"Wild Weather Swings Have Devastated Georgia’s Peaches"

"‘We just don’t have a peach crop,’ one Peach State farmer lamented "

"Lawton Pearson has seen bad years. So has his father. And his father before him.

As a fifth-generation peach farmer at the core of Georgia’s peach-growing region, he knows how fickle growing the state’s signature fruit can be.

Yet after Georgia endured record-breaking warmth this winter, Pearson’s peach harvest was wiped out in a way not seen in decades. His 1,700 acres of peach trees are yielding only about a tenth to a twentieth of what they should have.

“We’ve had some off crops, some bad years,” Pearson said, “but we hadn’t had anything quite like this since 1955.”"

Dino Grandoni reports for the Washington Post June 24, 2023.