ADAPTATION OF AGRICULTURE TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Preparing agriculture for adaptation to climate change requires advance knowledge of how climate will change and when. The direct physical and biological impacts on plants and animals must be understood. The indirect impacts on agriculture's resource base of soils, water and genetic resources must also be known. We lack such information now and will, likely, for some time to come. Thus impact assessments for agriculture can only be conjectural at this time, However, guidance can be gotten from an improved understanding of current climatic vulnerabilities of agriculture and its resource base, from application of a realistic range of climate change scenarios to impact assessment, and from consideration of the complexity of current agricultural systems and the range of adaptation techniques and policies now available and likely to be available in the future.