The impact of climate change
We are finding, coaching and training public media’s next generation. This #NPRNextGenRadio project is created with the University of Nevada, Reno, where five talented reporters are participating in a week-long state-of-the-art training program.
In this project, we are highlighting the experiences of people whose lives are being affected by climate change.
Illustration by Lauren Ibañez
Passionate farmer aims to make organic produce available despite struggles with climate change
About 12 miles north of Reno along the Nevada-California border, Zach Cannady owns and runs Prema Farm. He started this small-scale, sustainable farm seven years ago after returning from backpacking around the world. His worldly experiences greatly influenced him and encouraged him to cultivate produce for Northern Nevadans; however, it’s been a challenge due to the effects of climate change.
“When I got back from India, I started to work at the Great Basin food co-op. I went around and I reviewed all of our local farmers to find out what they could grow and what they would grow,” Cannady said. He also asked consumers and restaurant owners which types of fruits and vegetables were needed, and after assessing what local farmers were willing to grow, he developed a business plan and created Prema Farm.
Zach Cannady explains how climate change has affected his ability to farm
Image caption: Zach Cannady checks on the tomatoes in a greenhouse at Prema Farm. (Photo by Chris Darché)
For Cannady, it has been both challenging and rewarding, but he says “human nature is driven by challenges.”
One challenge that Cannady said he confronts on a daily basis is mother nature. At one point, the wind blew an extremely heavy roof off a greenhouse at the farm and he had to decide whether he was going to continue working in those conditions or give up.
“I knew at that moment. It was either a make or break [situation],” he said. “After that, I knew I was going to rebuild that thing, and I called a couple of friends and asked them to come out, and we spent a couple of weeks restructuring it, fortifying it for the wind and the snow so it wouldn’t happen again.”
Image caption: Zach and the team at Prema Farm use greenhouses to protect produce from the harsh environment of the Eastern Sierras. (Photo by Chris Darché)
Image caption: On the side of the gravel and dirt road to Prema Farm on May 17, 2022, this sign reminds passersby of the current fire danger level in the area. (Photo by Chris Darché)
Cannady also says that the rewards of this work outweigh the constant struggles. “You see a whole flock of hummingbirds pollinating in the trees around the farm that overwhelms you in an entirely different way,” he said.
Over the last few years, the effects of climate change have been impacting Cannady and his team’s ability to farm.
According to the State of Nevada Climate Initiative, increases in temperature and drought brought about by climate change are factors contributing to wildfires growing in severity and size.
“We’ve had two fires that have come really close to the farm,” he said. “The Loyalton Fire was in 2020. The bottom leg of that fire actually came onto the property of the farm.”
The Beckwourth Complex Fire occurred last summer and Prema Farm was put under mandatory fire evacuation. Cannady decided to evacuate, but after spending a few hours in Reno, he returned because he could not stand being away from his community.
Cannady also mentioned that the air quality affected Prema’s employees’ ability to work. The smoke from the fire also blocked the sun’s rays, which reduced plant growth.
Image caption: Smoke from a prescribed burn is seen from Prema Farm on May 17, 2022. Last summer, their farm was threatened by a number of fires, including the Beckwourth Complex Fire. (Photo by Chris Darché)
Image caption: Prema Farm grows an array of vegetables and other produce inside its greenhouses year-round. (Photo by Chris Darché)
According to Cannady, during the last two summer seasons, the Prema team has only been able to break even, when normally summer is a profitable time of year. Despite this, Cannady plans to continue farming and fighting climate change with environmentally-friendly farming methods so he can supply his community with the food it needs.
“It tests you. It leaves you wondering what the future is and what you should be doing. I feel like the best thing that I could do is show up and continue to provide really good, nutritious food,” he said.
Transcript
(SOUNDBITE ON A FARM WITH MACHINERY)
ZACH CANNADY: Gardening or farming in the high desert is extremely difficult because the higher the altitude, the more volatile the weather and unpredictable it is.
I’m Zach Cannady, owner of Prema Farms, land steward and [keeper] of the farm itself.
We’re only 12 miles as the crow flies from downtown Reno.
I’m a Nevada native. I was born and raised in Las Vegas.
We’ve had two fires that have come really close to the farm. The Loyalton Fire was in 2020, and the bottom leg of that fire came actually onto the property of the farm. The second fire was almost a million acres, and that was just about six miles north of us.
It just blazed, and so we left, we went in, and I couldn’t stay away. Like they, you know, essentially asked us to get off of the property. And so we staged a fire truck here and then hooked it up with our pump.
It actually touched all the trees on the property up there behind the ranch house, and then it was dark here ‘cause all you could see on the hillside here was all of the small blazes still going or the treetops where the canopies were still on fire and then watching trees like explode in the mix of that heat.
And I think that with the smoke and the way that the climate has shifted around us and the forest just being burned alive…
You know once you have gone through that, the PTSD that is left over for it, it leaves you in this space where I’m like today, and I see the prescribed burn, and the clouds coming up over the hill back there, like, it hits you in a way that is very primal.
(SOUNDBITE OF INDISTINGUISHABLE CHATTER)
CANNADY: I don’t think that summer is ever going to be summer for my kids. When I grew up, I used to go out, and I’d be outdoors.
And now, you know, their experience of five weeks of the summertime is it is a smoke season. And we can’t go outside, and we can’t play, and we need to either orchestrate travel and get them away and go to the coast where, you know, everything is blowing westward so that they can find air to breathe and time to play outside, and an experience of what summer is.
It tests you. It leaves you wondering, you know, what the future is and what you should be doing.
Because even if you do lose all of it, and like the whole thing, the whole farm melts down, and like it’s lost in a snowstorm, lost in a windstorm, or lost in a fire, like, at least at the end of that I could say that I showed up, and I did something that was really good for the community and really good for the earth, and it was really good for me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The Next Generation Radio Project is a week-long digital journalism training project designed to give competitively selected participants, who are interested in radio and journalism, the skills and opportunity to report and produce their own multimedia story. Those chosen for the project are paired with a professional journalist who serves as their mentor.
This #NPRNextGenRadio project was funded by The Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Our staff:
- Managing Editor – Traci Tong, Freelance Editor, Boston, MA
- Digital Editors – Amara Aguilar, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, Laura Gonzalez, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; and Crystal Willis, KUNR Public Radio, Reno, NV
- Audio Tech/Engineers – Selena Seay-Reynolds, Next Gen Radio Lead Audio Engineer, Los Angeles, CA; and Yuki Liang, Los Angeles, CA
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Our journalist/mentors for this project were:
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- Tim Lenard, Visual Journalist, The Nevada Independent, Reno, NV
- Jazmin Orozco-Rodriguez, Reporter, Kaiser Health News, Elko, NV
- Regina Revazova, Founder, Open Conversation, Phoenix, AZ
- Natalie Van Hoozer, Bilingual Reporter, KUNR Public Radio, Reno, NV
The Next Generation Radio program is directed by its founder, Doug Mitchell, NPR, Washington DC.