LOCATION: CENTENNIAL 6
WEDNESDAY, February 11, 2026 – 3:30pm – 4:10pm
Dr. Jochum Wiersma has been the small grains extension specialist at the University of Minnesota for the past 30 years. In that time, he has seen firsthand how spring wheat and barley retreated north with corn and soybeans gobbling up those acres in what once called the breadbasket of the world. Using historical variety trial data his co-authors and he were able to show that in the oat productivity has started to decline over the past climate normal in southern Minnesota.
Is it just me, or is it getting hotter? (how do you manage spring wheat in a changing climate?)
Wheat, barley, oats, and rye are all cool-season grasses. They thrive when you and I are also comfortable with optimum temperatures being in the low to mid-twenties Celsius. Climate change signals vary depending on where in the world you are. In Minnesota those signals include not only higher CO2 concentrations but also higher dew points, warmer winters, wetter springs, and a higher frequency of extreme thunderstorms in the summer. Some of those signals do not bode well for production agriculture in general and wheat production in particular. Meanwhile spring wheat and barley have retreated northward with corn and soybeans gobbling up those acres in what once called the breadbasket of the world. Is climate change to blame or is that a gross oversimplification?