Ruined crops, salty soil: How rising seas are poisoning North Carolina's farmland

[mahatmakanejeeves]

David Fahrenthold Retweeted

“If we have another year or two like the past five, not only will I not be farming. A lot of us won’t.”

Stunning reporting and writing by @sarahkaplan48, who also reported on climate change’s toll in North Carolina during Hurricane Florence

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Of climate change’s many plagues — drought, fire, flood — this one sounds almost like something out of myth: Rising seas are sowing farmers’ fields with salt.

With stunning photos by @EamonQ

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National
Ruined crops, salty soil: How rising seas are poisoning North Carolina’s farmland



East Carolina University graduate students Trevor Burns, left, and Tyler Palochak check groundwater monitoring equipment on a farm near Engelhard, N.C., in January. (Eamon Queeney/for The Washington Post)

By Sarah Kaplan
March 1 at 7:27 PM

MIDDLETOWN, N.C. — The salty patches were small, at first — scattered spots where soybeans wouldn’t grow, where grass withered and died, exposing expanses of bare, brown earth.

But lately those barren patches have grown. On dry days, the salt precipitates out of the mud and the crystals make the soil sparkle in the sunlight. And on a damp and chilly afternoon in January, the salt makes Dawson Pugh furrow his brow in dismay.

“It’s been getting worse,” the farmer tells East Carolina University hydrologist Alex Manda, who drove out to this corner of coastal North Carolina with a group of graduate students to figure out what’s poisoning Pugh’s land — and whether anything can be done to stop it.

Of climate change’s many plagues — drought, insects, fires, floods — saltwater intrusion in particular sounds almost like a biblical curse. Rising seas, sinking earth and extreme weather are conspiring to cause salt from the ocean to contaminate aquifers and turn formerly fertile fields barren. A 2016 study in the journal Science predicted that 9 percent of the U.S. coastline is vulnerable to saltwater intrusion — a percentage likely to grow as the world continues to warm. Scientists are just beginning to assess the potential effect on agriculture, Manda said, and it’s not yet clear how much can be mitigated.
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Sarah Kaplan is a science reporter covering news from around the nation and across the universe. She previously worked overnights on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. Follow https://twitter.com/sarahkaplan48