Looking out of the window of his truck, Bob Fitzgerald sees dying forests and empty farmland. Fitzgerald says the land has been in his family since the 17th century. "I can show you land around here that people grew tomatoes on when I was a little boy. And now it's gone."
Climate (气候) change is making things worse. As sea levels rise, salt water is entering rivers and other waterways. As a result, the land is becoming too salty for crops to grow on. Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to move inland because of rising waters.
Kate Tully, a researcher in the University of Maryland, wants to keep coastal farmers in business as the seas rise. She has seen the forests filled with pine trees killed by the increasingly salty soil. The United States Department of Agriculture gave Tully and other researchers $1.1 million to study the problem. She and her team hope to give farmers ways to stay on their land.
They are testing different crops on pieces of land around the Eastern Shore. "Sorghum is my new favorite crop because it can grow without rain and it can grow with lots of rain." The grain (谷类) crop may be a good choice to feed the nearly 600 million chickens kept in the area each year. As farmers know, chickens can deal with salt, dry weather conditions and heavy rains. Yet just being able to grow a crop is not enough. The crop has to bring in money.
Some people believe the land should be given back to nature. They say the fields should be turned into wetlands, which are popular with duck hunters (猎人). "There's money in duck hunting," Tully said. "Hunting organizations will pay farmers for hunting on their land. Farmers could make a lot of money from duck hunting."
Tully and her team are just getting started. It will be a few years before they really understand how to save the farms.
