Our Daily Agricultural Miracle Is No Accident

Mar 04, 2026

By Ashley M. Stokes

For two and a half centuries, the United States has been founded upon our capacity to feed communities, both at home and throughout the world. Through the forethought of federal legislators and Abraham Lincoln, we now have a complex and interconnected cooperative system for growing, cultivating, harvesting, processing and delivering the food we all rely on.

That system is nothing short of a daily miracle, delivering, despite the increasing and unpredictable challenges that farmers and the agricultural industry face, healthy and abundant food to retailers and communities across the country and worldwide.

Underpinning this miracle is a partnership among farmers, state and federal government, and public research universities, like the University of California, Davis, where I serve as dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

A series of acts established by the federal government provided the foundation of the United States agricultural powerhouse we see today. In 1862, the Morrill Land Grant Act was established and signed by Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War to establish higher education institutions to provide education for the broader population and to promote education in agriculture and the mechanical arts.

Source : ucdavis.edu

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.