The National Farmers Union posted an interesting story last week about a new set of tools that can help farmers plan for changes in climate. The set of tools developed by Oregon State University include “AgBiz Logic, a tool to help farmers anticipate environmental impacts in the business decision making processes, down to the farm level. In addition to supporting budget design and monitoring cash flow, the software tracks practices with potential environmental impacts, like tillage and nutrient applications, giving farmers a means to measure environmental performance.” I have not tried them out yet myself to see how hard they are to work with, but it looks like this would give producers the chance to play around with different inputs and weather situations to see what is the most economical for them. You can read more and access the tools at https://nfu.org/2018/06/18/what-do-farmers-need-to-know-about-climate-change-agbiz-logic/. According to the report, registration is free and the tool can import much of the data from existing record documents. Interested producers can learn more from USDA’s Northwest Climate Hub.

Source: Commons Wikimedia