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NOAA cuts disrupting services for farmers

A state climatologist says cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will impact farmer resources.

Ohio’s Aaron Wilson tells Brownfield he had been working to build capacity between USDA’s climate hubs and Cooperative Extension through the Climate Ready Midwest Project.

“We’re reducing the capability of the hub to operate,” he says. “It’s sort of completely opposite of the motivation and the target of what we’re trying to do in this project, so there have been disruptions. And on a personal level, a lot of strife for colleagues who have felt these cuts.”

University of Wisconsin, Michigan State, Purdue, and Central State are other partners on the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant.

He says it’s important to understand the value of weather services at the federal level.

“Our taxes are funding those services, but the value is in the millions when it’s for something like the National Weather Service,” he shares. “Per person, we pay about $4 in taxes per year while we get millions of dollars in terms of that value. Saving lives, saving property—that is like the mission.”

He points to Climate Prediction Center outlooks and the Early Drought Warning System as necessary tools that scientists and farmers need.

The Trump administration is expected to cut up to 20 percent of the staff at NOAA.

Brownfield interviewed Wilson during the Ohio Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference in Ada.