It was a gorgeous, late-spring day in Madison as I loaded up the car – sunny, with a high of 73; just me and the open road ahead. I was glad for the mild weather and average temperatures, after a week of severe storms and following Wisconsin’s warmest winter on record. 

I was heading to Ames, Iowa with the Climate Ready Midwest project team to present at the North Central Region’s Extension Agriculture and Natural Resource  Program Leaders meeting. This meeting brought together Extension program leaders in agriculture and natural resources across the 12-state north central region. The CRM team shared project findings exploring climate programming in Extension and relevant regional and national partnerships and resources.  

Producers across the region are already experiencing the impacts of our changing climate. Extreme weather events impact aspects of production – like erosion, water management, and heat stress in animals – and the associated risks are projected to increase. Extension plays an important role in these conversations as a trusted source of climate information for producers. As an organization, it’s important that Extension is prepared to answer questions producers have about building resilience in the face of current weather trends.

The CRM team is focused on enhancing Extension’s capacity to answer these questions. To do this, we are looking at how to empower Extension professionals to support climate-informed agricultural programming across the region. To better understand the opportunities, we have conducted interviews with Extension educators and specialists at and shared some preliminary reflections on those interviews in a previous post. 

Read the full post from the North Central Climate Collaborative.