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The cost of climate change on agriculture

A report from a nonpartisan policy group says damage to crop and rangelands caused by changes in climate and extreme weather in the Midwest in 2021 led to $12.5 billion in economic losses.

Environmental Entrepreneurs co-founder Nicole Lederer tells Brownfield the total cost since 1980 climbs into the hundreds of billions of dollars, “Total weather disaster costs since 1980 have been $370 billion and of that $370 billion, 20% have occurred in the last five years.”

David Kolsrud farms in southwestern Minnesota and says he experienced something earlier this year he’d never experienced in 50 years of farming, “These derecho winds that come through, they’re almost Biblical in the way the come through and destroy things. We had one July this year that wiped out a massive amount of crops and grain bins and killed three people in South Dakota.”

Lederer says there is $20 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act that can be used to fight climate change.