News

Using climate change information to your advantage

Useful to Usable, or U2U, is a collaborative effort between several universities across the upper Midwest to help farmers utilize existing climate change information to make better decisions for their operations. 

Otto Doering, ag economics professor at Purdue University says U2U wants the information to be farmer friendly and fit their management practices.  “In essence, as a farmer makes a series of decisions over the years about planting the crop these decision tools come in at critical points come in that decision framework,” he says. 

For example, what maturity of corn do you use?  “Do you use a short season variety or a long season variety?” he asks.  “Using a short season variety if we get much hotter summers might allow for pollination before the temperature gets incredibly high and pollination would be difficult.”

Doering tells Brownfield they’re trying to increase the management tools available to farmers.  “If we get serious increasingly speedy climate change it’s going to affect yields negatively,” he says.  “If it gets more difficult for farmers in terms of extreme events, higher temperatures, etc., you’ve given the farmer a toolbox to try to basically reduce the damage.”

Starting this month U2U is holding farmer focus groups in Nebraska and Indiana to find out what information is beneficial to them.

AUDIO: Otto Doering, U2U (5:04mp3)

Add Comment

Your email address will not be published.


 

Stay Up to Date

Subscribe for our newsletter today and receive relevant news straight to your inbox!