Experts discuss hard freeze impacts on agriculture, livestock and ranchers

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – As we make it through the hard freeze, experts say farmers and ranchers need to be on top of their game, and it’s exhausting.

Tuesday’s message from agricultural and climate experts say while this is not 2021, the yearly hard freeze has become consistent.

“It’s kind of unusual to have that cold basically three years out of four, which we just did,” Texas A&M climate professor, John Nielsen-Gammon, said.

But, each year is different. Nielsen-Gammon says when faced with 2021, ranchers had to make some changes.

“If there’s like a widespread ice storm that can sort of block access to normal grazing so that it may be necessary to provide supplemental feed and hay and that sort of thing,” he said. “We didn’t have much ice around here this time around so I don’t think that was a major problem and any cattle that survived 2021 ought to survive this cold air outbreak. For farmers, there are really no important crops in the area that are growing right now, the planning season starts in another month or two. So no direct impacts.”

Agricultural Economics professor, David Anderson, says this time of year can impact supply, but changes in demand help with the period.

“We get these disruptions both from the supply and demand side of things but the good thing is they typically work themselves out relatively quickly because the storm passes and we get some warmer weather and that it works its way out but there’s a lot of disruption for that those few days of time in that in that time period,” he said.

While Anderson says the supply was okay, a freeze is usually harder on property owners.

“You have to make sure that your livestock has food, they have water and so your water lines freeze up your ponds and tanks freeze. You got to get that ice chopped out so they can get to the water and so you’ve got that whole set of things and it’s cold out there. It’s cold for us and them,” he said.

On the bright side, Nielsen-Gammon says people can expect to see fewer mosquitos when it warms up.