February 24, 2003

Related story
LINCOLN, Neb. — A series of interdisciplinary University of Nebraska research projects now under way aims to help agricultural producers better manage risk in their operations.

The five projects have earned grants totaling about $2.9 million. This includes two grants awarded in December by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – one for $1.3 million, to create Web-based tools that will allow producers nationwide to assess and manage risk more strategically; the other, for $95,000, to fund a series of drought-risk management workshops in Nebraska in February and March.

The flurry of projects stems in part from congressional passage of the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000, which promoted a federal emphasis on ag risk management that goes well beyond the traditional tool of crop insurance, said Bill Waltman, research coordinator with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Department of Computer Science and Engineering and one of the researchers involved in several of the projects.

The law sees ag risk as "not something you just mitigate after the fact," said Don Wilhite, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center, based at NU's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Instead, the 2000 act asks, "What can we do up front to mitigate risk?"

This approach is more farmer and rural community friendly, less regulatory and perhaps a bit more holistic than earlier farm bills, Waltman said.

The various projects bring together researchers from the drought center, the UNL Departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Agricultural Economics, NU Cooperative Extension, the UNL-based High Plains Regional Climate Center and the University of Nebraska-Omaha's Department of Geography-Geology with non-university partners such as the Center for Rural Affairs, USDA's Risk Management Agency and National Agricultural Statistics Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Especially potent is the application of cutting-edge computer science technologies to producers' age-old decision-making processes.

"What we're all about is trying to bring together data and information to improve decision making, particularly by producers in Nebraska" and, ultimately, nationwide, Wilhite said.

Steve Goddard, UNL assistant professor in computer science, leads the $1.3 million project titled "Risk Assessment and Exposure Analysis on the Agricultural Landscape" and a $1 million National Science Foundation Digital Government project titled "A Geospatial Decision Support System for Drought Risk Management." Over the next few years, he expects the research team to develop a set of tools to help producers assess a variety of risks.

Goddard's team is developing a Web-based tool to compute drought and flooding frequencies, durations and intensities at national, state and county levels. Next, researchers will develop a risk-rating system that captures and measures the impacts of natural hazards on crop production, including identifying regions at particularly high or low risk for various natural hazards. The research also will identify "agro-ecozones" to define landscapes with similar soils and climates. It will couple climate indicators and significant weather events with historical data from the Census of Agriculture and National Agricultural Statistics Service to create maps that illustrate potential impacts of hazards on ag infrastructure. Also, the research will lead to a planting date guide that computes probabilities and extremes of frost dates and a crop development calendar based on growing degree days.

Later research will focus on range and fire danger indicators.

Training materials and sessions are planned, first for Nebraska producers and NU Cooperative Extension educators, then nationally.

"Producers will be able to see some patterns" specific to their own farmland, Goddard said. They'll be able to decide their level of risk as they choose planting dates and make crop selections. They'll be able to ask questions like "‘I've been growing corn for 20, 30 years. Can I grow grapes instead?'

" You could take a look at this and find out the risks of growing grapes," Goddard added.

The success of the 3-year-old Web-based Drought Monitor is proof that ag producers are looking for new tools to help them manage their operations, Wilhite said. The weekly national map is printed in countless newspapers and the Web version was visited some 5 million times in 2002. There are plans to incorporate data from Canada and Mexico into a monthly North American Drought Monitor map this spring, Wilhite added, and many producers have told him they'd welcome a map that tracked drought trends in China, Argentina and Brazil.

"If we can identify these kinds of tools, based on good science, people will use them," Wilhite said.

In addition to USDA, funding for the projects comes from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Each project focuses on a different piece of this puzzle," Wilhite said, adding that he expects the work to lead to additional, perhaps more expansive, projects in the future.

2/24/03-DM

Don Wilhite - Ph.D.
School of Natural Resources
Director
(402) 472-4270

William J. Waltman - Ph.D.
Computer Science & Engineering
Research Coordinator
(402) 472-9984

Dan Moser
IANR News & Photography Coordinator
(402) 472-3007

Department: National Drought Mitigation Center