Global circulation models all forecast that climate change will increase mean temperatures and change precipitation regimes. As a result, traditional coffee growing regions may disappear and new regions may appear. At the same time, demand for high quality, responsibly-sourced coffee continues to grow globally. For sustainable sources of coffee, participants in the global coffee supply chain need to know where coffee will grow in the future and how the suitability of these areas will change over time. With this information, the supply chain then needs to develop appropriate site-specific mitigation and adaptation strategies for both the short-and the long-term to guarantee coffee supply as well as to support improved livelihoods for rural communities. In this paper we firstly quantify the impact of climate change on the suitability of land to grow coffee in a case study in Nicaragua and on acidity content of beverage coffee in a case study in the Veracruz Department of Mexico. Secondly we propose site-specific adaptation strategies and finally identify critical potential impacts of climate change on the overall supply chain and the implications for all actors in the system. We conclude the paper by identifying key directions for future research to seek mitigation and adaptation strategies at both the community and the supply-chain level.
This chapter provides an overview of global climate models and their predictions for climate through the 21st century. The review examines the scientific basis of global climate modelling, including the bases for uncertainty in future climate projections. A summary of the Special Report Emissions Scenarios (SRES) is also provided. The current scientific knowledge on climate change points to increases in temperature of 1-3°C to 2050 combined with some complex spatially explicit changes in rainfall. There remains high uncertainty in predictions of extreme events, especially hurricanes. The chapter then looks at the likely impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity, pest and disease prevalence, and CO2-based fertilization. The impacts on crop productivity are likely to be negative. While moderate increases in temperature may bring about moderate increases in productivity, beyond 1°C of warming the literature tends to agree that impacts will be negative. However, possible CO2-fertilization effects may cancel out these losses, although significant debate exists as to the extent of CO2 fertilization to expect. While most literature predicts increases in the prevalence of agricultural pests and diseases, only a handful of studies have quantified possible impacts and further research is needed in this area.
The potential for bananas to produce year round is best expressed when water is abundant and daily temperatures are in the range of 20-30C. Zones with these conditions produce fruit for the global market. However, banana production, mainly for national markets, has developed in many subtropical areas under less than optimum conditions. Bananas are an important cash crop in southern Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, in countries of North Africa, the Middle East and southern Africa, and in China and northern India. In these regions, bananas are subject to sub-optimum temperatures and short days. Highly favorable temperatures and long days in the summer may also include short periods of extreme temperatures above 35C, while rainfall is also highly variable. The effects of climate change on selected subtropical production areas were modeled in a two-step procedure using the EcoCrop model, under current growing conditions and for 2020 and 2050 using a set of 19 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Global Climate Models (GCMs) under the SRES-A2 (business as usual) emission scenario. The modeling showed that current suitability for banana production in the subtropics is much lower than in the tropics with great variation in suitability within the subtropics. Of nine subtropical regions considered, two have improved conditions by 2020s, four are largely unaffected and three have a lower suitability. Our analysis also showed that, in terms of environmental conditions, certain sites are widely represented globally, offering options for technology transfer between sites. Other sites have few similar sites, which means that sites need to be carefully selected for approaches to technology development and transfer. The study leveraged site-specific information with widely available tools to understand potential effects of climate change in the subtropics. However, in order to fully understand the impacts of climate change on banana, the modeling tools used here need to be fully suited for semi-perennial crops to capture the effects of seasonal temperature and rainfall variability on crop cycle length and potential yields.
INTRODUCTIONThe potential for bananas to produce year round is best expressed when water is abundant and daily temperatures are in the range of 20-30C (Simmonds, 1962). Numerous zones with
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