Survey: Wicked Weather Takes Bite Out Of Vegetable Production
July 24, 2024 
Most years, slightly more than half of vegetable growers report they saw an increase in production. But for this year’s State of the Vegetable Industry survey, less than half of growers (46%) reported an increase for the first time since 2019 (for reference, 457 growers responded to this question). And 2019 was a particularly rough year for the industry, with only 39% saying they had an increase in vegetable production.
A couple reasons could explain this. The first is if the previous year was particularly strong, then a flat to lower year could still indicate a decent performance.
Think about the stock market. If stocks fall by 2%, it makes the news. But the stock market is at record levels these days, so even a 2% drop is much, much stronger than the same day in 2023.
That may partly explain why 2019 was such a weak year. The previous year saw a spike in production, with 59% of growers reporting an increase.
But that isn’t the case today. Last year, growers with increased production were at a normal 51%, which was the same as the previous year.
While there are a lot of possibilities for why fewer growers saw an increase — pest issues, buyer demand, a shrinking market, imports — one big reason is likely weather.
Extreme Weather Spiked
For the past few years, roughly 80% of you report grappling with an extreme weather event of some sort in the past year. This past season was no different, although there was a slight downtick, with 77% reporting adverse weather.
What jumped out at us, however, was the damage it caused.
For each type of weather event you report, we ask about severity. Here are the categories we offer:
- Mild Impact (lost some crops but it didn’t impact the overall season)
- Serious Impact (Affected timing of crops and impacted the season’s performance)
- Severe Impact (Lost fields or worse)
This year, the number of growers telling us they experienced severe impacts increased significantly. The most striking example is extreme rain.
Last year, with 108 reporting they experienced extreme rain, only 6% of those events caused severe damage. This year, with 218 said they had extreme rain, with 19% experiencing severe damage.
While extreme rain had the most dramatic increase in severity of damage, all four categories that affect a wide swath of growers rose. Growers from every region told us rain, drought, heat, and out-of-season frost made this past season truly rough for them.
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