Valley News – With crops under water, farmers consider future of flooding in Vermont

Zach Mangione, owner of Cross Farm in Barnet, was watching this week’s storm with bated breath as it approached Vermont, but he expected 2 to 4 inches of rain to fall.

A friend, who was pumping water from his own basement on July 10, urged Mangione to look outside. At 9 p.m., he saw a river flowing into his barn, where he kept 500-week-old chicks.

He got on his tractor and tried to “move dirt and soil to divert the water to the creek,” he said. It was “just too late.” He lost 400 chicks.

Then, storm kept Mangione up all night. He watched in disbelief as the smallest of three streams on his property caused so much damage that he now wonders if he can continue to farm the same land—or at all.

“Where that little stream used to flow, it doesn’t flow anymore. It now flows right through our farms and behind our barn,” Mangione said. “All of our pasture fences are damaged to some degree. All of our pasture water systems for cattle are ripped out.”

His diverse livestock operation, where he raises poultry, pigs and sheep, is “barely functional at the moment,” he said. He gave his remaining 100 chicks to neighbors, and he plans to sell his six-week-old pigs and then try to manage the remaining livestock.

Mangione says his emotions fluctuate a lot and he feels overwhelmed.

“But you know, our house is undamaged. We’re safe,” he said. “There’s a lot of things to be thankful for. I try to keep that in mind. It’s a struggle. Farming is hard on a good day.”

The storm that hit Vermont on July 10-11 was more localized than the devastating floods that hit the state last July. Overall, there appears to be less damage across the state than last year. But in some areas, this year’s floods hit with more water and more force.

“We are going to see significant damage. We don’t know yet exactly how much damage is going to be done,” Anson Tebbetts, secretary of the Agriculture, Food and Markets Agency, told VTDigger on July 12.

The agency is considering farmers in three categories, Tebbetts said. There are those who were not affected by last summer’s flooding but were this week, there are those who were flooded twice and there are those whose farms were flooded last summer but were spared this time.

Those hit twice could face compound losses. It’s the third straight tough year, as a drought in 2022 hit some farms, Jen Miller, program director at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, said in an email.

This spring, the first cuts of hay were plentiful but of lower quality, she said. For dairy farmers, the flooding reduces the yield of forage crops because farmers have to stop mowing, and when the quality of the forage decreases, it contains fewer nutrients. That’s a double whammy: Farmers get less milk and have to buy more forage that they otherwise wouldn’t have had to buy.

“Navigating the low wages and our current economic circumstances is a daunting task,” she said.

A similar scene

On the morning of July 11, at the Intervale Center in Burlington, the scene was eerily similar to exactly one year ago. The center is home to seven independent farms on hundreds of acres.

“In a good year, these farms produce tons of food and millions of dollars worth of food for our community,” said Mandy Fischer, program director for the Intervale Center.

Produce that comes into contact with floodwaters cannot be sold, so the center has called for volunteers to begin the emergency harvest.

“We had hundreds of volunteers here all morning and into the afternoon as the water rose, pulling everything out of the ground that we could,” said Melanie Guild, Intervale Center’s director of development. She estimated the number at about 300 people, an “amazing response.”

Fischer does not expect to know the full extent of the damage until next week.

“It’s very bad, but not as bad as last year,” she said.

The 360 ​​acres the center manages saw less flooding than last year, with Fischer noting that the ground was less saturated and the lake was lower, “so we’re seeing the water moving differently.” She recalled how last year’s “fast, raging” floods were “scary” as they moved quickly through the area. This year, she said, she felt less scared.

Like last year, this week’s flooding came at a particularly bad time, said Bill Cavanaugh, agricultural adviser for NOFA-VT. Across the state, farmers invested in seeds and labor, only to be flooded before they could harvest, he said. Farmers also reported damage to roads and farm bridges, making it “difficult or impossible” to reach fields.

‘No longer rare’

Nicole Dubuque, chief operating officer of the Agency of Agriculture and head of the Agricultural Recovery Task Force, said the task force met once a week before news broke that the storm was approaching. Members met daily throughout the week and will continue to do so through next week, she said.

One of the group’s tasks is to collect better data after the new floods. Last July, different agencies posted different links asking farmers for different information, she said. The task force has worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to streamline that process so agencies can “get information from farmers once, rather than asking them to fill out the same information multiple times.”

Tebbetts said farmers should document their damage with photos, videos and notes. For now, farmers can contact the state agency with that information, and they are working on a survey that they will send to farmers soon. They should also contact their local Farm Service Agency, Tebbetts said. Several organizations may have emergency funding available, he said, including the Vermont Community Foundation and the Center for an Agricultural Economy.

“One of the challenges of this event is that the harvest is just coming in, so this is a time of income for our farming community,” Tebbetts said. “With the harvest destroyed, they have no income, but they still have employees that need to be paid.”

Fischer, of the Intervale Center, called for more emergency aid for farmers. In the short term, a statewide emergency fund “could quickly free up resources for farmers who are dealing with climate-related weather disasters,” she said. They also need basic help, including meals.

“We need emergency supplies, money to buy, meals, now,” Fischer said. “Today, literally now. People are going to be hungry this evening.”

Heather Darby, a soil scientist with the University of Vermont Extension Program, also worries that farms don’t have adequate access to emergency resources.

Asked if there was a good system in place to help farmers through such extreme events, Darby said: “There isn’t.” She spoke to a farmer yesterday who was still waiting for help after last year’s floods, she said.

On Friday, Darby surveyed damage to farms in the area affected by the storm, along the Winooski and Lamoille rivers and in cities including Hinesburg and Richmond.

Farmers have an “eternal optimism that next year will be better,” she said. If “next year” brings the same devastating floods as the year before, “it makes it very hard to look to the future and think it will be different.”

“It’s not as irregular anymore,” she said. “So if someone experiences a catastrophic event — like a fire, or a death, or an accident, or a random storm, flood — people will take action. But at some point, it becomes normalized, right? And it just becomes the way it is.”

She wondered: what happens then?

Total loss

During these floods, Barnet was one of the towns worst hit.

Not far from Cross Farm, Eric and Mary Skovsted, owners of Joe’s Brook Farm, lost nearly everything they grew this year. The farmers produce about 12 acres of organic vegetables and strawberries, which they sell at a farm stand, a CSA, farmers markets, local grocery stores, restaurants and institutions including hospitals.

At Joe’s Brook, the storm left farmers with only tomatoes. At the Passumpsic River, they lost everything. They went to assess the damage early Thursday morning and saw “flooding that was worse than we’ve ever seen,” Eric Skovsted said.

“Last year we had a percentage loss, and this year we had a total loss,” he told VTDigger on Friday.

Still, Skovsted continued to focus on solutions.

Friends have set up a GoFundMe for Joe’s Brook, which had raised more than $26,500 as of Friday afternoon. He plans to use the money to “pay salaries, keep the crew working, clean up the farm and be able to both replant for fall crops and clean up the farm for next season.”

Justin Rich, owner of Burnt Rock Farm in Huntington, will have to wait to know the extent of the damage. Of the 25 acres and six greenhouses of organic vegetables, Rich said he had 15 acres “under water, in varying degrees of devastation.”

A raging Huntington River has eroded a field of sweet potatoes and onions. A field of potatoes is underwater but can still be saved. Another field of kale, broccoli and cauliflower is also underwater and cannot be saved because of laws that prevent the consumption of produce that comes in direct contact with floodwaters. Such waters are often heavily polluted.

“Anything that wasn’t flooded is just soaking wet and muddy and will be sick. But again, to what extent is the question,” he said.

Rich says he doesn’t know what else farmers along the river can do to adapt to flooding as the world’s climate changes.

“In modern America, most of us have never had shortages in the stores,” he said. “Food just shows up. But it comes from somewhere, and as more and more people in the world are exposed to these kinds of events, I don’t know if it’s wise to take it for granted.”