In Southwest San Antonio, more than 50 farmers and ranchers are coping with what is shaping up to be another brutal season.
Worried about the impacts the drought will have on their income, some farmers in rural South Texas have decreased the number of acres they farm so there’s enough water for irrigation and planting drought-tolerant crops.
“The heat is bearable if you have water, but the big challenge we have is we’ve had some rain, but not rain to ease the drought,” said Larry Stein, a professor and horticulturist for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, which offers farmers support through education and information. “We have wells that are going dry, so there’s less and less water available.”
Stein works with farmers in Southwest Texas, from South San Antonio, Atascosa County, Crystal City, Uvalde, and San Antonio, and works to find the best drought-tolerant plants.
Farmers in the area grow field corn, grain sorghum, cotton and sesame, as well as cabbage, onions and spinach. Other farmers grow strawberries and hay.
“Plants can tolerate heat, as long as you have water,” he said. “A lot of people think it’s worse now, simply because we have a lot more people pulling water from the ground.”
He’s heard farmers say the ongoing drought is “worse” than the drought of the 1950s, which lasted seven years, he said.
“Right now we’re in the nothing zone,” Stein said. “[Farmers] are concerned, are worried.”
If it doesn’t rain soon in the Southwest, Stein said farmers will have to plant fewer crops because there won’t be water to plant them.
“The impact on the local economy will be big, just because it’s going to hurt these local farmers,” he said.
In February, Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers, Inc., the last sugar mill in Texas, closed due to drought and inadequate water supply in the Rio Grande Valley.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, Bexar County is going through a moderate drought, and some areas in Bandera, Kendall and Kerr counties are experiencing extreme drought. Some parts of Atascosa, Frio and Wilson counties are abnormally dry.
Water restrictions are in place for SAWS customers, but most farmers don’t use municipal water. They pull from wells that get water from local aquifers. When restrictions are in place, their water yields decrease, too.
“A lot of people planted a crop and were only able to water it once. Your yields are going to suffer because of that. You have to be an optimist to be a farmer,” Stein said.
‘Global weirding’
At the San Antonio Food Bank’s farm at Mission San Juan, water from the San Antonio River flows through the acequia, irrigating crops like squash, cotton and onions at its organic farm through drip-line irrigation.
Food grown at the farm goes to the food bank farmer’s markets, where seniors and women with children get vouchers to get free food, to distribution events and gourmet area restaurants. Local restaurants also buy this produce from the food bank.
The food bank sources its food from several local farmers and its two farms, the Urban Farm at the food bank, and the one at the Mission San Juan, which it operates in partnership with the National Parks Service.
Visitors who walk through the trails that lead to the farm can also witness how the 300-year-old acequias water crops.
Among the crops, some plants have dried up due to the heat.
“We’re lucky to have some guaranteed water access. A lot of farmers aren’t as lucky,” said Mitch Hagney, director of food sustainability for the food bank.
Five acres of organic peach trees have struggled through climate change due to their need for chill hours so that they can enter dormancy to produce fruit in the spring.
Warm winters haven’t provided sufficient chill hours, stressing out the plant because it’s sugary, susceptible to fungus and pests.
“Most of the large peach producers in the region like Fredericksburg now feel that they get a good peach yield once every three years. It used to be every year,” Hagney said.
“Sometimes farmers call it global weirding, not global warming, because there’s random freezes, there’s less consistency,” he said.
The heat has caused concerns of water insecurity for the farm. Since summer started, the acequia has run dry twice for a few days, Hagney said, but when that happens, farmers ask the San Antonio River Authority to send water through.
The food bank wants to emphasize resilient crops, like nopales, squash, figs. Similarly, Stein said farmers in Zavala and surrounding counties are exploring crops that do well in heat, like sesame, and varieties of sorghum that require less water.
Lack of rain, lack of cloud cover and the rise of heat makes farming challenging Hagney said.
The rise of heat also makes it challenging to work past noon most days. “Even if you wanted to farm until 3 or 4 p.m., you really can’t because it’s so dangerous,” he said. Any other season, they farm later into the afternoon.
“As farming gets more challenging, there will be more scarce production, which will drive up the price,” he said.
For fourth-generation farmer and Poteet Strawberry Festival vendor Wes Stevens, when it’s time to plant in the fall, the heat impacts how much labor he and his wife can accomplish planting each row by hand.
Stevens, who grew up on the ranch just south of San Antonio, said the drought is typical for the area’s 10-to-12-year cycle of drought. He said the area gets three to four wet years, and goes back to 8- to 10-year droughts.
“At least in my lifetime, that’s how it’s been,” he said. “We’ve been on a drought cycle, but eventually we’ll come out of it.”
But over the years, Stevens said that the lack of rain has made his farm water insecure, with lower water tables leaving less water to pull from.
“Our water table has probably dropped 45 feet in the last five years due to the drought,” he said on July 11. “It needs to rain.”
The Stevens Farm & Ranch grows squash, okra, hay, and strawberries to sell at the annual Poteet Strawberry Festival in the spring. It’s all produced on 45 acres Stevens inherited, plus 16 more he purchased. “When it used to rain,” he said, the farm was based on cattle and hay.
He only uses a small plot of land to grow 12,000 strawberries in 27 rows. Most of the profits come from jam he and his wife sell from a booth at the strawberry festival, which they get free, per the festival policy, because they farm more than 6,000 strawberry plants.
His neighboring farmers in Poteet have other jobs and multiple sources of income and don’t rely financially on their farms, he said, mostly because it’s a gamble. A month ago, large hail stormed the area five miles away from the Stevens Ranch, and missed them by luck.
This year was the best year yet for strawberries, Stevens said. “We were one of the lucky farms that we didn’t get all of the hail that our neighboring farms five to six miles from here literally got hailed out during strawberry season.”
The lack of rain helps strawberry production in a way, because when the fruit gets wet, they decompose. But when the heat rises to the 90s, the plant produces smaller berries. At 95 degrees, the plant will stop producing berries, and at 100 degrees, the heat can cook the roots and kill the plant.
Stevens Farm is also growing different varieties of strawberries that do well against frost, which held up better to the moisture from the rain.
They also changed a strategy to help strawberries grow two more weeks of production. Instead of using black bags to protect them, white bags protect the berry from heat, making it feel 25 to 30 degrees cooler inside of the bag, because black can absorb heat more than white.
There aren’t many farms left in San Antonio, mostly due to development, whether that means going out of business because of the issues they face or selling off their land.
Texas loses about 100 acres of farmland every day, mostly for housing development.
“The displacement isn’t forced or violent, it’s just at some point, it gets so hard, I’ll just cash out my land and not have to break my back,” Hagney said. “But as a result, we, the consumers of food, have fewer places to grab from.”
