Midwest farmers adapt to increase in climate change-induced spring rainfall

Waiting on the weather is an old story in agriculture, but as climate change drives an increase in spring rains across the Midwest, the usual anxiety around the ritual of spring planting is expected to rise along with it. In Ohio, for example, farmers have lost about five days of field work in the month of April since 1995, according to Aaron Wilson, the state’s climatologist.
When farmers have to wait for fields to dry out, already long planting days can become endurance tests that stretch into the night. Delays in planting can affect yield if they are significant enough, and the quality of crops planted in wet springs may suffer at harvest, too.
“The expectation going ahead is that this will continue to be a worsening issue,” said Dennis Todey, director of the Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub. “We need to help agriculture understand that and develop new management mechanisms to deal with that by changing how we plant, changing when we plant, changing what we plant.”