Assessment of Climate Change and Extremes

With greater certainty of a climate change occurring, there is a need for developing information on its impacts on Agricultural production, particularly on farms with mixed enterprises. This paper outlines a farm simulation model developed to assess the impact of climate change and extremes on a mixed farm in the Canadian Prairies. The model is named MF-CCE -- Mixed Farm Model for the Economic Impact Assessment of Climate Change and Extremes. The model integrates the production models such as agronomic crop simulation model, cattle herd simulation model, pasture yield model for the simulation of crops and hay, livestock production, and pasture production, respectively. The model also includes liner-programming models for the economic decisions such as crop selections for feed rations and the crop mix for market sales. The outputs from these biological and economic models are inputs needed for simulation of farm level economic indicators. This model is applied to a mixed farm operation in Pincher Creek region of Alberta.

The impacts of climate change and extremes are simulated through yield effects measured by biological models under an assumed climate change scenario. The simulation results indicate that the modelled farm is viable business for the planning horizon of 30 years under both the baseline and future scenario. In terms of future climate change impacts, both the crop and beef cattle activities will benefit in the future taking account of both the average climate change as well as weather extreme events. However, the farm will be impacted severely during the period of extremes weather as indicated by negative returns at crop production and farm levels.

The study contributes to the knowledge of climate change impact assessment at the farm level by offering a simple and flexible yet comprehensive assessment framework, MF-CCE model. The model consists of a number of integrated sub-models to assess whole farm economic returns. However, the farm will be impacted severely during the period of extremes weather as indicated by negative returns at crop production and farm levels.

The above Article originally was published at SciFed Journal of Environmental Studies in 2017, to have a glance please visit: Click Here