We brought diverse agricultural producers together to talk about the future of agriculture. In these sessions, our team presented projections showing which crops are well-suited to their area’s anticipated future climate conditions and explained which variables the underlying model used to generate these results. Then we had an open conversation: what real-world issues would make these possible changes more or less likely to happen?
We brought diverse agricultural producers together to talk about the future of agriculture. In these sessions, our team presented projections showing which crops are well-suited to their area’s anticipated future climate conditions and explained which variables the underlying model used to generate these results. Then we had an open conversation: what real-world issues would make these possible changes more or less likely to happen?
Over the past year, we have been conducting focus groups across Georgia, Nebraska, and Ohio. In each state, we held 1 focus group with farmers growing their state’s dominant commodity crops, 1 focus group with farmers growing crops outside their state’s typical mix, and 1 focus group with young farmers. In total, we held 9 focus groups.
Each session started with a plain-language overview of the model we use to make crop projections. We were upfront that its assumptions are purposefully naïve. It is informed exclusively by changing environmental and climatic variables—by default, it holds everything constant that shapes agricultural landscapes except biophysical variables like soil type, precipitation, and temperature.
Over the past year, we have been conducting focus groups across Georgia, Nebraska, and Ohio. In each state, we held 1 focus group with farmers growing their state’s dominant commodity crops, 1 focus group with farmers growing crops outside their state’s typical mix, and 1 focus group with young farmers. In total, we held 9 focus groups.
Each session started with a plain-language overview of the model we use to make crop projections. We were upfront that its assumptions are purposefully naïve. It is informed exclusively by changing environmental and climatic variables—by default, it holds everything constant that shapes agricultural landscapes except biophysical variables like soil type, precipitation, and temperature.
After sharing state-specific projections about how their state’s cropping mix could change in the coming years, we asked farmers a few core questions:
After sharing state-specific projections about how their state’s cropping mix could change in the coming years, we asked farmers a few core questions:
The cards below capture the factors that emerged from our first round of focus groups as particularly salient: these are the issues that, across all states, producers mentioned most often and emphasized as especially critical when considering what crops will become more or less likely in the future.
“You can’t find enough people to help on your farm.”
“But right now, there’s no place to leverage sorghum.”
“I see a lot of small family farms that are going to specialty crops or just trying to diversify and maybe doing even the agritourism piece.”
“We used to plant cotton in the first week of April. Now we don’t even plant it till the first week of May.”
“I can tell you this, if we have more heat and a little bit more precipitation, I will be less inclined to plant sorghum as I will corn”
“If you can’t make it pencil on paper for what the commodity prices are, you’re not going to be able to make any money. You’re just going to lose.”
“You cannot sell a cotton picker right now… I have a million dollar machine sitting there… you are locked into growing cotton.”
“We gotta remember, government policy is a huge driver. Yeah, we shifted from the 70s to farming fence row.”
“Land prices are astronomical. That’s kind of the biggest cap on that. Just cost, cost and land.”
“If you had a way to process it, I think that millet would do a great job.”
“You know, we develop products to protect the crops that we grow, yeah, put pivots on dry land.”
“Peanuts tend to do decently well in sandy dirt too.”
The cards below capture the factors that emerged from our first round of focus groups as particularly salient: these are the issues that, across all states, producers mentioned most often and emphasized as especially critical when considering what crops will become more or less likely in the future.
“You can’t find enough people to help on your farm.”
“If you can’t make it pencil on paper for what the commodity prices are, you’re not going to be able to make any money. You’re just going to lose.”
“Land prices are astronomical. That’s kind of the biggest cap on that. Just cost, cost and land.”
“But right now, there’s no place to leverage sorghum.”
“If you had a way to process it, I think that millet would do a great job.”
“You cannot sell a cotton picker right now… I have a million dollar machine sitting there… you are locked into growing cotton.”
“I see a lot of small family farms that are going to specialty crops or just trying to diversify and maybe doing even the agritourism piece.”
“We used to plant cotton in the first week of April. Now we don’t even plant it till the first week of May.”
“We gotta remember, government policy is a huge driver. Yeah, we shifted from the 70s to farming fence row.”
“You know, we develop products to protect the crops that we grow, yeah, put pivots on dry land.”
“I can tell you this, if we have more heat and a little bit more precipitation, I will be less inclined to plant sorghum as I will corn”
“Peanuts tend to do decently well in sandy dirt too.”
