Can we weather climate change? On the Prairies we have come to expect a certain amount of drought, a recurring cycle of grasshoppers, markets that vanish, prices that plummet and now in some places croplands replaced with stands of cattails.
Will we make it to next year country?
Researchers define resilience as a system’s ability to experience change and retain the same function and identity. It is the ability to take a hit and bounce back. If you are as old as I am, you may remember those little toy Weebles that “wobble but they don’t fall down.” Weebles embody the essence of resilience.
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Is our agriculture resilient? It certainly takes its share of hits. The major limitations to success in agriculture seem to be weather and policy.
Can we withstand these twin assaults and still keep farmers on the land producing food? Are our agricultural systems resilient enough? How can we make them more resilient?
In a recent paper published inBio- Science,Brenda Lin, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggests ways to build resilience in agricultural systems around the world. She argues that that diversity is the key to resilience and that policies are needed to support biodiversity.
Crop diversification has long been recommended as an important strategy for building resilience. A solid rotation with a broad range of crops can help reduce weeds, pests and diseases.
Organic principles include a strong emphasis on crop rotation and biological processes to manage these crop challenges.
Can crop diversity help when the flood waters are a metre high over hundreds of square miles for the entire planting season? Probably not.
However, having range land, perennial crops and other crops that don’t need to be seeded in the spring might give farmers a few more options in lesser catastrophes.
Lin says that in tropical regions, growing crops such as coffee and cacao within a more complex forest system buffers them from harmful environmental challenges such as drought, hurricanes, landslides and flooding.
Ecologically complex agricultural systems have more wild species, more variability in crops and greater productivity.
Studies suggested that more complex systems had greater resilience in Sweden, where environmental challenges required cold tolerance, and in Tanzania, where the problem was heat.
Ecologically complex systems on the Prairies might include pastures, sloughs, wetlands, coulees, poplar groves, other natural vegetation, croplands, gardens and livestock.
Lin said the adoption of a more diversified agriculture is slowed by three main policies: encouraging intensive monoculture crops, focusing on expensive biotech solutions and favouring monocarps over multispecies systems because of the mistaken belief that they are more productive.
She says U.S. farm subsidies generally do not support small farmers, but rather go primarily to large monoculture operations.
Incentives could instead be tied to the selling of ecosystem services, which would encourage diversified farm systems, including agroforestry.
Lin claims that “diversification of agricultural crops and landscapes may be a more rational strategy for developing resilient agricultural systems and protecting food production in the future under climate change.”
Biotechnology has been suggested as the solution for problems expected because of climate change, such as drought.
Biotech solutions emphasize single crops and are likely to be prohibitively expensive for smallholder rural farmers.
Lin says biotech has had only limited success and is likely to have only moderate impact, citing Australian government sources and a report from the International Water Management Institute. It tends to be favoured and funded far beyond its potential.
Lin suggests that we are slow to adopt greater diversity because we believe that monocultures and intensively managed systems are more productive than diversified systems. This is short-term thinking.
She says that the emphasis on yields of one or two specific crops reduces ecosystem functioning. It is propped up by outside inputs such as fuel, chemical inputs and irrigation. Depending on these inputs makes systems more vulnerable as they become less available.
Lin describes a study in Minnesota comparing various land use scenarios.
The system that fared best included organic cropland, extended crop rotations and intensively managed grazing. It increased profits and biodiversity while reducing negative environmental impacts such as water degradation, greenhouse gases, sedimentation and flooding. Lin suggests this is a win-win-win situation.
Biodiversity is a basic principle of organic production. Does this make organic systems more resilient? According to Lin, resilience improves with greater crop diversity, greater landscape diversity, less dependence on outside inputs and policies that rely less on biotechnology.
This does suggest that the path to resilience for organic farmers is within their grasp and consistent with their principles.
Brenda Frick, Ph. D., P. Ag. is an extension agrologist and researcher in organic agriculture. She welcomes your comments at 306-260-0663 or email organic@usask.ca.
