Some squash, pumpkin and potato farmers in the Pioneer Valley are bearing the burden of a soil-based disease described by one farmer as being “like the plague” for these and potentially many more species.

Walking through a barren pumpkin patch late last week, Harrison Bardwell of Bardwell Farm in Hatfield picked up what appeared to be a healthy pumpkin. When he lightly pressed his index finger against the gourd’s surface, it broke through, exposing a rotted interior.

“Half our field died off early because of this disease. It just physically killed the plants off, and there’s not much you can do about that,” Bardwell said. “The hardest part about this disease is that it just spreads so easily. … You could pick up one bad squash or pumpkin, put it on your front doorstep, go throw it in a field or something at the end of its life, and that field is potentially going to start being infected by that disease.”

The scientific name for the disease is called Phytophthora capsici, and its something Hadley farmer Joe Czajkowski sounded alarm bells about on Monday morning as he met with several prominent politicians at his farm for another event touting the farm’s role in supplying vegetables to the Boston Public School system.

Czajkowski said the disease was responsible for the Great Famine in Ireland that stretched from 1845-1852, and it’s so concerning to him because it has the potential of contaminate over 60 other local species of crops.

“The thing is, theoretically speaking, what could happen because of climate change, is that it’s not out of the question for Phytophthora to jump to other families of plants,” such as cucumbers and eggplants as well as other “solanaceous” crops, he said, adding that yearly increases in temperature and precipitation make prime conditions for the water mold to prosper.

The recent spike in the disease locally can be traced to flooding in the region over the past year, he said.

Another hurdle farmers are experiencing is the long-term impact of the mold, which can make a field barren for up to a decade or more, with no fungicide currently on the market to counteract its spread. Czajkowski said that, “if you’ve got 6,000 pieces of fruit, and they all get harrowed in with the disease, you’re never really going to get the levels back to zero.

“They can actually climb hills and do amazing things,” said Czajkowski, speaking of the parasitic disease’s heartiness.

The Hadley farmer said he and neighboring farmers are searching for ways to cope without using fungicides, and he notes that antidotes are currently being researched by UMass Extension’s Center for Agriculture and the Environment, which may provide mold-resistant pumpkin seeds, for example.

On his farm in Hatfield, Bardwell said he usually produces roughly 30 to 40 bins of pumpkins — or roughly 800 pounds of produce — per acre on his approximately 10-acre farm. This year, however, Phytophthora capsici led to a roughly 90% reduction in his squash and pumpkin yield, with each acre only yielding three or four bins of produce.

“At this point, it’s just finding a way that you can work around it,” Bardwell said. “We’re really looking at ways to do better drainage in our soil, so either planting on raised beds or on plastic, mulch to help keep the rain away from the roots of the crops. Really, the only other thing we can do is try to create a barrier between the soil and the fruit that we’re growing.”

In response, farms have sometimes been forced to branch out to other crops to maintain profitable land. For example, Bardwell said this season his farm shifted focus to growing different crops — such as cauliflower, kale, tomatoes and cabbage — in an effort to avoid the negative business impacts of the pumpkin plague. The farm purchased pumpkins for resale at its farm stand to meet customer demand.

Al Rose of Red Apple Farm in Phillipston said the soil disease prompted his farm to pivot to growing sunflowers, shifting his pumpkin crop onto leased land owned by a neighboring family. Since wet soil conditions exacerbate the rotting caused by Phytophthora capsici, Rose said his farm has removed all of the pumpkin crops from its low-level land and replaced them with sunflowers, which he said are not vulnerable to the disease.

“We had a tough pumpkin year last year, but this year is shaping up to be a good year,” Rose said. “We’ve been fortunate enough to take some of our low-lying land that will become at higher risk for Phytophthora, out of pumpkin production over the years. … That’s the main reason we got into sunflowers and now we have three fields of sunflowers. … It’s that old saying, make lemonade out of lemons.”

When Red Apple Farm transitioned to growing sunflowers about four years ago, Rose said the change prompted a number of “pick your own” packages after the farm began growing potatoes, zinnia flowers and other crops that customers could gather themselves. Since the farm serves primarily as an apple orchard, Rose added that growing sunflowers, which benefits bees’ digestive health, helps pollinate the farm’s apple trees, making the change a blessing in disguise.

“Every year, it seems like it’s been challenging to deal with adversity, but with this weather, we’re very fortunate that the hurricane systems aren’t making their way up this far,” Rose noted. “One of the greatest challenges in farming is that you can’t control the weather.”

Help from state?

While farmers are doing their best to keep up with the invasion of Phytophthora capsici, Czajkowski is asking for the state to become more proactive in research before the affects of the disease ravage American agriculture, in addition to measures the state has already taken in the wake of flooding in the summer of 2023.

In response to the flooding, the state has created a program that allows impacted farmers to apply for low-interest loans and to refinance existing loans. In addition, farms have been able to utilize the Emergency Conservation Program, which is a cost-sharing program for debris and clean-up costs as they relate to natural disasters, such as the flooding which gave rise to Phytophthora capsici.

Winton Pitcoff, deputy commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, said that, “This is not an isolated thing. It doesn’t just happen in Massachusetts. It’s a national and global problem.” He said that research and science need to be “coming from people with a lot more resources, such as the United States Department of Agriculture or university extension services.”