Iowa Farmer Today
11-17-07
Global climate change a local concern
By Hannah Fletcher, Iowa Farmer Today
It is not so much the times that are a changin’ for our farming neighbors in
Europe as it is the weather and consequently agriculture that seems to be
changing, as one Welsh farmer notes.
Wil Williams raises 800 ewes on 200 hilly acres in northwest Wales, a small
mountainous region of about 3 million people sandwiched between England and
Ireland.
Wales’ agriculture is primarily small-scale pastoral farming of sheep, beef and
dairy cattle, of which sheep meat production is dominant, he says.
Recently, Williams has seen notable changes in the weather that may be
affecting the Welsh farming landscape.
The past three years was marked by the two hottest summers followed by the
wettest summer since records began, he says.
“Eyebrows have been raised locally by a few farmers planting olive trees and
grape vines on a neighboring island. This is many, many hundreds of miles north
of where you would usually expect to find such plants today,” he says.
“Time will tell if this will be the norm in the future.”
As a whole, farming has not changed in Wales, Williams says noting many
farmers are “flexible enough to have a little slack in their production systems to
allow for the climate change up to now.”
But, there are concerns about possible pathogens that could crop up if the
climate continues to change.
“A disease of ruminants called blue tongue has appeared in England. This was
carried over from the continent by midges, the warm weather presumably aiding
its survival,” he says.
Although agriculture is not Wales’ primary industry, as a farmer, Williams is
cautious about how climate changes could affect farming.
But, perhaps more importantly, he wonders what affect continued climate change
could have on the well-being of his people and country.
The climate in Wales is very mild in relation to its latitude due to the warming
effect of the Gulf Stream. Should global climate change alter the Gulf Stream, as
some have theorized, the effects could be dire.
“Serious though this is, it is nothing compared to the problems we will face if
climate change causes the Gulf Stream to change course, and our climate will
paradoxically result in much harsher winters” he says.
“I fear that such a process would not be gradual but sudden and catastrophic in
its coming, and it would destroy the bedrock of the farming economy and
threaten our ancient Celtic language and culture,” he says.
The effects of climate affects on other areas in the world may eventually
influence Midwestern agriculture, whether or not any changes are noted at home,
says Gene Takle, Iowa State University climate researcher.
“Typically, what is going on in other regions in agriculture is affecting here,” he
says. “What’s happening on a global level is important because our local weather
is in some way tied to global weather.”
Takle has studied weather for several years and is working on modeling future
weather patterns. His studies found weather in the Midwest is likely to warm only
slightly as compared with models that show an increase in the global climate.
Other near-future expectations include milder winter temperatures, slightly
increased precipitation and increased chance of severe storms.
“It seems to me that, Midwest agriculture is going to be impacted less negatively
than agriculture in many other regions,” Takle says.
“But, that is not to say that agriculture won’t be impacted indirectly through prices
and the bioeconomy. Food and fuels may be at the whims of the weather.”
A working group for the International Panel on Climate Change released a report
in April that examined the effects of climate change on specific world regions.
It found bleak consequences for people living in poverty, and some ag regions
may benefit from climate change while others will be seriously harmed because
of changes to growing conditions or access to water.
The working group found:
=Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases
in local average temperature over a range of 1-3 degrees centigrade, but above
this it is projected to decrease;
=At lower latitudes, especially in seasonally dry and tropical regions, crop
productivity is projected to decrease for even small local temperature increases
(1 to 2 degrees C), which would increase the risk of hunger;
=Increases in the frequency of droughts and floods are projected to affect local
crop production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes;
=by 2020, agriculture fed by rainfall could decrease 50 percent in some African
countries;
=by 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa could face water shortages;
and
=if temperatures rise between 1.5 to 2.5 degrees C, 20-30 percent of all plant
and animal species would be at an increased risk of extinction.
Williams would like to see world leaders working together to swiftly counteract
climate change for the betterment of agriculture and humanity.
“I feel that since human nature is inherently selfish, and that the lack of world
governments’ response means that we are on a slippery slope to huge problems
of drought and famine in the future,” Williams says.
“There is an old adage which goes ‘Live as though you die tomorrow, farm as
though you live forever,’ ” he says.
“If only our rulers adopted such thoughts then perhaps we could avoid climate
change and survive the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced.”