Starting a Conversation with Nebraskans on Climate Change

Rick Koelsch, UNL Extension

Which of these statements would you identify as FALSE relative to the opinions of Nebraska farmers and ranchers?

• 3 to 11% of Nebraska farmers and ranchers agree with the statement "Climate change is occurring, and it is caused by human activity".

• 60 to 70% of Nebraska farmers/ranchers believe that agriculture should take additional steps to protect farmland from increased weather variability.

• 60 to 70% believe university Extension should help farmers to prepare for increased weather variability.

If you answered that NONE of these statements are FALSE, then you  have a good understanding of the conflicts Nebraskans are experiencing around the issue of climate change. Each of these statements was verified by a survey of 5,000 farmers and ranchers across the north central region including Nebraska.

This is the environment into which Extension is starting a conversation on climate change.  UNL Extension's work group on Resiliency to Extreme Events/Climate Change in Nebraska work group is tackling this issue.  All Extension programs have the potential to be impacted by issues surrounding climate change.  It is important for all Extension professionals to consider how we can succeed in starting this conversation with our clientele.

Extension's Resiliency work group invites all Extension professionals to a webinar "Starting a Conversation with Nebraskans on Climate Change".  The arrangements for participating follow:

Date:  Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Time:  3 to 4 PM Central
Phone Connection:  800-910-2399  passcode 874758#

Web Meeting Room Connection:  http://connect.unl.edu/resiliency

Starting a Conversation with Nebraskans on Climate Change 

Moderator:  Rick Stowell, UNL Biological Systems Engineering (10 minutes each for each panelist)

Farmer/Rancher Perspectives on Climate Change (take home messages from Sustainable Corn/U2U survey of 5000 producers in this region) -  Gordon Arbuckle or Lois Wright Morton, Iowa State University.

Southeast Climate Consortium experience with Learning Communities and other Conversations with Extension Clientele – Wendy-Lin Bartels, Social Scientist, Ag and Bio Engineering at University of Florida.

How Climate Learning Community Has Impacted Alabama Agronomy Extension programs – William Birdsong, Regional Extension Agronomist, Auburn University. 

Lessons Learned from Animal Ag and Changing Climate online course – Rick Stowell

4 to 5 PM - Resiliency Work Group conversation. Contact Rick Koelsch if you wish to participate.

Extension's Future Needs for Weather Data

Rick Koelsch and Martha Shulski

A recent challenge experienced by the CropWatch web team to deliver valuable important weather data highlighted the importance of connecting our Extension web resources to the available weather and climate resources.  This seems to be a good time to ask "What current and future weather and climate products will be needed by Extension faculty to meet the needs of our clientele?

Jenny Rees recently shared that CropWatch clientele/customers are frequent users of weather data. The soil/temp data even right now remains in the top 5 Crop Watch web pages visited daily. The GDD/ET page was their 2^nd highest page behind the home page in the summer of 2013.  But the lack of the right information for 2014 cost web views and created many disgruntled clientele.   This experience reinforces the importance of weather and climate data to many of our clientele.

For Extension to be responsive to the needs of our current and future clientele, we need to ask some of the following questions about weather and climate data:

• What types of data sources are available from our State Climatologist, High Plains Regional Climate Center (HPRCC), National Drought Mitigation Center, and other sources? 
• What are the data needs of our current and future decision tools (web pages, modeling tools, apps) and other educational products?
• Crop producers and their advisors are big consumers of this information.  What will be the needs of beef producers?  NRDs?  Urban green industry clientele? …
• What innovative tools will be emerging from the Sustainable Corn project, U2U Climate Change, project, and USDA Climate Hubs?

The HPRCC invites Extension faculty to participate in a conversation about current and future climate and weather data needs.  This is an important discussion that will be a part of the work of the new Extension work group on Resiliency to Extreme Events/Climate Variability in Nebraska.  However, the faculty that need to be involved in this discussion may not all be a part of this Resiliency work group.

Who has a specific weather or climate data need important to the success of current or future educational products or decision tools? If you would like to be a part of this conversation with HPRCC and others, please share your name with Martha and Rick.