RESOURCES
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A Peek at Potential Soil Health System Performance in the Next 50 Years of Climate Change in Four US Cropping Systems
AFT posted its final Resilience Report, completing a series of four reports: Illinois corn and soybeans, western New York forage crops, California almonds, and California wine grapes. With climate change intensifying every year, the costs and benefits of adopting soil health management systems are likely to change with time. However, field trials of soil health management systems from the recent past are unable to demonstrate how crops and practices will perform in the future climate. So, AFT partnered with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and Regrow to use a computer-based model to simulate cropping systems with and without soil health management systems from 2022 to 2072 using climate projections*. The group also used satellite imagery to explore how common soil health practices are in New York and Illinois cropping systems and how quickly they are changing over time. Here, we provide a brief summary of each report, starting in the east with New York and moving west.
*We used the Localized Constructed Analogs Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (LOCA-CMIP5) climate projections of the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 6.0. More technical details are available in our technical note.
Greg Plotkin, Senior Manager for Smart Solar Outreach & Engagement at American Farmland Trust kicked off his series of interviews at the 2nd Annual Solar Farm Summit 2024 with one of his favorite interviews with American Farmland Trust's Christina Couch - an aspiring farmer who is building a new training program to help other producers embrace opportunities in agrivoltaics. To her, it all comes back to the land.
Visit www.farmland.org/solar to learn more about AFT’s work in the space.
“I see a world where agrivoltaics gives me an opportunity for land access. And for other beginning or first-generation farmers. This could be a really awesome opportunity for us to get on some land and start farming. ”