The National Climate Assessment released yesterday states what most of us already know: Climate change is occurring and having real and costly impacts, but we aren’t ready. This is especially true for our food and farming systems and rural communities, as Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack pointed out in a USDA statement this week on the assessment. While it remains imperative that we slow and eventually halt avoidable manmade causes to climate change, we as a society have to acknowledge that it is already occurring and work to adapt our lives, economies, and food and farming systems.
Fortunately, in the face of federal inaction, many U.S. states have already begun this process of climate adaptation planning. A new IATP report by Zack Robbins reviews these state climate adaptation plans, with a specific attention to their consideration of agriculture and food production. The resulting “State of the States on Climate Adaptation” report provides both a summary and analysis of the level of planning around food and agriculture that has already occurred, examples of which approaches are most broadly supported, and ideas for further steps to support more resilient food production and farming.
Adapting to a changing climate is, by definition, an ongoing process. Not surprisingly, states and local governments are leading the way on climate policy, but much more urgency is needed. Considering both how vulnerable our current agricultural systems and rural economies are to climate change and how important they are to our survival, it is imperative that we not only seriously factor climate change much more directly into our planning, but that we rapidly move toward policies and programs that substantively and financially support farming systems and rural economic sectors (such as renewable energy production) that can be most helpful to combating climate change and most resilient to its effects.
Read “State of the States on Climate Adaptation".
