Project Summary

Agricultural producers recognize and are concerned with the increased frequency of climate extremes, such as flooding, droughts, and late freezes. Timely communication of regionally specific information on relevant agricultural commodities (crops, livestock, forestry) is critical for both increasing understanding of these changes as well as reducing the risks to producers. This project will create state-level agriculture-climate summaries for the eight states in the USDA Midwest Climate Hub region (MN, WI, IA, MO, IL, IN, MI, OH). Stakeholders will be involved in developing these summaries, which will ensure the relevance of information on existing climate change issues and future potential problems to crops/livestock in each state. The products will be subsequently distributed to technical service providers, producers, and state entities via coordinated efforts between the Climate Hubs and State and University staff, including extension and agriculture experiment station partners. The impact will be assessed using download numbers and shares on various websites. Surveys will be conducted at conferences when the document is introduced to determine the usefulness and likelihood to share the information with others. Deliverables will be state-specific agriculture-climate summaries for the eight states. GLISA will provide downscaled historical and projected climate information to the team for the project area and analysis/visualization of agro-climatic variables.