by Megan Minnick, Newsletter Writer
For any of us living on planet earth in 2024, it’s become increasingly clear that climate change is here, and it’s happening in real time. It’s in the news—record high global temperatures, increased number and severity of catastrophic storms, raging wildfires, a rise in sea levels . . .
But so often these things are far away or abstract. Concerning yes, but somehow removed from our everyday lives.
Wisconsin is, after all, a land of extremes. We’re used to hot humid summers and frigid winters, years of drought and years of flooding, severe thunderstorms and blizzards—these are facts of life here, and have been for as long as any of us can remember. Living through the day to day and year to year fluctuations makes it nearly impossible to see the overall trends, and to notice what exactly might be changing due to climate change.
So what are the effects of climate change here in Wisconsin, and what can we expect as we move into the future? What does this mean for our local food system and for those Wisconsinites whose livelihoods are most dependent on the whims of the weather—our farmers?
To start answering these questions, I talked to Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin’s state climatologist and director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office.
How is our climate changing in Wisconsin?
“The long term trends are warmer and wetter,” Steve says, then he goes on to explain how both of these effects are being felt in specific ways.
Since 1950, Wisconsin has seen a three-degree rise in average temperature, but surprisingly, that hasn’t translated to more extreme summer heat. The warming has primarily been in the winter months, and overall, the nighttime low temperatures are rising faster than the daytime highs. Steve is quick to add that it seems to be luck that we haven’t seen more heat waves. “It’s something we are very likely to experience in coming years.”
It might seem counterintuitive to those of us who remember the drought years of 2012 and 2023, but the average precipitation in Wisconsin has actually increased 17%, or roughly 5 inches since 1950, with the decade between 2009-2019 being the wettest on record. Our springs and falls have seen more precipitation on average, with much of the moisture coming in extreme rain and snow events.
When I asked Steve about other extreme weather, such as tornadoes and hailstorms, he was less certain about long-term trends. “It’s true we’ve recorded more tornadoes in recent years,” he explains, “but the increase has been in smaller tornadoes that we wouldn’t have been able to detect in the past. It’s very hard to know if it is actually an increase, or if we’ve just gotten better at identifying them.” The same is true of hailstorms. “It’s quite possible that they’ve increased, particularly in certain areas, but we just don’t know for sure.”
Crimson, clover and rye cover crops at Tipi Produce
What do these changes mean for farmers?
Though some aspects of our changing climate aren’t detrimental, or may even be beneficial—a longer growing season brought on by the overall warming trend, for example—the negative impacts far outweigh the positives, at least for the vast majority of Wisconsin farms.
Diane Mayerfield, sustainable agriculture specialist for the University of Wisconsin Extension, explained how the specific changes we’re seeing are affecting Wisconsin farms.
“Hotter summer nights can really affect livestock,” she says. “The animals can weather a string of ninety degree days as long as they can cool off at night, but if the temperatures don’t dip into the sixties at night, the heat stress can build up and become a much larger problem.”
Corn also depends on cooler night temperatures. Even with plenty of moisture, prolonged heat can affect yields.
And even the longer growing season has a downside, Diane explains. “Longer growing seasons and increased humidity produces more generations of insects, which increases the pest pressure on certain crops.”
Another concern is the periodic winter thaws that come with warmer winters. This is a huge issue for farmers growing perennial crops such as tree fruit, as their trees may come out of dormancy too early, making them vulnerable when, inevitably, the freezing temperatures return.
What about the increased precipitation?
I spoke to four Wisconsin farmers in preparation for this article—an apple grower, a vegetable grower, a grass-fed beef farmer, and a beekeeper—and all of them agreed that too much rain is far worse than not enough.
In years of drought, there’s only one problem: not enough water. And unless it’s very extreme and wells start to run dry, farmers can manage using irrigation and careful rotational grazing. Yes, yields may be down, but life carries on.
But too much water creates a myriad of problems, especially when it comes in hard, fast downpours like what we’ve seen in recent years and are likely to see more of in the future. Flooding and damage to cropland is the obvious concern, but it goes well beyond that.
Eric Cates of Cates Family Farm produces grass-fed beef on 105 acres near Spring Green. His farm has been hit hard with rain this year, and it’s meant all kinds of trouble—from flooded streams and ripped down fence lines, to waterlogged pastures that become damaged when the cows huddle together in the rain, increased foot problems for the cows from the wet ground, and a larger-than-normal fly population.
Cate Family Farm Wisconsin cows on pasture.
Chris McGuire of Blue Roof Orchards, an organic apple orchard in Belmont, pointed out other effects of too much rain. “In wet years like this, apples get diseases that are very hard to manage, especially for organic growers,” he says. Whereas conventional farmers can use chemical pesticides and fungicides, organic growers have a much smaller arsenal to work with. “Another thing people don’t think about is the loss of productivity,” Chris continues. “We can’t work with wet trees because of the possibility of spreading disease. This leads not only to less time to get everything done, but it can make it very difficult for farmers who are trying to provide full-time jobs and keep their laborers occupied.”
The human laborers aren’t the only ones who lose productivity in rainy weather. Jack McWilliams, owner of the honey farm Barneveld Bees, told me that, because bees don’t tend to be as active on rainy and cloudy days, too much rain can affect honey yields. “It’s an issue this year in Northern Wisconsin,” Jack tells me. “They’re behind because the bees just haven’t gotten out of the hive as much as in other years.”
Honeybees at Barneveld Bees.
Investments for the future
With all of these changes, many farmers are faced with tough choices as they decide which of the many risks are great enough to warrant investing in mitigation technology.
Nowhere is this more clear than at Blue Roof Orchard. This May, the orchard was hit with a hailstorm that was worse than anything Chris has seen in all his years of farming. It dramatically reduced the expected yields.
The experience has prompted him to consider purchasing a system of netting that would cover their orchard and protect the trees from hail, but it’s very expensive—both in terms of money for the equipment itself and the time to maintain it. Will such a purchase be worth it in the long run? It’s very difficult to know.
Then there’s the winter thaw/spring freeze issue. “We’ve been lucky that we haven’t lost a crop to this in the twelve years we’ve been picking apples,” Chris tells me. “We’ve had lots of close calls though.” To mitigate the risk, many orchards turn to wind machines, huge fans that push the cold air up from ground level, and warm the area around the trees. “But again, it’s very expensive. It’s hard to calculate the ROI (return on investment).”
But there’s one investment that all the farmers I talked to agreed was worth it: the investment of both time and money into building healthy soil.
Steve Pincus of Tipi Produce has been growing vegetables in southern Wisconsin since 1976, making him one of the most senior farmers working with Willy Street Co-op. And for Steve, it all comes back to the soil.
“The most important thing to minimize the hazards of extreme weather is to have healthy, organic soils,” Steve explains. “Farmers that are dependent on chemicals are at more risk during extreme weather because their soil is depleted. But soil that has good structure and biological activity is better at both draining excess water and holding on to extra moisture.”
Rye and vetch cover crops at Tipi Produce.
But healthy soil is an investment, just as much as any equipment a farmer might purchase.
That means monetary investment in compost and other soil amendments, but more than that it’s an investment in time. The land Steve currently farms in Evansville had been planted to corn for 19 straight years when he first got there. “It took 5-6 years before the soil started acting like organic soil should,” he tells me.
It’s worth noting that almost all the farmers I spoke with have been farming for more than five years. Their businesses are established and they have both money and time to invest. The same is seldom true of new farmers. Climate change is one more barrier to entry for this next generation of farmers—making it even more difficult to get started in an already challenging profession.
A resilient future
With so many challenges facing Wisconsin farmers, it’s easy to dwell on the negative. But what’s the best-case scenario for Wisconsin agriculture as we move into a changing future? What can we all do—farmers and eaters and citizens alike—to ready ourselves for what’s to come?
When I put this question to my interviewees, it was remarkable how similar all of their answers were. Both scientists and farmers agreed: we need a more perennialized landscape of grasslands and savannas dominated by small, diversified farms, and we need to incorporate more ruminant livestock into our agricultural systems.
“Grazing animals is positive for the land,” Steve Pincus told me. “It naturally builds up soils and makes them more resistant to erosion and drought.”
Perennial pasture is not only resistant to many of the effects of climate change, but it also is one of the best landscapes for carbon sequestration.
“Over time, humans have selected our agriculture plants to push most of their carbon above ground so we can harvest it,” explains Randy Jackson, Professor of Grassland Ecology at UW-Madison. “It has been to our great benefit, but we’ve pushed it too far. We don’t replenish the carbon in the soil.”
But well-managed pastureland is different. Not only is the soil fertilized by the animal’s manure, but the grass’s deep root systems are extremely effective at pulling carbon from the air and holding in the ground, filtering groundwater, eliminating erosion (which is especially important in the hilly Driftless region of our state) and maintaining healthy ecosystems where pollinators, song birds, and fish can all thrive.
Does this mean completely eliminating all vegetable, grain and fruit production? Not at all, says Jackson. “Currently, 3.8% of the agricultural land in Wisconsin is devoted to food crops like fruits and vegetables,” he explains. “We’re not looking to eliminate that 3.8%, we’re looking to move some of the other 96% that’s planted in row crops like corn and soybeans [meant for livestock feed, ethanol, and uses other than feeding people] into something better.”
Diane Mayerfield of UW Extension researches ways to take the concept of perennial pasture a step further with a farming method known as silvopasture. “Silvopasture is the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into pastoral systems,” she tells me, and she explains how it further enhances the systems’ adaptability to issues of climate change. “In a hot, dry spell, silvopasture can provide shade, and the woody species act as fodder for the animals since trees don’t lose their leaves in a drought. Certain tree species such as mulberry and black locust have nutritional qualities for ruminant animals, and can be cropped close to the ground then regrow their leaves quickly.”
Mature silvopasture. (Photo credit: Natasha Paris)
A three-way partnership
Perhaps the most important thing to remember as we move into a future of continued change, is how essential it is to maintain and nourish the connections between farmers, scientists and eaters—for it will take all of us to successfully meet the challenges ahead.
We need each other.
We need ongoing communication and trust between scientists and farmers, so that farmers know how to assess their risks, which investments are worth making, and which methods of farming are the best for our changing climate.
We also need strong connections between citizens and scientists, so we know what to look for when pursuing those grocery store shelves. So we fully understand why grass-fed beef and dairy is so important, and why we should choose foods that are grown organically and in ways that support healthy soil.
And lastly, we need to nourish the connections between farmers and eaters. So that we, as consumers, are fully aware of where the food we’re eating comes from and that it’s grown in ways that contribute to a healthy, resilient future.
Want to know more?
Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts: Read detailed reports on the present impacts and forecasts for how climate change will affect Wisconsin. https://wicci.wisc.edu
Grassland 2.0: An organization dedicated to transformational agroecological change in rural landscapes in the Upper Midwest. https://grasslandag.org
Savanna Institute: An organization dedicated to supporting the growth of more diverse, perennial farming in the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds through the use of silvopasture. https://www.savannainstitute.org
