By Dinesh Panday and Saurav Das et.al
Weather has always shaped farming, but today’s droughts, floods, and unpredictable seasons are becoming more extreme, and a farm’s ability to withstand these conditions depends largely on the health of its soil. This position paper draws on more than 40 years of evidence from Rodale Institute’s Farming Systems Trial, which shows that organic soils can hold more water, store more carbon, and produce stronger yields during droughts and floods than conventionally farmed soils. Two additional Rodale Institute research efforts: regenerative farming trials across the Southeast and a program testing which soil amendments are most effectively reinforce these findings. Together, these studies point to the same conclusion: healthy soil is one of a farmer’s strongest defenses against a changing climate, especially when weather conditions become most challenging.
Introduction
Agriculture has always been shaped by the weather. What is changing is the magnitude, frequency, and economic consequences of weather-related risks. Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, extreme rainfall, and increasingly erratic growing seasons are exposing vulnerabilities in agricultural systems worldwide. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that 2015 – 2026 were the warmest years on record, with global mean temperature approximately 1.43oC above the 1850 -1900 average (WMO, 2026).
Water is the center of this challenge. The OECD’s 2025 Global Drought Outlook estimates that 40% of the world’s land area is experiencing increasingly frequent and severe droughts and that 37% of global land has experienced significant soil-moisture loss since 1980 (OECD, 2025).
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