CLIMATE CHANGE -- May 24, 2012 at 5:23 PM EDT

Farmers, How Have You Been Affected by Climate Change?

By: Rebecca Jacobson

Farmers, how have changes in your local climate affected your agricultural business?

HARVEST PUBLIC MEDIA

Bill Couser inspects one of the first fields he planted with corn in mid-April on his farm near Nevada, Iowa. (Sarah McCammon for Harvest Public Media)

The U.S. Farm Bill expires at the end of September and is slated for renewal. Some farmers are hoping a renewal of the bill will address the challenges they have faced in adapting to new weather patterns. Some parts of the country are deep in drought, while others battle excess rain and floods.

The PBS NewsHour wants to hear from farmers: What have these changes in weather patterns meant for your crops? How have these changes affected your farm or agricultural business? Have warmer winters brought new plants, pests or diseases? How did you adjust to a late freeze or an early spring? Have you had more losses in recent years?

The NewsHour has partnered with Harvest Public Media using the Public Insight Network to broaden our storytelling perspective. We want to put names and faces to current events. We want to know if you've made changes to adapt to a shift in weather patterns.

Please fill out the form below to share your insights. If you have an original photo of yourself or your farm that you can share with us, please do.

These insights will be used to inform our reporting, and some may be published directly to our website.

If you have any questions about this form, please contact Rebecca Jacobson rjacobson@newshour.org.


Beginning October 24, 2012, PBS NewsHour will allow open commenting for all registered users. We hope that the elimination of our moderation process will enable a more organic discussion amongst you, our audience. However, if a commenter violates our terms of use or abuses the commenting forum, their comment will be removed. We reserve the right to remove posts that do not follow these basic guidelines: comments must be relevant to the topic of the post; may not include profanity, personal attacks or hate speech; may not promote a business or raise money; may not be spam. Anything you post should be your own work. The PBS NewsHour reserves the right to read on the air and/or publish on its website or in any medium now known or unknown the comments or emails that we receive. By submitting comments, you agree to the PBS Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which include more details.

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