News

Report: Farming riskier with fewer field days

A University of Illinois study on climate change says the typical planting window for corn – April and May – could become too wet to work in fields in most parts of Illinois and mid-summer will be increasingly dry. Adam Davis, a USDA/ARS ecologist with the university tells Brownfield Ag News the study considered three climate scenarios: low, medium and high, “The high one is the one where you really have the problem where the mid-summer drought severity is so high, you’re going to have to potentially change even what types of crops you’re growing.”

Davis tells Brownfield farmers might have to switch to drought tolerant crops like sorghum, under those conditions. Davis says there are already signs of the likely changes ahead in the next 40 to 80 years — even this spring, when it was warm and dry, “One spring doesn’t make a trend. Right? But, we’ve seen over the last 10, 20 years, growers going earlier and earlier. And we’ve seen a large proportion of our hottest years happen in a row.”

Davis says he has high confidence in the weather models used in the study.