Browse by Topic: Planning

The New England Adaptation Survey draws upon the experience of 193 fruit and vegetable growers surveyed in 2017 and 2018. It explores emerging adaptive management strategies, perceived climate related risks, and adaptive capacity.

This short guide for Land Trusts gives you a starting point to help you design and implement adaptation actions in your work, with a special eye toward stewardship activities. It draws on the five-step Adaptation Workbook process to help you consider how climate change will affect your lands and your associated goals for land conservation and stewardship. By intentionally considering the potential impacts, challenges, and opportunities from climate change, you can then use this lens to identify actions that enable ecosystems to cope with stressors and adapt to changing conditions, while also addressing conservation priorities.

NOFA-VT’s Farmer Services Team offers flexible, responsive services to support farmers in assessing their level of climate risk and identifying adaptation strategies to increase their resilience. Submit Services Questionnaire to connect with the team

This technical bulletin contains information and resources designed to help agricultural producers, service providers, and educators in the Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States integrate climate change considerations and action-oriented decisions into existing farm and conservation plans. An Adaptation Workbook provides producers a flexible, structured process to identify and assess climate change impacts, challenges, opportunities, and farm-level adaptation tactics and continuously evaluate adaptation actions for improving responses to extreme and uncertain conditions. A synthesis of Adaptation Strategies and Approaches serves as a “menu” of potential responses organized to provide a clear rationale for making decisions by connecting planned actions to broad adaptation concepts.

We propose a method to improve surveys to define adoption in agriculture as a dynamic process. Our approach represents adoption as a flow of adopters moving through stages. We show how innovation diffusion is the result of individual adoption journeys converging into common pathways. Our approach provides a highly informative way to unpack the diversity of dynamic adoption. Our approach can assist agricultural researchers and extension agents to predict future adoption.

Participants will become aware of the social, ecological and economic drivers and implications of certain management practices that may reduce farm-scale risks producers in the northeast face because of climate change.

The main questions this tool helps the user answer are: 1) What are the climate adaptation and/or mitigation strategies that might be most appropriate for my operation? 2) How should I make decisions about implementing these strategies? 3) How will I know if I have achieved success with a given strategy? This tool is designed as a template, or “open workbench” for the user to enter information based on their operation and goals. The tool is not a diagnostic tool and does not recommend specific solutions for a given climate related production issue. The tool can be used across any farming system and allows you to choose strategies based on your own ideas and research, reflecting the realities of your farm system, location, microclimate, local markets, or other relevant variables.

John Oliver humorously explains what carbon offsets are, what they claim to do, and how they might be making climate change even worse.

Draws together a wide range of resources for farms in transition to more climate change resilient production, processing, storage and distribution practices. Includes videos, resilience planning, best practices, and resources for underserved farmers.

This worksheet is designed to help farmers go through the 5 step climate adaptation planning process and have a word document to produce a complete plan.

This publication explores climate-related challenges to perennial fruit and nut production, including drought, frost, flooding, and extreme weather events. It discusses steps growers can take to build resilience into their farming operations through diversification, water stewardship, and soil building, as well as technology, information, and policy.

This report details the findings from the Capacity Discovery project, an online survey implemented in spring 2015 that documented the current and future capacity of land-grant universities in the Northeast to address climate change research and Extension work in the agriculture, natural resources, and forestry sectors.

Scientists agree: human-caused global warming is real, and it’s bad. Severe weather is impacting all regions of Earth and will continue to increase in intensity and frequency as warming continues. The climate crisis demands our attention and our collective action towards restoring balance with natural Earth ecosystems. Climate-beneficial farming practices are one of the many pathways to mitigate climate change, while simultaneously building resilient ecological systems that can help farmers and ranchers adapt to unpredictable and unprecedented climate disruptions. This article summarizes the effects of climate change on agriculture, agriculture's role, and mitigation.

A short guide to climate change, Climate Smart Farming, and potential climate adaptations along with worksheets to aid in assessment, selection, and implementation of strategies. By using this workbook, producers can expect to have a better understanding of vulnerable areas to climate change and strategies to mitigate those risks on their farm.

A one-pager summarizing climate related hazards and vulnerabilities in northeast agriculture, key adaptation and mitigation strategies, and regional priorities.

A case study of Clovercrest Farm, a small-scale dairy farm in Charleston, Maine. Includes the impacts of climate change on the farm and their adaptation strategies. The farm milks 95 Jersey cattle on 250 acres, of which 125 acres are pasture and 125 acres are wooded. The farm rents 350 acres of cropland in the surrounding area to grow winter forage. Clovercrest Farm is pasture-based and has been certified USDA organic since 1998.

The Vermont Climate Assessment (VCA) of 2014 paints a vivid picture of a changing climate in Vermont and calls for immediate strategic planning to sustain the social, economic and environmental fabric of our state. The VCA is the first state-scale climate assessment in the country and speaks directly to the impacts of climate change as they pertain to our rural towns, cities and communities, including impacts on Vermont tourism and recreation, agriculture, natural resources and energy.

Outlines the new challenges that changing weather patterns pose in agriculture throughout the United States, and what you can do to make your farm more resilient. By understanding the climate risks to your production system and practices that can reduce those risks, you can identify some management steps that will improve the resilience of your farm or ranch to changing climate conditions while allowing you to achieve your other sustainability goals.

The goals of this publication are to present the principles behind drip irrigation and some practical guidelines for successful and profitable use of drip irrigation.

Participate to understand current research, available technologies, future possibilities, and the benefits and costs of small-scale manure digesters. Learn about REAP program eligibility, application deadlines, program grant and loan opportunities and how existing digesters used REAP as part of their funding package.

A template for creating a farm emergency plan. Includes emergency contact info, farm maps, animal census, biosecurity assessment, generator information, and overall emergency plan.

A detailed summary of climate change's impacts in the Northeast, drivers of adaptation, disproportionate impacts on certain groups, action plans, and implementation and financing of those plans.

A DIY whole farm planning process designed especially for small- and mid-scale diversified operations that will help you reduce the risks and capture new opportunities created by more variable weather and extremes.

Northeast Climate Hub partners have published two new studies exploring how a changing climate is affecting regional crops and livestock. Hear the lead authors of these studies highlight species or production systems that might be particularly vulnerable to changing conditions. They also include practical actions one can take to reduce the harmful aspects of some of these changes. This is Part 2: Climate change effects on livestock in the Northeast US and strategies for adaptation (presenter: Alexander Hristov)