Thanksgiving could be ruined amid looming cranberry shortage

This isn’t berry excellent news.

Excessive drought in Massachusetts might wreak havoc on this yr’s Thanksgiving festivities as the warmth wave is destroying cranberry crops.

Which means cranberry sauce and cosmopolitans are in danger because the Northeast dry spell is threatening crops and the entire business.

Out of the 14 counties within the state, 10 had excessive droughts, whereas the remaining 4 have been solely named as extreme.

Zachary Zobel, a scientist on the Woodwell Local weather Analysis Middle in Massachusetts, mentioned the “growth or bust” predicament is a direct results of local weather change and poses issues for harvests.

“The growth or bust state of affairs that local weather change presents relating to precipitation occasions — the growth being the big precipitation occasion, the bust being lengthy dry spells — that’s not an excellent factor,” Zobel told Grist. 

It’s a fragile fruit — an excessive amount of rain and there’s a fungus, however with out sufficient water, the berries received’t develop.

The cranberries are grown in flood fields utilizing freshwater, which protects the crop from frigid winters. Within the spring, the bogs are drained to permit cranberries to flourish, however this yr, the local weather was dangerously dry.

“We’ve had a lot dry warmth that individuals’s water is getting all used up. It’s going to be a troublesome harvest for lots of people,” Rochester resident and Choose Board member Greenwood Hartley III, who grows berries, instructed Sippican Week. “We’re getting these excessive climate circumstances because the climate is altering the place it’s hotter than traditional or rainier than traditional,” he added. “It’s troublesome for any farmer. All people is admittedly struggling.”

However the rising season isn’t over but — farmers have one other month earlier than harvest to cross their fingers and pray for rain.

“We’ll see what we get for rainfall over the subsequent few weeks,” mentioned Brian Wick, govt director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers’ Affiliation, including that farmers will want “to adapt” to the challenges.

“You’re not going to have that good, constant rising season, it simply appears to be one excessive or one other.”