Climate Change and Agriculture: Causes Impacts and Interventions

Natural change in climate is slow and takes millions of years; and it is known to have made our planet hospitable to live. The climate change is not limited to one country or a continent. It is occurring across the globe as evident from droughts in Texas and flooding along the Missouri River in the United States and along the Red River in Canada. Climate change drives many stressors and interacts with many non-climatic stressors which make it difficult to forecast outcomes in any general way other than existing threats to agriculture. Agroforestry increases a high level of diversity within agricultural lands which supports numerous ecological and production services that bring resilience to the impact of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Climate change risk management is difficult in annual cropping systems due to increasing uncertainty of inter-annual variability in rainfall and temperature. Mixing of woody trees with crops, forage and livestock operations provides greater resilience to the inter-annual variability through crop diversification and increased resource use efficiency.