Increasing Maine Farmer Capacity to Succeed in a Changing Environment: Needs Assessment

Researchers at UMaine are collaborating with Maine farmer groups to identify, develop, and document their needs and priorities regarding weather information, services, and farm management decision support tools. Our team recently received funding from the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions to conduct this work. The primary activity will be structured query and dialogue between Maine apple, wild blueberry, and vegetable producers, and an interdisciplinary team of UMaine research and Extension personnel with expertise in crop production, pest management, climate science, weather data acquisition and analysis, and decision support tool creation. Dialogue will include the exploration of on-farm decision points, information gaps, available weather data access and analytical capabilities. From that foundation we will collaboratively generate and identify practical solutions to meet the needs of farmers.

Researchers: Dr. Lily Calderwood, Glen Koehler, Dr. Sean Birkel, Erin Roche

Stakeholder Partners: Maine Vegetable and Small Fruit Growers, Maine Pomological Society, Maine Wild Blueberry Growers

Lily Calderwood, Glen Koehler, Sean Birkel, Mitchell Center Talk Series, 10/5/2020 from Mitchell Center on Vimeo.

Title: The Future of Farming: Building Tools for Tech Savvy Farmers
Speakers:
Lily Calderwood, Extension Wild Blueberry Specialist; Assistant Prof. of Horticulture, UMaine
Sean Birkel, State Climatologist; Research Assistant Prof., UMaine Climate Change Institute
Glen Koehler, Associate Scientist IPM, UMaine Cooperative Extension

This talk will focus on a project co-led by researchers in the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and the Climate Change Institute in collaboration with Maine farmers. Their goal: to listen to farmer needs around weather information and farm management decision support tools, and discuss future capabilities in light of Maine’s changing climate. Lily, Sean, and Glen will discuss their progress towards providing site-specific temperature, precipitation, frost and heat-stress warnings, cloud-cover/sunshine, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture forecast and observation values for locations in Maine. The wild blueberry and potato industries already have crop-specific weather stations. Through the project, the team has gained a better understanding of how these crop-specific weather stations can be combined with NOAA gridded weather data to serve more farms in Maine.

Lily Calderwood’s research and education program aims to develop whole system approaches to wild blueberry production in Maine. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is at the forefront of her work, which can improve the economic and ecological resilience of farms by incorporating subjects such as fertility, soil health, and plant physiology into pest management.

For information on the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, go to umaine.edu/mitchellcenter.