Adapting to Become More Resilient to Climate Change
Because climate events will continue intensifying, developing and building resilience in our productive unit is important.
Faced with different challenges and opportunities in a changing world with unexpected events, it is ideal to have as many tools as possible that will allow us to plan, respond, or identify how we can avoid them or reduce their impact. Real Academia Española (RAE) defines “resilience” as the capacity of a living being to adapt in the face of an adverse situation. The concept includes developing the ability or having access to the tools to face and overcome situations or activities that we cannot control. This ability is useful in different scenarios of our lives. However, when applied to agriculture, unexpected situations can be related to many factors, from variations in prices of inputs such as fertilizers, seeds, or fuel; changes in temperature patterns, water availability, and extreme events such as floods or droughts to common or new pests and diseases to our region.
Many of these climatic variations have become more frequent, more extreme, and with greater intensity, affecting crop yields, quality, and access to food for our communities. The scientific community is in agreement that climate change, a definitive result of human actions, has led to more and more extreme climate phenomena every year. This can be seen with higher temperatures in heat waves, longer droughts, and stronger storms, which will continue worsening over time. Because climate events will continue intensifying, developing and building resilience in our productive unit is important. But what does this mean? It implies knowing and identifying the tools that allow us to plan for the effects or impacts of these extreme events or practices that we can implement to deal with their consequences.
Access to information makes it easier to identify the best agricultural practices that will allow us to know when it is the best time to plant, irrigate, or harvest, it also allows us to identify tools to predict the risks of low or high temperatures for crops that are sensitive to these changes or how the climate in my region have changed over time increasing or narrowing the cropping season. Some interactive tools about frost, drought, weather patterns, and many other factors have been developed and can be accessed here. These tools include temperature predictions and the risk they pose for crops, such as apples, drought predictions, hardiness zones, and tools that identify the probability of success depending on the planting date. We invite you to review these tools, and contact us if you need any support for their use or interpretation of the information.
However, it is important to combine planning with the implementation of management strategies during agricultural production that may include minimum tillage practices, no-tillage, efficient nutrient management, cover crops, agroforestry systems (combination of trees and crops), silvopastoral systems (combination of livestock with trees), among many others. The benefits or impacts of carrying out these practices and planning considering them allow us to maintain healthy soils, increase the storage and availability of water for our crops, reduce the loss of nutrients due to rain or drought, and keep crops more resilient not only to climatic situations but also to different diseases or pests, which in the end translates into less loss of resources.
While it is impossible to manipulate the climate, it is possible to implement practices that may modify the microclimate on a farm, improving the conditions of that space for our crops. One of these practices, for example, is establishing agroforestry systems, a strategy that incorporates a mixture of trees and crops. Incorporating trees in farms can influence the conditions of that space by regulating the temperature through shade management, reducing evaporation, reducing the impact of wind – acting as a barrier-, maintaining soil moisture, and increasing the recycling of nutrients and organic matter.
Let’s take the example of a farming family, Roberto, and Daniel, who have a farm in a windy coastal area. They have always liked trees and consider them an important complement and part of a farm. They decided to plant trees in rows in certain parts of their farm as a protective barrier to reduce the wind. Over time, they realized the barrier also helped them to maintain warmer temperatures when it was windy. Moreover, they planted trees in a hilly area where some floods occurred in previous years. They found that water running and accumulating in this area decreased over time. Thus, the trees created a cozy space and allowed them to improve certain conditions on their farm.
However, each farm or productive unit has different conditions, which make them unique. Therefore, one strategy that may help one farmer may not help another. Differences in conditions, soils, and crops are relevant factors when deciding which practices should be implemented. Therefore, knowing our farm’s specific conditions, limitations, and strengths will let us plan and strengthen the resilience of our farm and our families while facing the unexpected. The world is, and will keep changing; family farmers who adapt their practices to the new ecological and economic realities will more likely to prosper.
