Farmers are adapting to extreme weather; it takes time and planning

The Larsen farm has been in the family for seven generations.
(Photo by Martin Larsen via Successful Farming)

Extreme winds, pummeling rain, popcorn-sized hail and drought. Farmers have to work out a way in all those conditions to grow food and make a profit. Extreme weather brought on by climate change has added another twist, which has forced farmers to adapt. "If they don't, they may lose their land — and their livelihoods — forever," report Chelsea Dinterman and Alex Gray of Successful Farming.

Justin Gilsan, Iowa's state climatologist, told Successful Farming that the potential for run-off events caused by heavy rains has more than tripled. Minnesota farmer Martin Larsen from Byron, Minnesota, told Dinterman and Gray, "The continued loss of fertile soil from farmland will decrease its future productivity, and unfortunately make the land less able to soak up the increasing amounts of heavy rains." 

"The difference between climate and weather is simple: Weather is the highly variable day-to-day environment involving temperature, precipitation, and wind speed. Climate is the average of those weather patterns, commonly broken into 30-year periods for study," Successful Farming reports. Gilsan said: "That 30-year average is what we call climatology, and it is important because it gives us a baseline to rank events.."

Those trends point to climate change, no matter the politics. "Increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere raise temperatures," Dinterman and Gray write. "Rising atmospheric temperatures allow the atmosphere to hold more water vapor. In turn, more water vapor needs to build for a rainfall event, making those events more intense and increasing the length of time between them."

For farmers like Martin Larsen, diversifying crops and changing tilling practices has helped him combat continuing bouts of drought followed by torrential rains. "Adding drought-resistant small grains to his operation has helped diversify that risk, allowing him to maintain profitability through unpredictable extreme weather. . . . Larsen adopted no-till practices over the course of three years, starting in 2013, to reduce the amount of soil shifted in rain events. Now, small grains and legume cover crops provide a strong root system to protect the soil."

Working together, area farmers can share solutions and support one another with a goal of protecting the land and their livelihoods. Successful Farming reports, "Larsen is part of a network of about 75 local farmers, representing roughly 25,000 to 30,000 total acres in the Byron area, who share knowledge about no-till, cover crops, diversifying crops, nitrate, water quality, and carbon sequestration with the goal of building farm resiliency."