Impacts on Agricultural Productivity and Resource Availability
Climate change will affect crop and livestock production
worldwide. These effects will stem from higher temperatures,
longer growing seasons, greater carbon dioxide concentrations,
changes in water availability, and increased variability
in temperatures and water supplies, among other effects.
These changes will also affect pest populations, which,
in turn, affect crop and livestock production.
The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report "Synthesis
and Assessment Product 4.3 (SAP 4.3): The Effects of
Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water
Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States" integrates
the Federal research efforts of 13 agencies on climate
and global change. The report focuses on the next 25
to 50 years, and finds that climate change is already
affecting U.S. water resources, agriculture, land resources,
and biodiversity, and will continue to do so.
Adaptation and Market Effects
As a result of climate-induced changes in productivity
and resources, agricultural yield potentials will change.
Farmers will adapt to changing yield potentials by altering
varietal selection, cropping patterns, grazing locations,
and input use. These impacts will affect national and international
markets; the prices of food, fiber, and energy; agricultural
incomes; and the environment.
Adaptive responses to global climate change will likely
include both the use of new crop varieties and replacement
of one crop by another. Genetic combinations that are optimal
for present growing environments may not be best as the
growing environment changes. Plant breeding efforts can
create varieties better suited to changed environments,
and new genetic material could enhance efforts to breed
new crop varieties. ERS research will examine farmers'
responses to changing resource availability and productivity
changes and will help in finding efficient alternatives.
Farmer responses, possibly aided by policy changes, can
help facilitate continued commodity production, conservation
of natural resources, and food security in the face of
climate change. The development of knowledge and tools
to enable adaptation to climate change will improve the
resilience of agricultural ecosystems.
Existing ERS research results, including studies not
initially focused on climate change, can inform climate
adaptation-related questions. For example, ERS
research finds strong links between public and private
investment in agricultural research and development and
agricultural productivity growth in crops and livestock.
Productivity growth is uniformly stressed as a key component
of meeting the challenges of climate and biofuel policy
goals. Research on R&D trends, policies and benefits
may provide valuable insights on options for improved targeting
of scarce public and private resources to adapt to climate
change effects and respond to climate change impacts.
In another example, ERS
research on crop genetic resources indicates
that these resources are essential to maintaining and improving agricultural
productivity. But habitat loss, the dominance of scientifically bred over
farmer-developed varieties, and genetic uniformity
are all threats to continued diversity. The U.S. system
for genetic resource conservation may lack sufficient
diversity to reduce some crops' vulnerability
to pests and diseases. Changing climatic regimes and
associated increases in crop stressors (such as pests,
drought, flood and early frost events) may increase demand for a wider range
of genetic material.
Decision Support
Climate change is expected to make agricultural production
more uncertain since producers must adapt to new and changing
weather patterns and therefore also new and changing agricultural
markets. Decision support refers to the provision of scientific
information and tools to USDA agencies, stakeholders and
producers to improve decision making. ERS research can
provide the economic analysis on which decision support
relies, as well as provide insights to help target scarce
decision support dollars to improve net benefits.
Decision-support resources can be targeted at three
broad categories: (1) monitoring, reporting, discussion
and planning that uses state-of-the-science syntheses and
assessments by decision makers, stakeholders, the media,
and the general public (2) management decisions (i.e.
climate adaptations) undertaken by agricultural producers,
and managers of natural resources and climate services;
and (3) climate change policy formulation, program development,
and program implementation. Each of these categories has
a unique set of stakeholders and requires different decision-support
tools.
An example of ERS analysis on decision support tools
can be found in The
Value of Plant Disease Early Warning Systems: A Case
Study of USDA's Soybean Rust Coordinated Framework (April
2006). Early-warning systems for plant diseases are
valuable when the systems provide timely forecasts that
farmers can use to inform their pest management decisions.
This study evaluates the benefit of a website that provides
real-time, county-level information to farmers on the spread
of soybean rust. Results suggest that such information
is valuable, and that its value depends most heavily on
farmers' perceptions of the forecast's accuracy. The predicted
increases in pest invasions associated with a changing
climate suggest that the value of this type of decision
support tool may increase.
|
