As Heatwaves and Floods Surge, U.S. Agriculture Faces a Growing Crisis

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, Jul 30 2025 – Recent weeks have seen an increase in extreme weather events. From heat waves occurring across the Midwest states to flash flooding in Texas, Maryland, and New York.

Although these weather events have had significant and measurable impacts on humans, rarely making headlines are the detrimental impacts these events have on agriculture, and that lack of coverage needs to change.

Most concerning is the noticeable gap in dialogue and focused attention by researchers, policy makers and other key stakeholders in agricultural crop production and food systems, a gap that urgently needs to change as well.

It’s time for researchers, policy makers, governments, media, and stakeholders across agriculture and food systems to engage more urgently in how these events affect not just humans, but also how they detrimentally impact agricultural crops and the microbial communities that support soils and agricultural crops health

Heat and flooding impact the crops such as corn, wheat, rice, and vegetable crops including tomato that we depend on to meet food and nutritional security needs.

These impacts can range from changes in growth patterns, acres of crops decimated to tons of vegetables unsellable due to potential contamination by flooding waters. All these losses also have a dollar value associated with them.

For example, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture estimated crop-related flooding damage in Arkansas in 2025, to be $78.9 million. 

Indeed, recent research coming from research institutions and universities across United States universities has demonstrated that these events detrimentally affect agricultural crop growth and production, resulting in reduced yields and agricultural crop revenue, while driving up prices and crop insurance payments.

Heatwaves and flooding also impact plant physiology and metabolism, disrupting the life-sustaining processes of plants, including photosynthesis, respiration, the antioxidant defense system, and reactive oxygen species scavenging. These changes hinder plant growth and development, leading to reduced crop productivity and yield losses.

Ultimately, farmers lose their crops and the revenue they get from farming, and these losses are passed on to consumers through increased prices. For example, according to The American Farm Bureau Federations, in 2024, farmers lost $20.3 billion to weather disasters including flooding and heat waves.

Extreme weather also affects the multitude of belowground microbes that underpin the health of soil, its functions, health, and quality, as well as the soil microbiomes that govern soil and plant health and key biogeochemical processes, including nutrient and water cycling. Both beneficial and pathogenic microbes are impacted by flooding.  

Flooding, for example, has been reported to impact soil microbial communities negatively, depleting beneficial soil microbes, and affecting other beneficial soil-dwelling organisms, such as earthworms.

And because belowground processes are tightly linked and interconnected with aboveground processes, changes in the health and productivity of crops can be impacted by changes in belowground dwelling organisms.

Importantly, researchers are rising to the challenge of finding solutions to mitigate the trail of damage that these extreme events have on agricultural crops and production systems both during and after these events have happened.

Take the case of flooding; emerging research reveals that applying nitrogen-based fertilizers immediately after a flooding event can help rescue plants from the detrimental impacts of flooding.

Disturbingly, however, although nitrogen fertilizer can help mitigate flooding impacts, its use is not sustainable due to its negative impacts on ecosystems, including polluting groundwater and streams, while contributing to the greenhouse effect. Therefore, researchers must push the boundaries beyond nitrogen.

Fortunately, the agricultural market is filled with sustainable bioproducts, including biostimulants and microbial inoculants. These products, that contain live microorganisms such as mycorrhizal fungi, nitrogen-fixing bacteria or other groups of beneficial microbes, have potential in mitigating the detrimental impacts that extreme weather events have on crops, and their investigation should be considered.

Excitingly, this is beginning to happen. For example, a recent study revealed that foliar spraying tomato plants with microbes improved their tolerance against acute heat wave stress. In addition, review papers are being published that detail what we currently know, while outlining future research questions to explore further.

Moving into the future, this line of research needs to be funded so that the excitement in using these products as well as the challenges that come along with using biostimulants including a lack of regulation and unified terminology and the growing concerns that introduced microorganisms could mutate as they adapt to environments can be addressed. The use of biostumulants is expected to keep growing, with global market estimated to reach USD 7.84 billion by 2030.

Notably, there is a need to think of long-term solutions. Thankfully, regenerative agriculture approaches, including the use of cover crops, can be utilized. Further, recent research is reaffirming this and has revealed that cover crops can mitigate the effects of flooding, thus enhancing resilience to extreme weather events.

Cover crops are plants that are primarily grown to provide several benefits including improving water infiltration, soil health and structure, and controlling erosion. These crops can be important long-term tools to mitigate extreme weather events including mitigating flooding risks by absorbing excess soil water while improving soil physical properties. 

Although the use of cover crops continues to gain traction in the United States, rising by 17% between 2017 and 2022, according to recent satellite-based research from that analyzed 100, 000 fields, their adoption and use can pose some challenges and potential drawbacks that continue to warrant more research and consideration.

Future projections indicate that many extreme weather events including flooding will continue to increase in both intensity and frequency.

It’s time for researchers, policy makers, governments, media, and stakeholders across agriculture and food systems to engage more urgently in how these events affect not just humans, but also how they detrimentally impact agricultural crops and the microbial communities that support soils and agricultural crops health.

By acknowledging and documenting these impacts through research, we can begin to develop sustainable, science driven solutions, both short and long term.  The time is now.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign