NEW CLIMATE?: Farmers in the U.K. are adapting farming techniques to cope with new weather patterns.
Image: Wkimedia Commons/David Wright
SLEAFORD, England -- Mark Ireland doesn't know whether it is due to the weather or climate change, but one thing he is certain of is that over the past 25 years, a great deal has changed along the furrows of his farm in southeast Lincolnshire.
Farmers have always been gamblers, betting on the weather year after year, but climate change appears to be thrusting them into games with Mother Nature that they've never played before. Crop planting and harvest time have moved progressively earlier. Crop yields and rainfall patterns and amounts are different. So are the pests, diseases and weather extremes that people like Ireland must learn to deal with to stay in the "game."
"I don't know enough about climate change to say if that is the direct cause, but the way we have farmed has steadily evolved," Ireland told ClimateWire on a visit to his Grange Farm about 130 miles north of London.
"A quarter of a century ago, we could not have started harvesting until late July. Now, if we have not started by early July, I start to worry. The harvests are definitely earlier," he said.
On the 1,878-acre farm he runs with his brother James, he grows barley, wheat, rapeseed and sugar beets. While wheat and barley crop yields have risen largely through varietal change and have now plateaued, the sugar beet yield has shot up with the warmer winters.
But it is not just the growing season that has changed, but also the mix of pests and diseases that attack the crops.
"Orange blossom midge has become a problem at this time of year on wheat, but 15 years ago, we had never heard of it. The Saddle Gore midge is another problem we are starting to hear about. They tend to move here from the south," Ireland said. "Yellow rust is also becoming a real problem. But the recent dry winters have meant that eye spot, which likes wet soils, has not been a problem."
"The disease cycles are getting far faster, too. We are having to look at changing the treatment schedules," he added. "Who knows what will be happening in another 30 years? We may even move to grain maize, which is a much more southerly crop at the moment."
Less rain, more storm damage
Ireland has assiduously collected rainfall data, with amounts for the past 12 years showing huge year-to-year variations. But no matter whether taken on an annual basis or smoothed into a five-year rolling average, they point to a steady decline. Less rain is a problem on the farm's light, sandy soils.
But there is also another side to the equation: the increase in frequency of sudden squalls and downpours.
"In March, I was starting to get really worried about the oilseed rape because of the drought. Now it is looking really healthy after all the rain we have had. But with the high winds and sudden downpours we have been getting, I am worried again that if it gets knocked over, it won't have time to get up again before harvest, and we will lose a lot because the combine won't get to it," Ireland explained.
In England, as in most industrial countries, if crops are not upright so the mechanical pickers can harvest them, they remain in the fields to rot.
A short distance east down the road, Nick Loweth has a different set of problems on his 530-acre Abbey Park farm, whose deep, loamy soils retain moisture.
"Drilling [planting] has got earlier for wheat but a bit later for the oilseed rape," he said. "Disease has also attacked more crops than in the past. But I have had the best grain harvests in the past two years that I have ever had despite the dry weather."
Tempted by the warming seasons, Loweth took a plunge into soybeans a few years ago, but events proved that to be a premature move for the warm-climate crop. "It was a bit of a disaster, really," he said. "I knew a chap in North Yorkshire who grew asparagus for a couple of years -- that is 100 miles north of where it is now grown -- but it then failed."
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5 Comments
Add CommentAh pokerplayer, strawman much?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho said that humanity should prevent the weather from changing?
It is wise, however, that humanity not exacerbate natural variability or move the mean. That takes farmers (and everyone else) into unplowed territory. ;-)
I've been farming for 40 years in a temperate, forgiving climate and I've still had significant losses because of the weather. The natural world doesn't play favorites. The farmers agenda is to grow food for people profitably. Every year is a gamble and losses can take years to recoup. It is hard, noble work and appreciate it!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispokerplayer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI call strawman again. Who are the "many" who are "propos[ing] that society immediately discontinue fossil fuel?"
There are many, including scientists who have nothing to gain by it, who propose a *transition* from fossil fuels to other sources. This makes sense for a variety of reasons, not just climate change. Of course, if one can do high school-level black body calculations, you can prove to yourself that global warming is yet another reason to reduce fossil fuel use, on top of sending our money out of our economies and into others who might not use it to our benefit, and the geopolitical consequences of that.
One wonders why a self-proclaimed economist would worry about "lightening people's wallets." That would be an economist who thought that money was destroyed in an interaction. The economists I know (and I have seen it for myself in the copper mining industry) tell me that money is in fact not destroyed when it is spent, but that it moves to, say, a power company who in turn pays, say, a domestic wind turbine manufacturing firm who, say, pay their workers who in turn have...wait for it...more disposable income, which in turn would pay for goods that the first guy made, giving him his disposable income back and, well you get the idea. See I thought there was this thing called the "velocity of money" that was a good thing for economies and the individuals in them. When the mining industry (for which I was working) claimed that pollution regulations would destroy the industry, they were quite wrong for this reason.
One wonders why climate scientists are assigned a motivation to lie about climate change, when they are the ones saying that the research is conclusive, that no more research needs to be done to prove it, and that we now need to change policy to deal with the inevitable changes. Surely petrochemical companies have more motivation to delay action than scientists do to cause it? Cui bono?
So pokerplayer, are you willing to take on the moral and financial consequences of inaction in the face of the observations and recommendations of scientists who have made this their life's work? Will you volunteer to bear the burden if you are wrong? I will bear the burden of action if I am wrong.
Climate IS changing, deny all you like, ignore science all you like, won't change reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW no one has said to shutdown all polluting energy sources immediately. To do so would cause massive damage to all economies and societies and basically would be the end of the world as we know it. Scientists are pushing for a move to cleaner energy sources to slow the destructive pollution that IS the cause of global warming. The longer we take to do this the greater the impact our pollution will have.
That IS the science, pure and simple!
pokerplayer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK now I call weasel words. Who are these "many scientists?" Where are these "most climatologists?" Since 98% of published climatologists conclude that warming is happening and it is human-caused (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html), I am not sure where they are hiding. Maybe they are climatologists in their heads by self-proclamation?
The only professional scientific group who denied anthropomorphic climate change is the Society of Petroleum Engineers and they have changed their position to one of ambiguity, leaving not one scientific body denying the data. Every other single one, including the National Academy of Sciences, has stated that the evidence is clear, unambiguous, and has a vanishingly small chance of alternative explanations. You can read it in their own words here: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12782&page=1
It is not "hey, this is going to happen!" It is clear, and this article is one example of many, that it is already happening.
I won't deny that fossil fuels have been necessary to achieve what humanity has so far accomplished. But the consequences of continuing to use what we know has already caused climatic change not seen for 25 million years far outweigh the consequences (if any) of moving from fossilized sunshine on to other power sources. Just as it would be foolish of me to continue to take a medicine that allowed me to survive some dreadful disease while my doctor is saying that it is no longer needed and cumulatively harmful to my health.
And since you didn't argue it, I am assuming at this point that you now recognize that the so-called "global depression" that deniers claim will be caused by a sensible transition to non-fossil fuels would actually be a boon to the economy.
So no, now that you have been fully informed of the dangers of climate change, that there are multiple lines of evidence showing that it is happening, and happening at a rate that actually exceeds the consensus predictions of the IPCC, you do not get credit for the good it has done. You personally, ethically, and financially are choosing to accept fully and without recourse the consequences of each day you and others who deny the science delay a carefully planned transition from fossil fuels and force an eventual choice between a catastrophic and sudden abandonment of these sources or the even worse choice of doing nothing with fair warning of the massive toll on human life and prosperity that this will entail.