© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Global demand for food and fuel is rising, and competition for resources has widespread ramifications. We all eat, so we all have a stake in how our food is produced. Our goal is to provide in-depth and unbiased reporting on things like climate change, food safety, biofuel production, animal welfare, water quality and sustainability.

Climate Change Hubs Created To Give Farmers Survival Tips

Luke Runyon
/
KUNC and Harvest Public Media

Looking to help farmers adapt to climate change, the U.S Department of Agriculture is setting up seven new research hubs, 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.

Credit USDA
/
USDA
The climate hubs, housed within existing USDA facilities, will be scattered in different regions across the country.

 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’s still a controversial task to hang climate change on any one extreme weather event, agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack says he’s seen enough.

“When 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’ve experienced -- the combination of all those factors convinces me that the climate is changing and it will have its impact,” 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.

“If 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’re doing today,” Vilsack said.

The Fort Collins office will work with farmers throughout the northern plains in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. The region is home 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. 

As KUNC’s managing editor and reporter covering the Colorado River Basin, I dig into stories that show how water issues can both unite and divide communities throughout the Western U.S. I edit and produce feature stories for KUNC and a network of public media stations in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada.
Related Content