer heat waves? Grocery shoppers may soon feel their impact at checkout.
Record-setting heat and extreme weather battered farms across the United States this year, damaging critical crops, stressing livestock and squeezing financially stretched farmers.
Blistering July temperatures in the Western United States killed thousands of cattle. Torrential rain, high winds and unexpected tornadoes in August flattened Midwestern cornfields. And hurricane winds decimated coffee farms in Hawaii.
Scientists say climate change is increasing the intensity of extreme weather events, while this year’s developing El Niño pattern could further disrupt agricultural production around the world.
“Climate change is amplifying these events, making them more frequent,” said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
El Niño, a natural warming of Pacific Ocean water, also increases the risks of floods, drought and extreme heat, according to the World Meteorological Organization, an agency within the United Nations.
Meanwhile, climate change is causing more severe extreme weather events that are contributing to food inflation, according to an Oxford Economics report published in May. A 2023 report from the European Central Bank found a strong El Niño could increase global food commodity prices by up to 9%.
Farmers in the United States are already feeling the impact.
Heat Kills Cattle and Squeezes Beef Supplies
Rapid City, South Dakota, saw more than 10 days of temperatures reaching 110 degrees or hotter in late July. Upwards of 5,000 cattle died because of the extreme temperatures, according to an estimate by Warren Rusche, a professor at South Dakota State University focused on cattle feeding.
That’s about the number of animals a single processing plant might handle in a day, Rusche said. Consumers might not feel a direct price impact from those deaths, Rusche said. But they are significant for ranchers, especially at a time when the U.S. cattle herd is at its lowest level in 75 years.
“Those losses are going to be substantial because those were animals that were destined to be sold soon,” Rusche said.
Ranchers can apply for federal assistance to help with the economic loss, but that process takes time.
For many producers, the money crunch from the cattle deaths compounds existing stressors.
A yearslong megadrought in the West has scorched pastures used for cattle grazing and dried up water supplies, forcing ranchers to ship in hay. The higher feeding costs have led ranchers to cut herd sizes.
Ground beef prices reached a record average of $7.158 a pound in August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Rusche said supply and pricing challenges with U.S. beef are likely to persist for years, as conditions cause ranchers to buy and raise fewer cattle.
“These are people making long-term investment decisions in a very uncertain environment,” Rusche said. “And the more uncertainty there is, the less likely they are to make the investment.”
Coffee Crops Take a Hit in Hawaii
Franck Carisey opened Uluwehi Coffee Farm on Hawaii’s Big Island in 2018 after falling in love with the area while on vacation with his wife. Carisey lost about one-third of his trees when Hurricane Lala hit the island in August. The storm whipped the Kona region, where the farm is located, with 75 mph winds and dropped three feet of rain in some areas. The winds ripped some of Carisey’s trees out of the ground and broke branches off countless others.
Coffee growers in Hawaii typically harvest between September and November. This year, Carisey expects to see about 60% less coffee than usual.
“It’s going to set us a year or two behind,” he said. “It’s going to be harder to serve all our customers.”
Some growers lost 20% of their trees, the Hawaii Coffee Association told Hawaii Public Radio.
Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows coffee, though it produces less than 1% of all the coffee consumed in the country. The industry brings an estimated $44 million to the state’s economy, according to Kona Coffee Farmers Association.
A Battered Corn Belt
Severe summer thunderstorms in parts of the Corn Belt, including Indiana and Illinois, flattened and flooded fields, creating uncertainty for the fall harvest.
While other states, including Iowa and Missouri, saw some ideal growing weather, experts expect the storms will hamper the overall corn supply.
“There’s probably a lot more areas of corn that were impacted by the severe weather than areas that are really good,” said Daniel Quinn, a corn specialist at Purdue University’s College of Agriculture.
In early September, the Department of Agriculture decreased the amount of corn it expects farmers to harvest this year. If the estimates hold, corn production will drop to 15.8 billion bushels, down 7% from 17.02 billion bushels in 2025.
The decrease is likely to impact prices. In the same report, the USDA raised the projected price of corn by nearly 7%. Excessively wet summers between 1971 and 2019 contributed to higher corn prices, according to a study published in Nature in January. In some cases, the weather shocks increased prices by as much as 10%.
The United States isn’t the only country facing weather-related corn losses. France is expecting its smallest corn harvest in half a century as a result of extreme heat over the summer, and other European countries, including Germany and Italy, are seeing lower than expected yields.
California’s Crops Wilt in Record Heat
An unseasonable record-breaking March heat wave in Southern California led growers in the top pistachio-producing county in the country to lose more than 50% of their crop.
Temperatures in Kern County, California, soared above 100 degrees for more than a week, causing pistachio trees to bloom prematurely. Growers found countless pistachio shells without kernels, the Kern County agricultural commissioner reported.
Wonderful Pistachios, the largest pistachio seller in the world, said the weather-driven crop loss might lead to increased prices for consumers.
“We have to ensure the long-term viability of our farmers, who are part of the foundation of this country,” Andy Anzaldo, senior vice president of grower relations with the company, said in an August news release.
Other major crops in Kern County, one of the biggest agricultural areas in the country, were also impacted by the heat wave, including cherries.
Farmers found unusable, cracked cherries and a “glut of undersized fruit,” said Steve Murray, owner of Murray Family Farms.
“We are definitely going through a hot dry spell in addition to the normal fluctuations that California has and it really throws a monkey wrench, especially in growing crops,” Murray said.
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