 There are several facets of agriculture that have really, really seriously hurt. The apple crop is down 30 percent regionally this year after a category three drought hit Massachusetts this summer, affecting not only your fall apple picking experience but the entire industry behind it. Farmers are faced, some of these farmers, vegetable farmers are faced with the choice of which fields do we keep going and which do we abandon and truly they do abandon some. Smolak serves on the Farm Services Agency within the Department of Agriculture. He is one of five farmers in Massachusetts to be appointed by the past two presidential administrations. Him and other board members are discussing preventative measures. If a drought like this were to happen again. I'd like to think about how do we address this in the future because is this the new normal? None of us know, no way of telling. So if this is the new normal then we've got to really get ourselves in gear and drill more wells and get our irrigation systems up to par. Apples have decreased so much in size that local farmers are coping with the economic losses. When we have a drought also it makes the apples fall off the trees much earlier and that's what we're starting to see. It normally takes 80 to 100 apples to a bushel. Look how tiny they are. This year it's taking double that. We paid for like the 30 bags so I mean I guess we got like some big ones but most of them were smaller so it was easier to fill the bag. This one, this one they're pretty little. The apples aren't really big they should be oh probably about this big around compared to what they are. Farms on the North Shore have been hit the hardest but according to Smolak mother nature is finicky and it's all part of the job. Reporting for BUTV 10 in North Andover I'm Christina Gallardo.