A Multi-Level Framework for Adaptation to Drought Within Temperate Agriculture

Ip Holman,D Rey,Tm Hess,Jw Knox

doi:10.3389/fenvs.2020.589871

Abstract

Droughts affect a range of economically important sectors but their impacts are usually most evident within agriculture. Agricultural impacts are not confined to arid and semi-arid regions, but are increasingly experienced in more temperate and humid regions. A transferable drought management framework is needed to transition from coping to adapting to drought through supporting improved planning and policy decision-making through the supply chain from primary producers to consumers. A combination methodology using a Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) approach, an analysis of weekly agricultural trade publications and semi-structured interviews were used to explore drought impacts and responses, using the 2018 United Kingdom drought as a case study. While most reported responses were on-farm, a diverse range of measures were implemented across institutional scales and through the supply chain, reflecting complex interactions within the food system. However, drought responses were dominated by reactive and crisis-driven actions to cope with, or enhance the recovery from, drought; but which contributed little to increased resilience to future droughts. Our transferable drought management framework shows how improved collaboration and multi-sector engagement across spatial, governance and supply-chain scales to develop human and social capital can enable the transition from coping (short-term and reactive) to adapting (long-term and anticipatory) strategies to increase agricultural resilience to future droughts.

Highlights

Droughts are a serious natural hazard and widely recognized as being one of the dominant causes of global environmental, agricultural and economic damage (Vicente-Serrano et al, 2010)
There needs to be greater emphasis directed toward building resilience and adaptive capacity to cope with future drought events if potentially serious consequences for rural economies and food security are to be avoided
The reported drought responses were dominated by actions that focused on shortterm actions (Table 1 and Supplementary Table S2) to cope with the drought or short-medium term actions (Table 2 and Supplementary Table S3) that enhanced the recovery from the drought, but which contributed to little anticipated increase in resilience to future drought events

Summary

Introduction

Droughts are a serious natural hazard and widely recognized as being one of the dominant causes of global environmental, agricultural and economic damage (Vicente-Serrano et al, 2010). The impacts of an agricultural drought often extend well beyond the farm gate, with drought-induced losses in food crop production at the farm level typically spreading along the value chain (e.g., Newton et al, 2011). Such drought impacts are not confined to arid and semi-arid regions (e.g., Azadi et al, 2018; Kuwayama et al, 2019), but increasingly experienced in more temperate and humid regions where droughts were historically not considered a major risk to agricultural sustainability (Bachmair et al, 2015; Rey et al, 2017; Parsons et al, 2019). There needs to be greater emphasis directed toward building resilience and adaptive capacity to cope with future drought events if potentially serious consequences for rural economies and food security are to be avoided

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion