 I'm standing in the long-term continuous cropping experiment. This experiment was started in 1962. Way back two years after the formation of Erie, the scientists already had the foresight of envisioning continuous rice cropping with as many as three crops of rice per year. And they were seeing already at that time that key ingredients would entail varieties, fertilizer, and irrigation water. Those ingredients have now come together from 1962 in this experiment that has enabled the continuous cropping of rice to the 150th crop in which we're seeing right now. The key ingredients are the irrigation water that we see here. You can see that the field is flooded, but actually the field can be allowed to dry down to the point of cracking before it is re-irrigated again. You can see here that there are two different appearances of the rice plot. This one here is greener than this one right here. This particular plant has been fertilized with nitrogen. The plot over here, where I'm standing now, this is a plot that has not received nitrogen fertilizer. This crop has grown for 150 seasons without nitrogen fertilizer. So June you've looked back at some of the history of this experiment. You discovered that it started in 1962. The first crop was started in 1962. The seedlings were grown, were sown May of 62 and then they were transplanted first week of June. So that's the first crop that was planted here in this experiment. It was first called the maximum yield experiment and then eventually they continued it and now it's called the long-term continuous cropping experiment. One of the lessons that we've learned in the long-term continuous cropping experiment is the importance of climate and potential changes in climate on the productivity and sustainability of intensive rice systems. What we have done is plotted the measured yield through time versus a potential yield that is the maximum yield that's plausible based on the climate and the germplasm. In the back of the experiment we have a MET station that is collecting daily climate data. We use that daily climate data together with a crop simulation model to calculate for each season the maximum yield or the potential yield, the yield that would be plausible based on perfect conditions for climate and germplasm. What is actually attainable by farmers with good agricultural practices for profitable rice production is about 80% of that yield. So our target in this experiment is to achieve 80% of the maximum plausible yield and to use that 80% as an indicator of sustainability. And what we've found is that there are great fluctuations in the potential yield or the yield that is dependent on climate. It has varied by as much as 3 and 4 tons in a given season over the last 20 and 30 years. But when we plot the measured yield that we're achieving with good practices versus the potential yield we find that we're able to sustain the yield that we attain at about 80% of the potential in the dry season. So this is our measure of sustainability, but you can see that the potential yields have a downward trend. This downward trend is influenced by climate. And one of the great challenges we see of the future is how to adapt these systems to a changing climate. And that changing climate includes less solar radiation, higher nighttime temperatures, and potentially higher daytime temperatures.