2004 Articles

ADAPTATION OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE: LESSONS LEARNED AND PROPOSED RESEARCH APPROACH

Baethgen, W.E.; Meinke, H.; Gimenez, A.

Societies, cultures and economies in the world's history have successfully developed by mastering their abilities to adapt to climatic conditions. However, the last decades have been characterized by a dramatic growth in human population that is imposing unprecedented pressures on natural ecosystems and on existing agricultural production systems. In addition to this pressure, societies are expected to face changes in climate at also unprecedented rate. Agricultural production systems will require effective adaptive strategies to overcome these expected pressures in the immediate future. Against the very unfavorable economic scenarios of the last decades, farmers around the world have been struggling to maintain their income by continuously trying to increase yields in their production systems. But these higher productive systems have often become more vulnerable to climate variability and climate change. These existing pressures demand the development and implementation of methodologies to address issues of vulnerability to climate for assisting farmers and policy makers of the agricultural sector to further develop their adaptive capacity with improved planning and better management decisions. This article will focus in the mixed livestock/crops production systems of South America and will discuss the lessons learned in the research on the climate variability (CV) and climate change (CC) interactions with agricultural production systems. It also discusses a path for building on such experiences to establish activities (research and capacity building) in the next generation of studies on climate variability and climate change.