A report from a national agricultural organization says climate change is already impacting the production of Iowa’s key crops and it offers dire predictions for a more challenging future.
John Piotti, president and CEO of American Farmland Trust, says shifts in rainfall patterns that bring extremes like drought and flooding, are combining with warmer weather to make it very difficult — if not impossible — to continue the way we currently farm.
“Eighty percent of our cropland is at risk due to rising temperatures and rainfall changes,” Piotti says, “so there’s really an urgent need here. We clearly have to limit warming but we also have to think about increased adaptation and resilience.”
By the year 2040, the report projects only 33-percent of the acres now devoted to corn are likely to remain highly productive with the current corn varieties.
“We think of corn as a crop that works well in warm temperatures, and it does, but it needs a cooling period as well,” Piotti says. “There was a study that Purdue did a couple of years ago that showed the production of corn dropped a lot just by having warmer nights.”
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Iowans like Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug helped to revolutionize the hybridization process, enabling plants to survive extreme weather conditions, insects and other risk factors. Piotti says with the right tools and support, agricultural producers can continue to adapt to climate changes and help reverse the trends.
“I don’t want to have a doom-and-gloom story here because what we’re saying is -current- varieties, grown the way they are now,” Piotti says. “There will be other varieties that are developed for greater adaption and the like, but we need to invest in research for that.” To ward off the worst impacts of climate change, Piotti says farmers and non-farmers can work to limit global warming and to increase the resiliency and profitability of farmland.
“Any efforts to advance conservation practices on your land, whether it’s no till or cover crops or other steps, that’s the right thing for farmers,” Piotti says, “and for your average Iowa citizen, one thing you can do is to support the farms during what will undoubtedly be challenges ahead.”
For other key crops, the report says 53-percent of the winter wheat acres will be much less likely to support the varieties now being grown. Also, conditions on all but four-percent of the commercial apple production acreages will be much less likely to support the apple varieties we now grow.
See the full report, “Farms Under Threat 2040: Choosing an Abundant Future,” HERE.