Looking to help farmers adapt to climate change, the U.S Department of Agriculture is , including one in Fort Collins.
The new research centers, anchored in different regions, are tasked to chart how climate change poses risks to farming, ranching and forestry. Then to devise strategies to adapt.
Existing USDA facilities in Fort Collins, El Reno, Oklahoma and Ames, Iowa, will focus on the Midwest. The other centers will be in California, New Hampshire, North Carolina and New Mexico.
The Midwest in the past few years has have grappled with epic drought, mega-blizzards and crippling heat. While it鈥檚 still a controversial task to hang climate change on any one extreme weather event, agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack says he鈥檚 seen enough.
鈥淲hen you take a look at the intensity of the storms that we have seen recently, and the frequency of them, the length of drought, combined with these snowstorms and the subzero weather that we鈥檝e experienced -- the combination of all those factors convinces me that the climate is changing and it will have its impact,鈥� Vilsack said in a White House press conference.
The move to create these research hubs has been grouped in with other climate-related initiatives taken by the White House in the absence of Congressional action.
鈥淚f we are not proactive, as the president has directed, we will find ourselves five, ten, 15, 20 years down the road wishing we had done what we鈥檙e doing today,鈥� Vilsack said.
The Fort Collins office will work with farmers throughout the northern plains in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. to a variety of land types, high alpine to grassland, and a diversity of agricultural activity. Livestock and grain crops dominate the Great Plains. Climate models show the plains, like the rest of the country, could see weather extremes and longer, hotter growing seasons as climate change progresses.
Adaptations to climate change tested and rolled out by the hubs could include more drought-tolerant seeds, super efficient irrigation systems and soil management techniques.
