Mid-June 2022 hottest in nearly 40 years

Jun 15, 2022

A solar scientist provides weather insights

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

The middle portion of June 2022 could be one for the ages, a solar scientist says.

“It’s going to be a big shift in the second half of the month,” Dr. Simon Atkins, a solar scientist with Advanced Forecasting Corporation, said during a June 12 webinar presentation. “I think the month overall will probably be about two degrees above normal even though the first 11 days it was cooler.”

Dr. Atkins will be featured during the 2022 US Crop Tour as he’ll host five webinars to provide weather insights to Farms.com Risk Management clients and farmers who are following the crop tour.

Data from weather and other maps indicate more hot weather is on the way.

The summer solstice begins on June 21 and already temperatures are approaching 100 F (37 C).

“We are one week away from the summer solstice, and we’ve already got temperatures nearing 100 (F) in central Iowa,” Atkins said. “As an atmospheric scientist I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Between June 13 and July 27, a period of 45 days, Atkins predicts weather variations for the U.S. and into Canada.

The U.S. will be about 2.3 degrees warmer with the western part of the country cooling down first.

“The western U.S. will start to cool down in the second half (of July), and then by early August, that cooler air with rain is going to start going through the north central plains, probably mid-month it starts to hit the Midwest,” Atkins said.

His prediction for Eastern Canada is 3.3 degrees warmer and 1.1 degrees warmer in Western Canada.

The schedule for the webinars Dr. Atkins will be making as part of the Farms.com Risk Management 2022 US Crop Tour:

Thurs. June 30 where Dr Atkins will share his predictions for the U.S. Midwest growing region in the 2022 growing season.
Thurs. July 7 and 14 he’ll provide a 15-minute presentation looking at states Farms.com Chief Commodity Strategist Moe Agostino has visited and will visit on the US Crop tour.
On Thurs. July 21 Dr. Atkins will host a 30-minute wrap-up presentation with insights for the 2022 growing season and review other impacts in other growing areas in the year ahead.

Please note all webinars begin at 7:30 a.m. Central.

For more information or to sign up for the webinars, visit: https://riskmanagement.farms.com/events/us-cornbelt-tour-2022

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”