Extreme weather caused Georgia to run out of peaches this year, impacting employment across the region
- Peach farmers in Georgia lost more than 90% of their crops this year due to unusual weather, experts say.
- This season has been the worst for peach farmers since the 1950s, one farmer told the Washington Post.
The Peach State is running out of peaches as growers in Georgia face the worst season for peaches in recent memory, CNN reported.
Peach farmers say unexpected extreme weather resulting from the climate crisis is to blame: A heat wave hit the state in February and then two cold fronts passed through later in the season.
"We know in Georgia that winter is the season that's warming the most quickly," Pam Knox, an agricultural climatologist, told the Washington Post last month. "It's warming about twice as fast as any of the other seasons."
As a result, farmers say they've lost more than 90% of their crops this year.
"We've had some off crops, some bad years," Lawton Pearson, a fifth-generation peach farmer, told the Post. "But we hadn't had anything quite like this since 1955."
This shortage isn't just resulting in disappointment for peach lovers — it has also made it harder for workers who rely on seasonal jobs during harvest season.
Some farmers told the Post they could only hire a small portion of the seasonal employees they normally do. Similarly, grower Sean Lennon told CNN he was forced to lay off several employees, many of whom traveled from Mexico on work visa programs to support their families.
"In a small community like we are, it's a big hit for the bigger employers to not hire anybody," Pearson told the Post.