Bananas from Connecticut? Oceanfront property in Vermont?

Climate change is a pretty daunting topic. It’s easier to make jokes about it than it is to take it seriously. But not only will climate change affect your farm, it probably already has.

What’s changing? Common sense observation leads many of us to conclude that the weather is not like it used to be. Several of the hottest seasons on record have occurred in the past decade. Deluges of rainfall and short-term droughts both seem to be getting more frequent. And the growing season has been getting longer.

These changes present both threats and opportunities, and they aren’t just figments of our imagination. The scientific community is quite unified in its conclusion that climate change is upon us. What scientists have been debating is not whether the climate is changing, but how quickly.

Climatologists study and predict the weather over many decades, unlike meteorologists, who focus on recent and impending weather. However, the two disciplines can be connected. For example, by using weather station data collected over the past hundred years, climatologists at the University of New Hampshire determined that the Northeast’s average annual temperature has increased by 1.8 degrees F. during the last century.  The winters (Dec – Feb) have warmed more (2.8 F) than the annual average, and winter warming in the last 30 years has been even more pronounced (4.4. F).

Scientists have found that even a little change in temperature has a powerful effect. The frost-free growing season in New England is one week longer than it was a century ago. Lake ice breaks up about 5 days sooner. Across the Northeast, lilacs and apples have been shown to be flowering earlier in the spring than they were in the 1960s.

Why is the climate changing? Although many gases, both natural and man-made, have an influence on the temperature of the earth, the main culprit behind climate change is human activity that generates carbon dioxide (CO2), primarily by burning fossil fuel. Scientists have measured air trapped in ice cores going back many thousands of years, and while there were significant ups and downs in the level of atmospheric CO2 during that time, the level today is far greater than it has ever been before.

In fact, atmospheric CO2 levels have risen by one-third in just the past hundred years, coinciding with an increase in industrial activities around the world. The U.S. currently leads the world by generating over 5 tons of CO2 per person per year. Places like China are just gearing up industrially, and may someday pass us in that dubious honor.

Nitrous oxide (N20) and methane (CH4) are other gases that contribute to climate change, and in fact they are relatively more potent than C02 as ‘greenhouse gases’ that cause global warming. Fortunately, they are produced in smaller quantities.

How can agriculture adapt? There are many ways that farmers will cope with climate change. This could be with a different mix of crops, modified production systems, and changes in pest management.

For example, it’s likely that cool season crops won’t do as well in areas that warm up, so farmers may switch to varieties that are more heat-tolerant, or change the kinds of crops they grow. As rainfall gets more erratic, reliable irrigation as well as good field drainage will become even more important. Animals like dairy cows may need additional environmental management to keep them cool and maintain their productivity. If new pests arrive with changing conditions, scouting will be essential to avoid being taken by surprise. Some current pests may become more frequent problems in the Northeast, especially storm-blown insects like leafhoppers and corn earworms.  Warmer winters could mean better survival of some insects, such as flea beetles, and therefore higher populations in early spring.  Others may diminish in severity.

How can agriculture help? Besides planning for adaptation, farmers can also work to mitigate their contribution to the problem. Although agriculture is by no means a leading contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change, farmers, like everyone else, should do what they can to address the problem. The good news is that many agricultural actions that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions can also enhance profitability and stewardship.

According to CAST (the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology), agriculture has a role to play in the broader effort to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations by:

* Taking CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering (storing) it in biomass and soils. This could be done through increased use of cover crops, green manures and permanent pastures that ‘tie up’ carbon and build up soil organic matter.

* Decreasing the rate of land clearing for agriculture, and taking marginal lands out of production, thus allowing the native plant cover to grow and sequester carbon.

* Increasing the efficiency of farm inputs such as fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides, reducing consumption of fossil-fuel energy that is required to produce them.

* Increasing production of agricultural bio-fuels (renewable biological-based energy fuels) to replace fossil energy, thereby recycling carbon that is already ‘above-ground.’

* Using nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently in order to decrease nitrous oxide emissions that can result from excess applications.

* Decreasing methane emissions by capturing or preventing methane loss from animal manure storage and by increasing livestock production efficiency.

Of course, there are many more actions that farmers can take to address the issue of climate change. These include: using alternative energy sources like wind, hydro and fuels made from wastes like used vegetable oil; planting windbreaks to reduce energy use in adjacent buildings while capturing carbon in trees; replacing old vehicles with more energy efficient models, and increasing local markets for their products in order to reduce the energy needed for transportation.

These actions suggest a win-win approach to a very big problem. Through innovation, and implementation of more sustainable technologies, farmers can enhance their stewardship of natural resources, reduce their contribution to climate change, and improve their bottom line.

For more information on climate change and agriculture, visit www.climateandfarming.org

EPA’s global warming site explains the science and data on climate change: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/index.html

To see fact sheets on regional climate change and what you can do about it, visit: http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/information/factsheets.php

The Canadian climate change network has several papers on agriculture: http://www.c-ciarn.uoguelph.ca/