Farmers should engage in climate change debate

Duane Acker in the Des Moines Register: …."Can agriculture adapt to climate change?" Some dramatic scenarios have been advanced. Yet, agriculture's success is a vivid story of continuous adaptation - to climate, soil and the market.

I offer but one example: When I moved to South Dakota State University as dean of agriculture in 1966, I found a late 1880s Agricultural Experiment Station Report that said the new crop, corn, was doing well at Flandreau (40 miles north of Iowa's northwest corner) but would likely never get as far north as Brookings (another 40 miles). However, by then, corn was the major crop in the Brookings area and I found a college classmate, an agronomist for a seed company, serving area growers. There was more potential for corn, and we set as our first priority research and extension program goal moving the leading edge of the Corn Belt further north and west, by enhancing drought tolerance, pest control and tillage practices. Twenty-five years later, I checked South Dakota county-by-county corn acreages and average yields and compared them with 1960s acreages and yields. The data told me the edge of the Corn Belt had moved another 100 miles north and west.

Today, with the capability for DNA manipulations and with increased precision in cultural practices, we can speed adaptation. I do not worry about Midwest agriculture adapting to climate change. I do, though, urge farmers and farm leaders to be involved in the climate change issue. We need to help keep climate-related conversations, whether with legislators, our neighbors, or others, focused on reality. As producers, we need to do our part in mitigating any negative atmospheric carbon and nitrogen consequences - and perhaps profit from doing so.

A farm near Dubuque, Iowa, from the USDA