Managing Climate Risk in Agriculture

Coming up in Beechworth later this month is a conference farmers cannot afford to miss.

Managing climate risk in agriculture.

Farmers for Climate Action (FCA) will host the “Managing Climate Risk in Agriculture” conference on Thursday, October 25.

Spokesman for FCA, Corey White said, “From the back paddock to parliament, everyone’s talking about climate change. What does it mean for agriculture? What are the risks? What can farmers do? 

“Managing climate risk is now core business, with the future of farming, good food, tens of thousands of livelihoods, and whole communities at stake,” he said.

Mr White said the conference will involve producers and industry leaders.

He added that also featured would be scientific, legal, financial, health, market, and technology experts all with a message to help farmers and others better understand the climate risks, how to manage them, and within that, how agriculture can be climate smart. 

Details of the event, which is just $35 including lunch, can be found in the attached brochure. 

Climate Conversations interview Corey Watts about the October 25 conference:

All's well, according to 'three older blokes in a pub'

Beneath the Wisteria supporter, Graham Parton lives in Stanley, near Beechworth, and the closest and most influential newspaper is Albury’s Border Mail.

A recent column in that newspaper caught his eye and offended good sense,

Here is Graham’s communication about that issue and it’s interesting to note that “three older blokes in a pub” know more about what causing our extreme weather conditions than the world’s best scientists and climatologists.

 

Hi Robert

Probably not of much interest to your Shepparton readers but I saw a column in the Border Mail today that I just had to respond to. The central premise was that there have been really hot days over the past 50 years ago so therefore this heatwave is just part of a normal cycle. Just to make it worse they have this little vox pop section where a reporter finds three people somewhere in the local region and asks them a question and records their answers. (They got me one once but i had a silly question to answer about whether or not sports people should be subject to the same laws as very one else). Anyway today’s one was asking three older men in a pub if the heatwave had changed their opinion on climate change (which is an interesting question because it assumed they were deniers). All three said that no, it was just part of a normal cycle. So there you have it, three men in a pub!

 

Anyway here's what I wrote to the Border Mail.

 

Your columnist Howard Jones has demonstrated an alarming lack of logic in reaching the absurd conclusion that this summer heatwave is not particularly worse than previous ones. His main “evidence” for this is records that show maximum temperatures reaching into the 40s all through the last century. He may not be aware that those same records have shown that during that time the global average temperature has risen by about one degree and that 2013 was the hottest year on record. Even his totally inadequate method of remembering very hot days from the distant past as a comparison with the current longer hotter temperatures is unreliable. He also needs to consider the trend in overnight lows, which are getting consistently higher, and the fact that these heatwaves happen three times more frequently now than they did during most of the 20^th century. I applaud the Fairfax policy of not giving column space to climate deniers, but how did this one slip through the cracks?