Conservation agriculture and climate resilience.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Michler JD
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6358000 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Conservation agriculture and climate resilience.
Michler Jeffrey D JD Baylis Kathy K Arends-Kuenning Mary M Mazvimavi Kizito K
Journal of environmental economics and management 20190101
Agricultural productivity growth is vital for economic and food security outcomes which are threatened by climate change. In response, governments and development agencies are encouraging the adoption of 'climate-smart' agricultural technologies, such as conservation agriculture (CA). However, there is little rigorous evidence that demonstrates the effect of CA on production or climate resilience, and what evidence exists is hampered by selection bias. Using panel data from Zimbabwe, we test how ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:California agriculture will undergo significant transformations over the next few decades in response to climate extremes, environmental regulation and policy encouraging environmental justice, and economic pressures that have long driven agricultural changes. With several local climates suited to a variety of crops, periodically abundant nearby precipitation, and public investments that facilitated abundant low-priced irrigation water, California hosts one of the most diverse and productive agroecosystems in the world. California farms supply nearly half of the high-nutrient fruit, tree nut, and vegetable production in the United States. Climate change impacts on productivity and profitability of California agriculture are increasing and forebode problems for standard agricultural practices, especially water use norms. We highlight many challenges California agriculture confronts under climate change through the direct and indirect impacts on the biophysical conditions and ecosystem services that drive adaptations in farm practices and water accessibility and availability. In the face of clear conflicts among competing interests, we consider ongoing and potential sustainable and equitable solutions, with particular attention to how technology and policy can facilitate progress.
| S-EPMC11317594 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The strong trends in climate change already evident, the likelihood of further changes occurring, and the increasing scale of potential climate impacts give urgency to addressing agricultural adaptation more coherently. There are many potential adaptation options available for marginal change of existing agricultural systems, often variations of existing climate risk management. We show that implementation of these options is likely to have substantial benefits under moderate climate change for some cropping systems. However, there are limits to their effectiveness under more severe climate changes. Hence, more systemic changes in resource allocation need to be considered, such as targeted diversification of production systems and livelihoods. We argue that achieving increased adaptation action will necessitate integration of climate change-related issues with other risk factors, such as climate variability and market risk, and with other policy domains, such as sustainable development. Dealing with the many barriers to effective adaptation will require a comprehensive and dynamic policy approach covering a range of scales and issues, for example, from the understanding by farmers of change in risk profiles to the establishment of efficient markets that facilitate response strategies. Science, too, has to adapt. Multidisciplinary problems require multidisciplinary solutions, i.e., a focus on integrated rather than disciplinary science and a strengthening of the interface with decision makers. A crucial component of this approach is the implementation of adaptation assessment frameworks that are relevant, robust, and easily operated by all stakeholders, practitioners, policymakers, and scientists.
| S-EPMC2148359 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of major risks for African agriculture and food security caused by climate change during coming decades is confirmed by a review of more recent climate change impact assessments (14 quantitative, six qualitative). Projected impacts relative to current production levels range from -100% to +168% in econometric, from -84% to +62% in process-based, and from -57% to +30% in statistical assessments. Despite large uncertainty, there are several robust conclusions from published literature for policy makers and research agendas: agriculture everywhere in Africa runs some risk to be negatively affected by climate change; existing cropping systems and infrastructure will have to change to meet future demand. With respect to growing population and the threat of negative climate change impacts, science will now have to show if and how agricultural production in Africa can be significantly improved.
| S-EPMC3060257 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Including the parameterization of land management practices into Earth System Models has been shown to influence the simulation of regional climates, particularly for temperature extremes. However, recent model development has focused on implementing irrigation where other land management practices such as conservation agriculture (CA) has been limited due to the lack of global spatially explicit datasets describing where this form of management is practiced. Here, we implement a representation of CA into the Community Earth System Model and show that the quality of simulated surface energy fluxes improves when including more information on how agricultural land is managed. We also compare the climate response at the subgrid scale where CA is applied. We find that CA generally contributes to local cooling (~1°C) of hot temperature extremes in mid-latitude regions where it is practiced, while over tropical locations CA contributes to local warming (~1°C) due to changes in evapotranspiration dominating the effects of enhanced surface albedo. In particular, changes in the partitioning of evapotranspiration between soil evaporation and transpiration are critical for the sign of the temperature change: a cooling occurs only when the soil moisture retention and associated enhanced transpiration is sufficient to offset the warming from reduced soil evaporation. Finally, we examine the climate change mitigation potential of CA by comparing a simulation with present-day CA extent to a simulation where CA is expanded to all suitable crop areas. Here, our results indicate that while the local temperature response to CA is considerable cooling (>2°C), the grid-scale changes in climate are counteractive due to negative atmospheric feedbacks. Overall, our results underline that CA has a nonnegligible impact on the local climate and that it should therefore be considered in future climate projections.
| S-EPMC6175211 | biostudies-other
Project description:Food security relies on the resilience of staple food crops to climatic variability and extremes, but the climate resilience of European wheat is unknown. A diversity of responses to disturbance is considered a key determinant of resilience. The capacity of a sole crop genotype to perform well under climatic variability is limited; therefore, a set of cultivars with diverse responses to weather conditions critical to crop yield is required. Here, we show a decline in the response diversity of wheat in farmers' fields in most European countries after 2002-2009 based on 101,000 cultivar yield observations. Similar responses to weather were identified in cultivar trials among central European countries and southern European countries. A response diversity hotspot appeared in the trials in Slovakia, while response diversity "deserts" were identified in Czechia and Germany and for durum wheat in southern Europe. Positive responses to abundant precipitation were lacking. This assessment suggests that current breeding programs and cultivar selection practices do not sufficiently prepare for climatic uncertainty and variability. Consequently, the demand for climate resilience of staple food crops such as wheat must be better articulated. Assessments and communication of response diversity enable collective learning across supply chains. Increased awareness could foster governance of resilience through research and breeding programs, incentives, and regulation.
| S-EPMC6320549 | biostudies-other
Project description:Most business-as-usual scenarios for farming under changing climate regimes project that the agriculture sector will be significantly impacted from increased temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns. Perhaps ironically, agricultural production contributes substantially to the problem with yearly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of about 11% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions, not including land use change. It is partly because of this tension that Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) has attracted interest given its promise to increase agricultural productivity under a changing climate while reducing emissions. Considerable resources have been mobilized to promote CSA globally even though the potential effects of its widespread adoption have not yet been studied. Here we show that a subset of agronomic practices that are often included under the rubric of CSA can contribute to increasing agricultural production under unfavorable climate regimes while contributing to the reduction of GHG. However, for CSA to make a significant impact important investments and coordination are required and its principles must be implemented widely across the entire sector.
| S-EPMC7190105 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Biodiversity loss--one of the most prominent forms of modern environmental change--has been heavily driven by terrestrial habitat loss and, in particular, the spread and intensification of agriculture. Expanding agricultural land-use has led to the search for strong conservation strategies, with some suggesting that biodiversity conservation in agriculture is best maximized by reducing local management intensity, such as fertilizer and pesticide application. Others highlight the importance of landscape-level approaches that incorporate natural or semi-natural areas in landscapes surrounding farms. Here, we show that both of these practices are valuable to the conservation of biodiversity, and that either local or landscape factors can be most crucial to conservation planning depending on which types of organisms one wishes to save. We performed a quantitative review of 266 observations taken from 31 studies that compared the impacts of localized (within farm) management strategies and landscape complexity (around farms) on the richness and abundance of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate species in agro-ecosystems. While both factors significantly impacted species richness, the richness of sessile plants increased with less-intensive local management, but did not significantly respond to landscape complexity. By contrast, the richness of mobile vertebrates increased with landscape complexity, but did not significantly increase with less-intensive local management. Invertebrate richness and abundance responded to both factors. Our analyses point to clear differences in how various groups of organisms respond to differing scales of management, and suggest that preservation of multiple taxonomic groups will require multiple scales of conservation.
| S-EPMC4132690 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Most cropland in the United States is characterized by large monocultures, whose productivity is maintained through a strong reliance on costly tillage, external fertilizers, and pesticides (Schipanski et al., 2016). Despite this, farmers have developed a regenerative model of farm production that promotes soil health and biodiversity, while producing nutrient-dense farm products profitably. Little work has focused on the relative costs and benefits of novel regenerative farming operations, which necessitates studying in situ, farmer-defined best management practices. Here, we evaluate the relative effects of regenerative and conventional corn production systems on pest management services, soil conservation, and farmer profitability and productivity throughout the Northern Plains of the United States. Regenerative farming systems provided greater ecosystem services and profitability for farmers than an input-intensive model of corn production. Pests were 10-fold more abundant in insecticide-treated corn fields than on insecticide-free regenerative farms, indicating that farmers who proactively design pest-resilient food systems outperform farmers that react to pests chemically. Regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems. Profit was positively correlated with the particulate organic matter of the soil, not yield. These results provide the basis for dialogue on ecologically based farming systems that could be used to simultaneously produce food while conserving our natural resource base: two factors that are pitted against one another in simplified food production systems. To attain this requires a systems-level shift on the farm; simply applying individual regenerative practices within the current production model will not likely produce the documented results.
| S-EPMC5831153 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionWheat grain filling processes under post-anthesis stress scenarios depend mainly on stem traits and remobilization of stem water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC).MethodsA diverse panel of advanced semi-dwarf spring wheat lines, representing a natural variation in stem traits (WSC content, stem diameter, peduncle length, and stem wall width), was used to identify specific traits that reliably reflect the relationship between WSC and grain yield. The panel was phenotyped under various environmental conditions: well-watered, water-limited, and heat stress in Mexico, and terminal-drought in Israel.ResultsEnvironmental stresses reduced grain yield (from 626 g m-2 under well-watered to 213 g m-2 under heat), lower internode diameter, and peduncle length. However, stem-WSC generally peaked 3-4 weeks after heading under all environmental conditions except heat (where it peaked earlier) and expressed the highest values under water-limited and terminal-drought environments. Increased investment in internode diameter and peduncle length was associated with a higher accumulation of stem WSC, which showed a positive association with yield and kernel weight. Across all environments, there were no apparent trade-offs between increased crop investment in internode diameter, peduncle length, and grain yield.DiscussionOur results showed that selecting for genotypes with higher resource investment in stem structural biomass, WSC accumulation, and remobilization could be a valuable strategy to ameliorate grain size reduction under stress without compromising grain yield potential. Furthermore, easy-to-measure proxies for WSC (stem diameter at specific internodes and length of the last internode, i.e., the peduncle) could significantly increase throughput, potentially at the breeding scale.
| S-EPMC11308436 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Climate change is expected to impact ecosystems directly, such as through shifting climatic controls on species ranges, and indirectly, for example through changes in human land use that may result in habitat loss. Shifting patterns of agricultural production in response to climate change have received little attention as a potential impact pathway for ecosystems. Wine grape production provides a good test case for measuring indirect impacts mediated by changes in agriculture, because viticulture is sensitive to climate and is concentrated in Mediterranean climate regions that are global biodiversity hotspots. Here we demonstrate that, on a global scale, the impacts of climate change on viticultural suitability are substantial, leading to possible conservation conflicts in land use and freshwater ecosystems. Area suitable for viticulture decreases 25% to 73% in major wine producing regions by 2050 in the higher RCP 8.5 concentration pathway and 19% to 62% in the lower RCP 4.5. Climate change may cause establishment of vineyards at higher elevations that will increase impacts on upland ecosystems and may lead to conversion of natural vegetation as production shifts to higher latitudes in areas such as western North America. Attempts to maintain wine grape productivity and quality in the face of warming may be associated with increased water use for irrigation and to cool grapes through misting or sprinkling, creating potential for freshwater conservation impacts. Agricultural adaptation and conservation efforts are needed that anticipate these multiple possible indirect effects.
| S-EPMC3637704 | biostudies-literature