CIAT, based in Colombia has come up with a neat way round this. If you are trying to sensitize farmers to what the future might hold, why not take them to visit another farm with the kind of temperature and rainfall characteristics that might apply in 10, 20 or 30 years? Sure, this requires applying the climate models to identify such trends – at the ambitious end, a database, where a farmer or extension worker could enter a current profile of temperature, rainfall, soiltype etc and click to find the nearest +10, +20 or +30 year area to visit in their area. But it’s less expensive, avoids spurious claims of certainty and it can be as simple as visiting farms a few hundred metres higher up and discussing the differences with the farmers there. Smart idea – ‘farmer to future’ as well as ‘farmer to farmer’. Here’s the introductory video. For more see the CIAT website ]]>