NPR Falsely Claims ‘Climate Change’ Is Damaging New York Apple Harvest
A recent interview from NPR affiliate WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s “Northeast Notebook” titled “Apple growers confront climate change, fuel challenges for 2026 harvest” blames low apple production in New York on “increasingly unpredictable” weather
This story is promoting a factually inaccurate narrative. If ‘climate change’ were harming New York apple production, there would be evidence in long-term production and yields, but there isn’t.
WAMC published a transcript of an interview-style report with Hudson Valley apple growers, who WAMC says “encountered a late April frost, skyrocketing diesel prices, and a federal crackdown on foreign labor in 2026,” creating “uncertain economic conditions.”
Sam Dingman, a reporter for WAMC’s Northeast Notebook, claimed that apple farmers need to guard “against unexpected losses from increasingly unpredictable spring weather,” ultimately blaming climate change for allegedly worsening growing conditions for apple farmers in New York.
While a late spring frost can damage yields for a season, this is normal weather variability, not ‘climate change’.
Also, the good news is that late spring frosts are becoming less frequent.
One need only look at New York’s April minimum temperature data to see that cold snaps are not becoming more extreme or unpredictable during apple bloom season. In fact, previous decades saw larger variation between April lows than recent years. (See figure below)
Farmers have dealt with bad weather every season, some worse than others, throughout history. The fact that spring blooming seasons are slightly longer today than they were a hundred-plus years ago does not indicate trouble for crops; rather, the opposite.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that apple production and yields in New York have risen 35 percent from 1980 to 2025, with 2025 seeing an all-time production record. (See figure below)
If long-term ‘climate change’ were damaging apple production, one would expect the data to show long-term damage, but it does not.
Previous Climate Realism articles have covered similar claims about apple production from the U.S. at large, and even Kashmir, and in both of those cases the data showed the same thing: apple production and yields have increased across the United States and the world amid the modest ‘climate change’ of the past century.
That is, even though in the United States at least, the acreage devoted to growing apples has declined in the past few decades.
Of course, apple growers in New York and elsewhere may be having difficulties like higher costs from skyrocketing diesel prices and a federal crackdown on foreign labor, and that might make for a compelling story.
Still, those factors have nothing to do with ‘climate change’.
NPR’s affiliate station in New York is promoting a lot of nonsense in this story, in line with standard climate alarmist propaganda.
And in fact, the data shows the exact opposite of what is claimed.
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