Nebraska Legislature - Special Committee - Climate Change Seminar - Ag Roundtable

Nick Brozovic Author

06/08/2016 Added

210 Plays

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Seminar on Climate Change for the Climate Change Seminar for Elected Officials of the Nebraska Legislature - Ag Roundtable summary

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[00:00:00.137]Molly Nance, our Communications Director, will talk
[00:00:02.837]much more about the institute this afternoon.
[00:00:05.558]I'm here to talk to you about
[00:00:06.798]the Climate Change Round-table Reports.
[00:00:09.438]I'll keep my comments fairly brief.
[00:00:11.658]Don absolutely said no Powerpoints.
[00:00:14.358]Keep it brief, no Powerpoints.
[00:00:16.278]That either means he's very confident in my speaking,
[00:00:18.642]or he's not very confident in my Powerpoints.
[00:00:21.882]It's one or the other.
[00:00:26.241]Agriculture is an enormously important sector to Nebraska,
[00:00:29.941]I think that we all understand this, and climate change
[00:00:32.342]will have disproportionate effects on agriculture.
[00:00:35.861]There are a few things that aren't in the report
[00:00:38.162]that I want to lay out in terms of a broader context
[00:00:40.821]for agriculture, food, water, and climate change first.
[00:00:44.101]I think many of you know, Nebraska is in the top
[00:00:47.062]three states for soybeans, corn, and livestock.
[00:00:50.281]That's incredibly important to our economy.
[00:00:53.283]Second of all, many of you know Nebraska has
[00:00:56.278]eight and half million irrigated acres right now.
[00:00:59.478]That's the largest irrigated acreage of any state in the US.
[00:01:03.699]That's more than Egypt, that's more than Australia.
[00:01:06.918]If it were a country it would be in the top ten.
[00:01:09.098]Now this means that using water to buffer against
[00:01:12.579]the effects of drought and weather in general is
[00:01:15.519]incredibly important to the state's economic
[00:01:18.358]well-being.
[00:01:20.159]We also have a larger length of river channel,
[00:01:23.178]than any state in the US.
[00:01:25.498]That's one that I certainly didn't
[00:01:26.738]know until quite recently.
[00:01:28.519]All those large rivers flowing east/west.
[00:01:30.939]That means we're also very dependent,
[00:01:32.689]our ecosystems, our habitat, our parent zones
[00:01:35.979]are very dependent on water
[00:01:37.799]and the agroecosystems around them.
[00:01:40.299]And then finally, several of the world's largest
[00:01:42.978]irrigation companies, including the largest irrigation
[00:01:44.979]company in the world are based in Nebraska.
[00:01:48.318]And so, even beyond agriculture, when we look broadly
[00:01:51.458]within agribusiness and industry, many industries
[00:01:54.578]that depend enormously on agriculture, food, and water
[00:01:58.258]are based here and will be impacted by climate change.
[00:02:02.398]So that said, one of the climate change round-tables
[00:02:06.178]was based around agriculture, food, and water,
[00:02:09.177]we met in late, late October.
[00:02:11.298]It was a very vibrant discussion.
[00:02:14.457]Because agriculture is impacted so much by
[00:02:17.577]extreme weather, by drought, by climate change,
[00:02:21.138]many of those facts are quite well known were covered
[00:02:24.194]both by previous reports at the university and elsewhere.
[00:02:27.914]So I don't intend to go into those in too much detail.
[00:02:31.434]Of course climate variability and extreme weather
[00:02:33.434]events are very, very important to producers.
[00:02:37.734]You need only look at the drought
[00:02:39.514]in 2012 to understand that,
[00:02:41.753]or what flooding or large rains do to the ability to plant.
[00:02:46.933]So very, very important, extreme weather events.
[00:02:49.833]Crop production and yields, we know that plants require,
[00:02:54.013]they operate within windows of environmental conditions
[00:02:56.633]and so as growing seasons change, as weather changes,
[00:03:01.733]we need to change cultivars we need to look at
[00:03:03.824]tolerances for temperature and extremes
[00:03:08.348]that we might not have right now.
[00:03:11.068]Similarly, livestock production is also effected
[00:03:13.409]by weather extremes, by climate change,
[00:03:16.529]and grasslands as well.
[00:03:18.509]I think it's well understood that pests and disease
[00:03:22.289]tend to increase as the weather gets warmer.
[00:03:25.209]This is one that moving forward will be particularly
[00:03:27.289]important within the agricultural sector.
[00:03:30.809]Similarly, as you have more extreme events,
[00:03:32.969]erosion and runoff will become more of an issue
[00:03:36.129]within the agricultural sector.
[00:03:39.149]Water resources, of course, are close to my heart.
[00:03:41.529]It's something that we work on a lot.
[00:03:42.849]Water is really a cross-cutting issues, and it's a
[00:03:45.149]theme I think both Scott and Rick mentioned water
[00:03:48.889]in their presentations.
[00:03:50.129]Water cuts across all sectors.
[00:03:52.149]It's particularly important in agriculture.
[00:03:54.849]I actually mentioned another issue that Eastern Red Cedar,
[00:03:57.202]is it uses water.
[00:03:58.746]You have 300,000 acres of Eastern Red Cedar using water,
[00:04:02.741]that belongs to the state, that could be put to other
[00:04:05.200]productive uses if it weren't being used by the Red Cedars.
[00:04:09.180]So that's something that we should think about as well.
[00:04:12.381]As I've mentioned, as you have extreme events you
[00:04:15.621]end up increasing your production costs,
[00:04:18.260]you might have impact on food security,
[00:04:20.721]and you have impacts on rural livelihoods as a result.
[00:04:24.699]In terms of the mitigation and adaptation strategies,
[00:04:27.876]many of the things, and you can read the list yourself,
[00:04:30.753]one of the things that's nice about agriculture is that
[00:04:33.793]many of the things that are adaptation strategies
[00:04:36.093]are also mitigation strategies.
[00:04:38.453]So if you do things that help you deal with
[00:04:40.213]those weather events and extremes, they often have
[00:04:43.333]mitigation benefits too.
[00:04:45.553]So diversifying production systems, changing cropping
[00:04:48.443]practices, ranching practices, irrigation decision
[00:04:52.043]making in a way that you increase your crop resilience,
[00:04:55.643]is very, very, helpful.
[00:04:58.743]We also can improve plant tolerance distresses,
[00:05:02.423]both biotic and abiotic stresses, we can help
[00:05:05.943]livestock adapt by providing new foraging
[00:05:08.737]strategies, shade, sometimes actually one of the
[00:05:12.677]suggestions was to use solar power to provide both
[00:05:15.137]energy and shade to livestock production systems.
[00:05:18.137]That's quite clever.
[00:05:21.157]Again, many of the things that came up are research
[00:05:23.297]and education systems.
[00:05:25.098]One of the things that came within the agriculture, food,
[00:05:28.097]and water discussions is that the impacts of climate
[00:05:31.137]change will be felt a lot in rural communities
[00:05:35.333]and many of those impacts will be financial and economic.
[00:05:38.493]So as we think about strategies to address these things
[00:05:41.113]we should think about maintaining and improving
[00:05:44.133]economic and financial resiliency of rural communities.
[00:05:48.633]And again, these are things that resonate within
[00:05:50.373]those communities.
[00:05:51.793]We talked about both having incentives for adaptation,
[00:05:56.333]backed up by education,
[00:05:57.849]we talked about things like new insurance policies
[00:06:00.709]to provide a buffer that would let people have time
[00:06:03.409]to adapt and to really adapt to some of those most
[00:06:06.849]extreme events.
[00:06:08.249]When you get to an extreme enough event,
[00:06:10.829]you can't adapt to it.
[00:06:12.429]That's one of things that it's important to understand.
[00:06:14.469]If it's a large enough flood, a large enough fire,
[00:06:17.409]a large enough drought, you get to the point
[00:06:20.609]that the cost of adaptation is very high.
[00:06:23.729]So for those cases, it's important to provide
[00:06:26.289]insurance strategies to underwrite the losses
[00:06:30.949]as you move along an adaptation pathway.
[00:06:34.509]And again, continuing to collect long-term data.
[00:06:37.749]Nebraska actually has some of the best agriculture,
[00:06:40.409]food, and water available in the world and that's
[00:06:44.429]something we need to continue.
[00:06:46.409]One of the suggestions again was to continue to use
[00:06:48.409]UNL extension as a trusted source of information.
[00:06:52.689]I think I'll stop there and take questions.
[00:06:55.349]Thank you very much.
[00:06:57.874]Questions?
[00:07:00.624]Questions?
[00:07:03.490]Yes, Chuck.
[00:07:04.702]Did your section cover soil erosion,
[00:07:09.049]or was that covered somewhere else?
[00:07:11.209]It was discussed in our section.
[00:07:13.749]So again the issue is, as you get to more extreme
[00:07:15.429]events that's going to exacerbate.
[00:07:18.289]So things like what are your crop management
[00:07:20.669]practices to reduce runoff, that absolutely came up.
[00:07:24.489]And a lot of those strategies also are good
[00:07:26.579]water management practices.
[00:07:28.290]So absolutely, that came up.
[00:07:29.770]Well you know the rolling hills
[00:07:31.010]of Eastern Nebraska are really at risk from
[00:07:34.409]rain events, and good farming practices can
[00:07:38.170]really help us with that.
[00:07:39.570]So that's a big one we're focused on.
[00:07:42.610]Thank you.
[00:07:44.870]I have a question for you.
[00:07:46.969]If people, as events happen, people adapt to them.
[00:07:52.588]Why is it necessary to introduce
[00:07:54.828]this concept of climate change?
[00:07:57.828]How does that change, instead of
[00:07:59.648]"Well, we'll just take care of this, we'll plan for it."
[00:08:03.908]Why does being aware of climate change,
[00:08:07.468]why is that helpful?
[00:08:08.874]So Senator, that's a very good question.
[00:08:10.534]Agriculture is perhaps, a particularly controversial
[00:08:13.034]sector in that the language of climate change
[00:08:16.214]is often unacceptable to many of the stakeholders
[00:08:19.599]within agriculture.
[00:08:21.504]I personally really like this view,
[00:08:22.884]that if you talk about things that help you deal
[00:08:25.604]with drought, that help you deal with extreme events,
[00:08:28.464]that's maybe the right way to go about it.
[00:08:30.884]Now, I think it's very clear that the frequency
[00:08:33.624]of droughts, the severity of droughts,
[00:08:35.484]and of extreme events is going up.
[00:08:37.773]Whether you believe that's climate change or
[00:08:39.793]something else, if you can come up with a strategy
[00:08:42.453]that helps rural communities manage those events
[00:08:46.113]better, that's great.
[00:08:48.113]Again, that's something that communications experts
[00:08:51.313]can perhaps speak to much better than myself.
[00:08:54.813]In my own experience, it's been exactly this.
[00:08:56.713]That people who often are very uncomfortable talking
[00:09:00.073]about climate and anthropogenic causes of climate change,
[00:09:03.913]are very comfortable talking about strategies
[00:09:06.533]to deal with droughts, extreme events and so on.
[00:09:11.893]So when we hear from extension division,
[00:09:14.513]since their job is communicating University
[00:09:18.348]to the public, I'm sure we'll hear more about that.
[00:09:26.291]It seems to be
[00:09:29.932]the limitation
[00:09:31.300]of what you just said
[00:09:33.475]is that,
[00:09:34.705]that probably won't motivate
[00:09:37.592]people to go beyond mitigation,
[00:09:40.353]it won't motivate people to say
[00:09:43.772]"Maybe we better change what we're doing,
[00:09:47.430]so that the climate doesn't change anymore."
[00:09:53.489]I think that that's actually the key thing here,
[00:09:57.530]not the thing, but a key thing here, is that you have
[00:10:01.210]to motivate people and governments
[00:10:07.458]to reduce
[00:10:08.995]the rapidity with which the climate is changing.
[00:10:12.231]Yeah, I personally agree.
[00:10:15.213]I'm hopeful that we're at a point, and particularly
[00:10:20.233]with the role of faith communities in climate change,
[00:10:24.342]I'm hopeful that we're at a point that there is now
[00:10:27.222]a change in public perception.
[00:10:29.902]And that five or ten years from now the debate
[00:10:31.862]will be very different.
[00:10:33.302]Again, agreed, that at some point you have to change
[00:10:36.021]from a pragmatic perspective, I'd also say that
[00:10:38.061]in agriculture, a lot of what you're doing for
[00:10:41.621]mitigation has an adaptation perspective as well.
[00:10:46.616]If you can find those aspects, that's low-hanging
[00:10:49.342]fruit, you deal with those first and that opens
[00:10:51.781]the door to the longer debate.
[00:10:55.242]I'm not sure that's the answer you want.
[00:10:56.962]Again, it's really a pragmatic one.
[00:11:00.181]Sir.
[00:11:01.162]Are you at all connected with
[00:11:02.396]the Water Sustainability Fund and the efforts there?
[00:11:05.441]Do you communicate back and forth with them?
[00:11:07.919]We do.
[00:11:09.199]So the Nebraska Water Center is part
[00:11:10.979]of the Water for Food Institute,
[00:11:12.539]and I know that we have,
[00:11:13.879]Chittaranjan Ray is Director of the Nebraska Water Center,
[00:11:17.239]and he has worked with the Water Sustainability Fund.
[00:11:23.419]Part of the answer, again I think
[00:11:25.439]it's good news that in that rural poll, 61% of
[00:11:29.219]Nebraskans, they didn't just recognize climate change,
[00:11:33.979]but they said that the state aught to have a climate action.
[00:11:37.659]So, hopefully that's improvement.
[00:11:41.879]Thank you.
[00:11:42.712]Thank you so much.

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Nebraska Legislature - Special Committee - Climate Change Seminar - Ag Roundtable

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