美国国家公共电台 NPR Flooding And Rising Seas Threaten America's Oldest Farmland

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Farming is a big part of the economy on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. But the land there is sinking, and as the climate warms, sea levels are rising. NPR's Jennifer Ludden spoke 1 with farmers determined 2 to hold on.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE 3: Bob Fitzgerald lives on the edge of a flat field that's just a few feet above sea level. It's the same spot his ancestors settled before the U.S. became a country.

BOB FITZGERALD: The land grant came into the family 1666.

LUDDEN: When he was a child, they grew tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans. Now, nearing 80, Fitzgerald plants corn and soybean to supply local chicken farms. But he says a tidal creek 4 that runs alongside his fields is flooding more. Just the other day, in one corner...

FITZGERALD: It looked like a lake. That whole thing was covered. I'd never seen it covered. And this back here, you could not see a piece of grass sticking up. The tide was that high.

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LUDDEN: Fitzgerald takes me to see a small berm he built to keep water out. But the floods spill over it probably once a month now. He says, so far, the saltwater has killed 15 acres of crops.

FITZGERALD: I mean, I have actually thought about having dirt hauled in just to build this up another six inches or something, just to hold it off.

LUDDEN: A few miles away, Kevin Anderson says encroaching saltwater is costing him money.

KEVIN ANDERSON: There's 20 acres of farmland that I mortgaged and paid for 20 years ago that's not producing any income now.

LUDDEN: Anderson's a fifth-generation farmer, but says it's hard to plan now. And he has a young daughter who's thinking about farming. He says everyone wants to know, what land is worth fighting to keep and what land should they just let go?

ANDERSON: You know, if you're going to draw a line in the sand, let's make an educated guess where we're going to draw the line. Give me an idea of what this farm will look like in 25 years.

LUDDEN: That's exactly what Kate Tully hopes to do. She's an agroecologist with the University of Maryland, and she's tracking how this impact of climate change is hurting farmers here. We meet in a patch of land that's so degraded, the owner turned it over for Tully's research.

KATE TULLY: That's where the corn was just two years ago.

LUDDEN: Now the soil is sandy with dried salt. Tully points out bluish-gray patches of microbial crust. She says as the Atlantic Ocean heats up, it's expanding. That means higher tides and more flooding, but that may not be all. She bends over a pipe in the ground.

TULLY: So here - let me pull these up.

LUDDEN: A black tube registers salinity 5. It's three times what corn can handle. Inside the pipe...

TULLY: And you can see the water is right there. It's really close to the surface.

LUDDEN: Oh.

TULLY: Yeah.

LUDDEN: Oh, it's right there.

TULLY: It's right there.

LUDDEN: Just a couple feet down. Tully thinks the sea is pushing underneath 6 the land into the groundwater. She worries this briny 7 mix is then rising the sea levels, killing 8 from below. It's a threat that stretches all the way down the Eastern Seaboard to the Florida Everglades. Tully wants to help farmers here hold on as long as they can. She's testing out crops that are more salt tolerant.

TULLY: We have barley 9 and wheat, and we tried to plant switchgrass as well.

LUDDEN: She thinks another solution might be to set land aside for conservation and pay farmers to do that.

TULLY: You know, everyone says, when it comes down to it, you know, Mother Nature is going to win this war. And so, it's kind of a matter of figuring out how we can deal with it, you know, right now. And then what are the long-term, either solutions or ways that they're going to need to adapt?

LUDDEN: Because the bottom line is clear, she says. As the Earth continues to warm, some land that's been farmed for centuries will be lost to rising seas. Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Princess Anne, Md..