JOIN USLiz Graznak is the co-owner of Happy Hollow Farm, a family operation located in Missouri, USA, where she grows crops like tomatoes. Liz said she’s seen big changes in weather conditions since she started farming 10 years ago. These days, she said, “it’s more extreme one way or the other.” This and other effects of climate change represent a global challenge, and farmers like Liz have found themselves on the front lines of the struggle to adapt. For her, that meant altering the way she farms. Large tunnels covered in plastic dot the seven acres where she grows vegetables, protecting them from greater variability in rainfall and temperature. In the village of Joynagar in West Bengal, Srimonto Soren is dealing with such challenges in his own way. He grows rice, long beans and ladies fingers. Like Liz, Srimonto has been farming for the past 10 years, and noticed shifts that affect his livelihood, such as rainfall that’s now “more erratic and unpredictable.” Srimonto and other farmers in the area look to low-cost ways to adjust to these shifts, such as making vermicompost.
In the agricultural heartlands of India and the United States, extreme weather events have caused damage to millions of acres of crops. Not only does this jeopardise the incomes of farmers, it puts food supplies across the world at risk. Farmers are divided on the root causes of climate change. But experts who work to help them adapt say farmers are increasingly united in the recognition that their environment is changing. In places as West Bengal and Missouri, farmers have very little choice but to seek out practical solutions to preserve their livelihoods. According to data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 were each the warmest years on record. Climate change experts say the warming climate is driving up the numbers of droughts, floods and other weather events that can devastate crops.
Water woes
For farmers in both India and the United States, wild changes in precipitation can cause some of the most immediate problems connected to climate change. As the earth’s surface warms, water from oceans, lakes, rivers and streams evaporates and rises, gathering in the clouds and resulting in rain, storms and snowfall. At other times and in other places, the warming climate increases and intensifies droughts. All farmers depend on some level of predictability in the weather to manage their businesses. Large fluctuations in precipitation patterns can result in issues such as changes to planting and growing seasons and lower crop yields.
Extreme rainfall has devastated many farms in India. In March 2015, heavy rains fell throughout India. In states such as Uttar Pradesh, it was the wettest spring in decades, if not on record, according to the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. Farmers in parts of India plan for occasional heavy rainfalls, since they are a regular feature of the climate in many regions of the subcontinent. But that spring saw especially intense rainfall even for a string of years with precipitation far higher than normal. In Missouri, farmers are also feeling the effects of volatile precipitation levels. Jerry Hatfield, laboratory director at the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment for the US Department of Agriculture, said dry summers reduce farmers’ yields and their profits go down. Wet springs, meanwhile, may delay planting because the soil is so waterlogged. Again, farmers lose money.
Preparing for the future
While adaptations can help farmers worldwide face the climate change effects happening now, some scientists argue they will be insufficient later on. The International Centre for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability at Washington University in St Louis, USA, supports research into climate. A recent paper by a team at the centre suggested that eventually, the Midwest’s agricultural profile may come to resemble the mid-South. In India, the situation is becoming similarly extreme. Vineet Kumar, a programme officer at the Centre for Science and Environment, said the number of floods and droughts has brought India’s agriculture to a state of crisis.
While those events take a tremendous toll on farmers in developed nations, they can be even more destructive in places in India where infrastructure is weaker and farmers have less access to new adaptation techniques. The stakes are also high in India. According to the latest census, 69% of India’s population lives in rural areas. “Many of them are directly dependent on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture not only for income but also for food security,” said Rajashree Joshi, member of a team looking at climate change adaptation with Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation. With no end in sight to these variations, researchers are trying to find ways for farmers to cope moving forward.
Whether adaptation methods are cutting edge, or build on techniques that have been used for centuries, farmers across the globe remain at the forefront of the effort to adjust to the demands of a rapidly changing climate.