HATCH, N.M. — In all her eight decades of farming in southeastern New Mexico, June Rutherford has never seen a chile season this bad.
“The weather hasn’t been a bit good for chile,” said Ms. Rutherford, who was recently crowned Queen of the Great New Mexico Chile Taste-Off, in Socorro, N.M., about 110 miles north of Hatch.
At 95, Ms. Rutherford is the matriarch of the Franzoy family, one of the first to commercialize the Hatch chile, a mainstay of the farm-based economy here and a brand known around the world.
“It’s been hot,” the queen said, sitting at her dining-room table, a crown atop her curls. “Hot and dry.”
More than two decades of drought have drained the reservoirs, which are fed by the Rio Grande, a river that — even on a good year — flows shallow in the parched riverbed. But a shortage of water for irrigation is just one of many forces threatening the future of the state’s signature food.
The peppers depend on hot days and cool nights, growing comfortably between 55 and 95 degrees, to develop the desired taste and heat. Since at least the 1970s, summer daytime temperatures have reached 100 degrees or higher. The excessive heat, a symptom of climate change felt across the Southwest, can blister the chiles’ fragile skin and interrupt the growth cycle.
“You put all your effort into it, all of your money, but if there’s no water, you won’t get anything,” said Edgar Grajeda, 25, an owner of Grajeda Farms in Hatch. “It’s getting drier and drier.”
Some farmers who have grown chiles for generations are cutting back acreage to save their limited water for more reliably profitable crops like onions or watermelons. After decades of driving the Hatch Valley brand and agricultural economy, the chile has become less dependable.
Water and labor costs are fixed, but growers cannot increase their prices by much; farms in Mexico, which sell their chiles in the United States, often pay workers less and can sell their product cheaper. Scientists are trying to find a way to automate the harvest, but for now, chiles have to be picked by hand because they bruise easily.
Some farmers are having a hard time finding pickers, as tightening immigration policies have slowed the flow of temporary workers from Mexico.
“This year, we were faced with more challenges from weather and labor than ever before,” said Chris Franzoy, 50, Ms. Rutherford’s great-nephew and an owner of Young Guns, Inc. and the Hatch Chile Factory. “We’ve got a much higher cost, but we’re not able to pass that along to the consumer.”
Few other foods embody a state’s identity like the chile, one of New Mexico’s two official state vegetables (alongside pinto beans). Chiles are pictured on license plates, sold flame-roasted by roadsides and served on just about every food you can order. It’s even the subject of the official state question: “Red or green?”
“It’s who this state is,” said Teako Nunn, 70, an owner of Sparky’s, a popular restaurant in Hatch. “For the people that live here, it’s like milk, or American cheese, or ketchup, or mustard. It’s like that, except better.”
Red chiles dry on the vine and are served in a smoky, spicy sauce. Green chiles are usually fire-roasted, chopped and used as a relish over anything from omelets to pasta to burritos.
For the unaccustomed, the heat is a slow build; by the seventh bite of a Sparky’s burger, customers are often red-cheeked and sweating. (The restaurant’s chocolate ice cream shake is meant to soothe, but that’s got chile in it, too.)
But New Mexican chiles can’t be grown just anywhere: The state’s high elevation provides the required temperature swings between hot days and cool nights. (Hatch, which is in a lower part of the state, is still over 4,000 feet above sea level).
“It’s hard to say that you could just move to a cooler environment,” said Jonathan Overpeck, the dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, who studied the Southwest when he held a similar post at the University of Arizona. “I just don’t think there’s an obvious place to move to grow our chile.”
Farmers have started growing chiles in Colorado, which is directly north and has the highest mean elevation nationwide. (This kicked off an amusing spat on Twitter between the two governors.)
But the soils are different in Colorado. The water is, too. And much like wine connoisseurs, chile enthusiasts claim they can taste the difference. Something about the Hatch Valley, they say, crisps up the texture and balances the taste.
That belief comes at least in part from a decades-long marketing campaign, led by farmers and town officials, hailing the valley as the Chile Capital of the World. There is now an annual Hatch Chile Festival and a state chile association.
There’s even a state law, enacted in 2013, that defines the parameters of a “New Mexico Certified Chile” to keep other states and countries from fraudulently labeling their peppers New Mexican.
“Hatch is considered the Napa Valley of chile,” Mr. Franzoy said, standing in his fields as workers knelt around him, snapping the green peppers off plants with gloved-hands. “There’s a misconception. Hatch is not a variety. It’s a place, an origin.”
In 2017, sales of the state’s chiles totaled $44.6 million, placing the crop seventh in New Mexico’s $3.38 billion agriculture sector. They trailed pecans ($221 million), hay ($109 million) and onions ($107 million), according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Different parts of New Mexico grow different chiles: A teaching garden run by the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, 40 miles southeast of Hatch, has more than 150 varieties.
But all varieties are facing an uncertain future. In the 1990s, more than 35,000 acres of chiles were grown in New Mexico, compared with about 8,400 in recent years, according to Sonja Schroeder, the executive director of the New Mexico Chile Association.
“It’s talked about, kind of on the same level as politics would be,” said Nelle Bauer, a chef at Frenchish, a restaurant in Albuquerque, speaking of the drought and fears of a future chile scarcity. “It’s at the forefront of most New Mexicans’ minds.”
In 2018, the Elephant Butte Reservoir, which supplies water to southern New Mexico, Mexico and parts of Texas, was at only 3 percent capacity. The riverbed of the Rio Grande cracked in some places, and farmers watched their chiles wither in the fields.
Thanks to a snowy winter and a cooler spring, the reservoir was fuller this year, reaching about 26 percent capacity, according to David DuBois, the state climatologist and a professor at New Mexico State. It’s been a good growing season as a result, and the fields around the valley are filled with pepper plants.
Still, the trend points down: New Mexico “is at the very top” of water-insecure states, with 80 to 100 percent of available water used every year, said Betsy Otto who directs the global water program at the World Resources Institute.
“Our drought pretty much started in 1999,” Dr. DuBois said. “2011 and 2012 were really dry. I called those harbingers of the future. I’d ask farmers: ‘Can you adapt? Because that’s the direction we’re heading.’ ”
Not every farmer sees the unpredictable weather as caused by human actions and industry, but nearly all agree: The past few years have been harder. The weather has been more erratic, with winds, unpredictable frost and wetter growing seasons, which can bring pests.
Warmer winters drop less snow in the mountains, leading to less runoff to fill reservoirs. Windier spring weather shakes the fragile sprouts, kicking up dust that can cut down new growth.
Most farms, like Morrow Farms, have converted to irrigation that runs under the ground, at the root of the plants. (Some farms rely on underwater wells called aquifers, but pumping can be expensive and the water can be too salty.) That’s a more efficient system, but it’s far from a permanent solution.
“It’ll keep you up at night to worry about the weather,” said Tyler Holmes, 35, who intends to take over part of the farm from her father, Harvey Morrow.
In the 1980s, Morrow Farms planted hundreds of acres of chiles, but Ms. Morrow’s uncle John, another owner, stopped planting chiles on his section 10 to 15 years ago. He doubts he will plant any next year; watermelons are just better for business.
Ms. Morrow and her father still plant chiles, but only on about 80 acres of the 1,200 they irrigate. They mostly sell to people in town who like their product.
“We talked about not growing it, but that’s not possible,” she said. “It’s who we are.”
Other families, like the Franzoys and the Grajedas, are still holding strong, expanding their operations and breeding new varieties.
Ms. Rutherford, the chile queen, demands it: She watched her father, Joseph Franzoy, start with just two acres, and picked chile for 10 cents a bushel with her first husband, Jim Lytle, during World War II. In his honor, she bred the Big Jim variety, one of New Mexico’s most popular.
But even as she sat at her dining room table wearing the plastic crown, she worried those days might be over.
“Do you think any of our kids are going to carry on the legacy?” she asked. “Why should they come and farm if they can’t make a living?”
