Agriculture Working Group

As of 2017, agriculture was responsible for 15 percent of Wisconsin’s greenhouse gas emissions. Wisconsin needs to adapt land-use and land management strategies that decrease agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions, promote soil carbon sequestration, and increase agriculture’s resiliency to the climate change impacts we face.

Primary Impacts to Wisconsin Agriculture

Increased warming in the spring and fall can extend the growing season for summer crops like corn, beans, and alfalfa, but warming in summer could push temperatures outside the optimal range for some crops like potato. Increased temperatures can also accelerate the rate of phenological development of plants. Adapting new varieties that can take advantage of increased warmth is an important adaptive strategy.

Increased temperatures during the winter can reduce the formation of ice and chilling units that cranberries need, more pests may overwinter, and new pests may appear as winters become less severe across Wisconsin.

Increasing temperatures in the summer can lead to increased irrigation demands by crops, especially in the Central Sands Region that supports diverse potato and vegetable production. Farmers in other regions may begin to look towards irrigation as another adaptive strategy to deal with more heat and increased frequency of droughts during summers. More summer heat stress on livestock, in particular dairy cows, could lead to lower milk production.

Increased precipitation could lead to more runoff, flooding events, and fields with elevated groundwater tables that cause more management challenges.

Increased frequency of extreme events — in particular heavy rainfall — will continue to cause increased challenges to managing soils and agrochemicals.

Agriculture is deeply intertwined with the environment and the climate, making producers and laborers especially vulnerable to environmental and climate injustices. The Agriculture Working Group has identified these injustices as: the climate impacts on the health of farm workers, extreme weather eroding the independence and sustainability of agricultural communities, and the disproportionate burden of transitioning to a more sustainable agricultural model.

Health of Farm Workers

Farm laborers are likely to experience increased health and injury risk because of increased exposure to high heat and/or humidity and increased populations of disease vectors, like mosquitoes and ticks, caused by climate change. Migrant workers, who make up much of this workforce, will be disproportionately affected by these impacts. This will create additional pressures on the need for sound immigration and labor policy, likely having an impact on Wisconsin farmers. This will be further complicated as labor challenges and increased opportunities to automate continue.

Impact on Communities

Climate related pressures often stress production based on geographic region, such as the 2018 flooding in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Local communities bear the economic burden of the storm cleanup and production loss, which often causes outmigration that destabilizes communities.

Burden of Transition

We know that healthy soils benefit communities and producers by slowing runoff, regulating greenhouse gasses, infiltrating water, and retaining nutrients. However, the reality is that current conservation practices that build healthy soils are not always economically profitable for producers. There is also significant disparity among groups like migrant/immigrant populations, smaller producers, and producers with less access to education, capital, or other resources. These disparities leave them more vulnerable to environmental and climate injustices. Decision-makers need to ensure that any economic burden in transitioning to a more sustainable system is distributed equitably among agricultural processors, distributors, input suppliers, farm service providers, and others who profit from agricultural production.