By Chad Kruger, Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources
One of the most significant challenges to climate adaptation planning in agriculture is the difficulty in visualizing what future climate change might mean for your area in a concrete way.
From late 2014 to early 2016 the Pacific Northwest experienced what could be called “climate postcards from the future”. For about 24 months, average temperatures in the region were about 4°F warmer than the historical average. Given that this period spanned across parts of three production seasons (and two snowpacks), it gave us a very profound glimpse of the range of agricultural experiences we might have mid-century. I had been presenting on what climate forecasts for agriculture in the region might look like and it was extremely helpful to frame the science in the context of a real-life experience.
It was December of 2014, and I’d just given the opening plenary talk at the Washington State Tree Fruit Association annual meeting — a talk on “what the future of climate change means for Washington agriculture” to a room full of growers and industry. It just so happened that a few days before the event it had been announced that the unseasonably warm fall had led to a projected 140m boxes of apples — a record crop for Washington. The actual crop turned out to be 170m boxes! But, due to West Coast port closures, the whole talk of the convention was the crashing price of apples.
During the presentation, you could have heard a pin drop as I presented more “doom and gloom” to a room full of people who were already anxious. It was one of those really awkward situations where you wonder if you are ever going to get invited back.
After the session, one of my good friends (an orchardist) took me to lunch and we talked about climate change, the strangely warm fall, a very delayed start to winter snowpack, and the combination of a record crop and subsequent price collapse. The conversation, like the conference session, was depressing — and I couldn’t stop thinking about how unhelpful my talk had been in a situation with dire circumstances that seemed so good a few days prior.
This was not the first time I’d felt like our approach to presenting the state of climate change science in agriculture was just not that helpful to the people who manage our crops and livestock. So, what if we are going to see plus or minus 10 to 15% yields on crops? We see more than that much variability year in and year out. Not one to accept the status quo, my colleague Kirti Rajagopalan and I began to discuss other approaches to conceptualizing and visualizing what future climate might look like that would be more tangible and concrete to someone producing food.
As I described above, the 2014-2016 seasons presented “climate postcards from the future” for agriculture in the PNW. The solid snowpack followed by an unseasonably warm fall led to record yields for many PNW specialty crops. Then in 2015, one of the worst snowpacks in history led to more than $1b in farmgate sales losses due to insufficient water for irrigation. In 2016, a decent snowpack combined with an early warm-up led to more of a mixed experience that was good for some crops but not others. With these “future postcards” as a framing, Kirti rolled up her sleeves and put her lab’s analytical skills to the task looking for additional temporal analogs — where we could compare annual climate data to crop performance. As she often does, after some initial exploration, Kirti came back to me and said, “I have a better idea — there is too much noise in the temporal data, so let’s look at spatial analogs instead”.
It hit me like the proverbial slap in the face. Duh! What other location currently has a climate representative of your locations’ future climate! For generations — if not millennia — farmers have looked at their neighbors near and far to learn from them about what is similar and what is different about their farms and ranches — and how to apply generalizable knowledge to different conditions.
I started thinking about my friend (the orchardist) and how he has traveled the world and hosts travelers from all over the world visit him who share knowledge about farming. It struck me that Kirti was onto something that could provide a very practical and tangible approach to climate change adaptation planning for agriculture.
Kirti’s lab set to the task of analyzing strategies for evaluating spatial climate analogs. It wasn’t as easy as we initially expected, but through the USDA NIFA Award #: 2017-68002-26789, the Fruit and Veg CAMO Project, her lab developed a rigorous methodology for identifying and assessing spatial analogs for the 680 primary specialty crop producing counties in the CONUS and we published a tool. I started noticing in following talks that eyes glazed over when I presented relative yield data, but the audience snapped to attention and asked more productive questions when I showed them a simple analog image.
We knew we were onto something, so we engaged our colleague, Sonia Hall, to help facilitate a pilot workshop where we convened extension personnel from a target location in Florida and analog location in Texas together to talk about what climate change might mean for the future.
For me, an obvious next step was that we needed to get these two groups of Extension personnel together to visit each other and the farms in their service areas. There is nothing quite as valuable as visiting in person and kicking the tires while talking with experts who work on similar or different challenges than you do.
At this point in the story (early 2021), we were still a long way from coalescing our plans for what would ultimately become the Climate Analogs Academy. Looking back on that miserable December day in 2014, it now seems so simple and obvious. Developing the methodology and facilitating knowledge sharing across targets and analogs has not been easy, but it’s clear that this approach is more empowering than presenting abstract concepts. I think one of the most important insights that I’ve heard from members of the inaugural Academy cohort after visiting analogs is that there is a lot more hope that we can adapt to future climates.
Interested in joining the 2025 Climate Analogs Academy Cohort?
We are recruiting now for the 2025 Academy cohort starting in January. This is the second and final cohort for the project effort. The priority deadline for applications is October 18th, 2024. For more information and application, visit the Climate Analog Academy webpage
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