Weather used to be a safe conversation starter, as rain, wind, cold and heat are common experiences shared by everyone. But climate change is a divisive subject these days, and mentioning to someone you don’t know well that “it’s hot today” or “it sure has rained a lot lately” can spark all kinds of reactions that deviate quickly from the subject of the weather.
Farmers lives revolve around the weather. It determines our daily schedules, our monthly plans, and our annual income. It can make or break them in a single day. If your crop gets flooded or you have to send your employees home because it’s too hot to work, it doesn’t help to hear that someone thinks oil companies are at fault or that climate change is a hoax.
While twenty years ago I knew farmers who didn’t believe that the climate was changing, it has become impossible to dispute that average temperatures in this area have risen dramatically. That doesn’t mean that all farmers believe that humans are causing climate change, or that it is possible for humanity to collectively stop it. Only a few farmers believe that the state of California, acting alone, can make a difference in its progression. And no farmer I have ever met believes that “agriculture” deserves blame for the carbon emissions it creates. Farmers are tasked with growing enough food to feed humanity without going broke, using the tools that are available to us. It’s not our fault if the population keeps growing.
At the moment, we have a President who does not believe in climate change. He and his administration seem to think that by disabling the federal government institutions that track, study and attempt to forecast the weather, it will somehow “disprove” that the climate is changing. If you haven’t been following along, the administration is cutting funding and staff for the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) — among with dozens of other agencies, of course.
The weather affects everyone, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally. Major weather events like hurricanes, heatwaves, and blizzards can impact tens of thousands of people and do billions in damage, and the accuracy of their forecasts can make a huge difference in lives and dollars. State, and local government entities rely on these forecasts to make critical, potentially lifesaving decisions — even the biggest states do not have their own weather agencies. There are any number of industries other than agriculture that also rely heavily on reliable weather and climate data — including aviation, marine industries, insurance, and others.
On Monday of this week, a late-season rainstorm dropped a quarter inch of rain on us at Terra Firma at 5:30 a.m., just prior to the start of our workday — more than double what had been forecast. For us and most other farms in the area, the brief but poorly-timed downpour completely disrupted our workday. Crops went unharvested, fields were too wet to till or plant, and farm roads were too slick to use. It didn’t matter that two hours later, the moisture had mostly disappeared. No crops were lost and no damage was done, but we had to cancel work for the day.
The fact that our national weather infrastructure can’t accurately predict a rainstorm 12 hours in advance is not, in my opinion, a reason to cut funding for it but rather the opposite. It seems that even in our divided nation, most people might agree that we need to invest more resources into making weather prediction more accurate. I sincerely hope our currently leadership doesn’t have to learn that lesson the hard way.
Thanks,
Pablito