Impacts of climate change in agriculture and how can Nepalese agriculture go with climate change impacts?
The abrupt and ad hoc change in climatic factors such as temperature, solar radiation, precipitation and humidity highly influence crop production. We can observe the pattern of erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spell, unexpected drought, flood and landslides since last 10-12 years. One of the reason behind these chaotic disasters is change in climate and global warming. Problem of erratic rainfall, drought, dry spell, landslide and floods are creating mixed type of impacts and effects in Nepalese agriculture production. Nepalese agriculture is facing mixed type of experiences with climate change i.e. positive and negative.
Both Positive impacts and negative impacts of climate change to Nepalese agriculture going together, it means even climate change is posing positive impacts in one hand, it is creating negative impact in another hand. However, our future agriculture should have strong strategy and plan to cope with negative impacts and to balance the agri-system healthy production.
The positive impacts of climate change in agriculture
The positive impacts have been noticed in many areas. First the increase in CO2 level increases the photosynthetic rate and enhance the carbon fertilization effect. The water-use efficiency rate can increase as increase level of CO2 close the stomata in leaves. There would be decrease in plant transpiration rate as well as the crop development can be accelerated because of CO2 level increase.
Increase in temperature can extend the length of potential growing season for agricultural crops. Reduction of growing season can cause early maturation, so that we can harvest our crops early. It also reflects that, we might have more cropping cycles at the same time period.
Increase in temperature also shifts the cropping line which mean, now we can grow crops in high altitude that before can grow in low altitude. Increasing in temperature is creating even high altitude and cold areas are favourable for agriculture. Areas covered with snow are not getting more warm, so that we can shift the crops that being used to grow in such climatic condition. Which means, change in climate is increasing more cultivable land for agriculture
Negative impacts of climate change in agriculture
Low rainfall pattern affects the agriculture process, both rainfed and irrigated crops will be affected by the erratic rainfall pattern. Increase in temperature, prolonged dry spell and drought cause moisture stress in soil, which harm the crop growth and development. Higher temperature and dryness demands very quick and fast water cycles because of high evaporation rate.
We have many experience that our agriculture system is now demanding more natural resources because of more hotter summer, low rainfall and severe dry spell. There is more water requirement, damaging soil fertility and organic matters in soil and increasing more acidity are challenging existing agri-system to thrive.
In addition, the positive impacts from change in climate is just transient. Temperature increase for more than 3 degree celsius significantly decrease the crop yield. In addition, the increase in CO2 if goes continuous for several years then this severe increment hamper the crop growth and development. Therefore, our agriculture system should be prepared for these kind of possible impacts in agriculture.
How can our agriculture go with climate change?
The change in climate is a cumulative effect and it is a global cause. We can not ignore that, we can get rid off climate change because it is ongoing phenomenon. This climate change had not only impacted our country, it has widespread impact within the globe. The only possible solution to go with climate change is to either adapt or to mitigate the impacts by reducing the activities that can cause global warming. Furthermore, it is possible only when whole globe get unite to do so.
Therefore, in our situation, we have following options for our agriculture to cope with climate change
Mitigation
The energy use in our agriculture system is usually petroleum fuels such as petrol and diesel. These energy are being consumed usually in pumping out the reserved underground water for irrigation purpose. Combustion of these kind of fossil fuel is required when operating pumpset, therefore can emit huge amount of CO2 in environment and cause raise in temperature. Therefore, we can mitigate the emission of CO2 from our agriculture-system either by using clean energy (such as electricity and/or solar energy) or by using carbon smart agri-tech (such as biochar application). It will make our agri-system be energy efficient and will also increase soil active carbon as well.
Replacement of CO2 emitting fossil fuels to clean energy can mitigate harmful CO2 whereas application of CO2 sequestration practices such as biochar and coal application will help to increase carbon sequestration in soil and increase the soil carbon level.
Adaptation
We can make our existing agriculture system more adaptive to climate change through following ways
Making it Nutrient smart
As climate change demands more nutrients for crops to grow. We can therefore use nutrient detecting (digital and/or physical) tools to identify the need of nutrient to plants. Therefore, we can optimise the use of chemical nutrients for plants, reduce the haphazard use of chemical fertilizers and then reduce the emission of CO2 as well.
We can first identity such tools, techniques and practices then can scale up for commercial use. For instance, chlorophyll measuring machine, leaf colour chart can be useful to measure nutrient requirement in plant.
Making it Water smart
Climate change also demands more water use cycle in our agricultural crops. Therefore, we can make our agriculture water use efficient and smart by using multipurpose water use system such as drip irrigation. Reducing frequency of irrigation by identifying critical water requirement time for crops, limiting the hours of irrigation and use mulching to conserve the soil moisture would be beneficial to preserve current water resources and make our agri-system to adapt in dry season.
Photo: Use of drip irrigation can help for efficient use of water in plants, Source: Irrigation Australia
Make it weather smart
Weather pattern is changing and now we have very unexpected weather changes. It harms the agriculture system from germination to harvest. Severe bad weather at critical growth phase, flowering stage and harvesting stage either can cause complete damage/collapse of crop or can cause severe outbreak of insects and diseases. Therefore, to go with this severe weather, our agriculture system should be weather smart. We have to adapt the adaptive cultivars that adapts in harsh weather condition such as flood tolerant, frost tolerant and dry tolerant crops: should adapt the digital technology such as weather forecasting message to farmers; and should be ready to transfer risk into opportunity.
Photo: Use of digital program to observe daily weather with respect to agriculture can help to decide agricultural operation, Source: Bikas
Even though we have developed our agriculture system nutrient, water and weather smart, we should not forget that it should compatible to local knowledge. Otherwise, farmers will take it as risk and would never be ready to transfer the risk into opportunity. Therefore, whatever we develop in our agriculture system, it should be compatible to local knowledge therefore, everyone can understand easily and implement without hesitation.
Together we can make positive change, let's move our agriculture forward ЁЯТЪЁЯТЪЁЯТЪ
Comments
Post a Comment