Excerpt
THE NEED: ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE IMPLICATIONS FOR UNITED STATES AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS Climate change affects entire production systems from agronomics to economics, farm to region, cropping systems to nutrient management, and plant protection to sociology (Walthall et al. 2012). All of these components interact such that none can be understood adequately in isolation. The call for more integrated, long-term, regional agricultural projects to address processes and challenges like climate change has been well articulated (Robertson et al. 2008). This call is consistent with a general recognition of the need for broadly collaborative science to address complex problems (National Academy of Sciences 2004; Palmer 2012; National Research Council 2014). For US agriculture and forestry, the partnership between federal scientists, land grant scientists, extension service, and producers has helped make US food and fiber production systems a model for the world. Addressing the complex, system-level challenges in a newly integrated and coordinated fashion can help us continue to excel in managing our uniquely successful agricultural enterprise, and to provide global leadership in this area. Mechanisms for realizing this integration are coalescing as evidenced by recent establishment of the USDA's Long Term Agricultural Research Site Network (USDA ARS 2014) and the evolving USDA Climate…
- © 2014 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
