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Agriculture depends on the weatherBy D. Bruce Bosley CSU Extension Agent, cropping systems Colorado Farmers are the most dependent upon weather among all segments of a country. They depend upon the weather providing growing conditions suitable for raising crops. Europeans throughout the Middle Ages suffered through famine in years, and even decades, where weather conditions were unfavorable for crop production. Based on historical anecdotes and new methods of determining weather from previous centuries, we have a better appreciation of the impact of climate on crop yields and people's lives. Having an appreciation of how climate changes can impact crop and livestock production is helpful to contingency planning in crop and farm management. The average temperatures in Northern Europe from about 800 AD through 1299 AD averaged about 2 degrees warmer than today. Harvests during this period were generally good to excellent. Farmers in northern countries adopted cold sensitive crops such as grapes. This was also the period that Norse explorers discovered and settled in Iceland and even southwestern Greenland. Furthermore, Lief Eriksson sailed west to the North American continent establishing brief settlements. It had warm and stable weather and provided for good cropping conditions. Starting in about 1300 and lasting until the 1850s, the weather in the Northern Hemisphere became considerably cooler and more unpredictable. Widespread crop failures became more frequent due in large part to the cooler and, for northern Europe, wetter conditions. Years of poor harvest followed one another; and starvation and its associated diseases wiped out poor and rich alike. The black plague decimated much of Europe's population during the middle 1300s. Failed grape harvests caused English farmers to abandon their vines. Greenland settlements were eventually abandoned when cattle feed crops failed and packed ice eliminated commerce. The cold and variable weather experienced during these troublesome times challenged the existence of farmers and city dwellers alike. Resourceful farmers developed crop and livestock pasture rotational systems that helped stabilize their crop yields and provided some cushion to the yearly climatic variation. The economy of the countries improved as their food systems stabilized. The first two decades of the 1800s had some of the coldest weather of this period and yet European civilization thrived and expanded their influence around the globe. Weather in the first five months of this year has averaged more than 3 degrees cooler than that of the past decade. The spring of 2007 also started cooler. In both cases, the heavy snows of the early winter set the cooler trend. Since this January, it's been nearly as dry as 2002 and 2006. We've started this century with much less settled weather than we'd grown accustomed to in the 1980s and 1990s. Climate variability is a fact of history and a certainty in our future, regardless whether either the predictors of global warming or a return to another ice age prove to be right. Agriculture practitioners who have a flexible and positive attitude and a capacity to adapt to change will ultimately survive and thrive. Please contact me, Bruce Bosley, about this or other cropping systems or natural resource topics at 970-522-3200 extension 285 at Sterling or 970-542-3540 at Fort Morgan. 6/16/08 Date: 6/11/08 Advertisement
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