MOSCOW, Idaho—Inland Northwest farmers will be better prepared to adapt to climate change as a result of a three-state, six-year, $20 million project led by the University of Idaho, the project’s director says.
The Regional Approaches to Climate Change in Pacific Northwest Agriculture (REACCH) drew together more than 200 researchers from UI, Oregon State University and Washington State University, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.
The final meeting for the project is planned Feb. 9 on the UI’s Moscow campus for scientists and students who worked on the project to review the project’s findings. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
“Our goal includes helping farmers understand ways that climate change will affect them so they can better anticipate those changes and adopt new practices to meet future challenges,” said Sanford Eigenbrode, a UI entomologist and University Distinguished Professor.
His own research within REACCH included projecting the effects of warming on cereal leaf beetles and their impacts on wheat. He also found a new aphid species that could pose problems and launched studies of its biology. Entomology was a small but integral part of the overall effort, which addressed all the technical, economic and social aspects of wheat production in the region.
The emphasis of the project was research, generating numerous refereed publications and presentations at scientific conferences on the technical aspects of climate change in grain production.
We also focused significant effort on generating and communicating immediate and near term results to farmers and the public, Eigenbrode said.
Genesee farmer Eric Odberg hosted a stop during a precision agriculture tour sponsored by REACCH in 2015. He has changed his methods to better apply and control the amounts of nitrogen fertilizer used on his fields, a climate-friendly move that also saved him money and improved yields. Farmers will adapt to climate change, he said, and more information will help them make better decisions.
“There’s only so much you can do to prepare for it. But just think about all of the farmers in the ’30s in the dust bowl if they had had a project like this going on in the ’20s, preparing them for what was going to happen,” Odberg said. “And now we just have so much more technology on our side to do that for us. I think that is what the greatest value of this whole grant has been.”
The $20 million project focused on wheat production, but also examined implications for other crops, explored ways to limit farming’s impacts on climate change, developed new climate change education materials for K-12 students and analyzed likely pest and climatic condition changes.
To help farmers better see how changes could benefit their own operations, the project commissioned profile stories about how others have adopted new methods. Five profiles explore topics ranging from no-till farming methods to improve soil health, precision agriculture advances with the use of drones, adding marketing value through cooperative flour marketing by farmers who use direct seeding and precision agriculture strategies for those using conventional farming methods.
The profiles are posted online with many other project outputs at www.reacchpna.org.