Climate change and the resulting ongoing and forecast impacts make it necessary to take measures to encourage greater resilience in agricultural activities. All practices that aim at preventing and/or reducing climate risks are adaptation actions. Many of these measures could also have positive effects on the mitigation plan (i.e., a reduction in the causes behind climate change, more specifically, the emission of greenhouse gases), showing the synergic and non-complementary relationship that links these two concepts.
A set of adaptation actions is proposed below, drawn up thanks to the contribution of experts in the areas of agronomics, meteorology, economics, etc. For each of these, certain explanatory items are presented which allow an assessment of the applicability of the individual actions to their commercial farms, more specifically: the agro-food supply chain, climate risk, range of action, contribution towards mitigation, technical difficulties, ideal farm size, effectiveness, time-frame and costs/benefits.
The adoption of adaptation measures almost always carries a cost. This cost may relate to the initial investment and/or the operating expenses for the implemented action. In most cases, the expenses incurred translate into annual costs in terms of investment depreciation, technical means (water, energy, etc.), maintenance and manpower. Therefore, any decision to implement adaptation measures must carefully weigh the costs and benefits deriving from their adoption. For more information on the study carried out by CRAE-PB, please refer to the full report “Cost/benefit analysis of each climate change adaptation measure”.