Coping with Extreme Weather Events: Strategies for Agriculture.

Extreme weather events occur throughout the year and are expected to increase in the future. However, the specific degree and timing of extreme events, e.g., heat waves, intense precipitation, or drought, are difficult to predict. To offset these impacts, producers have to be aware of the potential consequences of extreme events and steps they can implement to reduce the impact and create resilience in their agricultural systems. The vulnerability of any agricultural system can be defined as the exposure + sensitivity - adaptive capacity and in extreme events, the vulnerability can result in complete loss of the crop or livestock. In agriculture, we need to focus on reducing the sensitivity and increasing the adaptive capacity. For cropping systems, an extreme event is often related to either excess or deficit precipitation. Increasing the soil organic matter and increasing crop cover on the soil will reduce the effects of the precipitation extremes because of the increased amount of water holding capacity in the soil. Soil organic matter can be both a mitigation and adaptation practice with positive impacts on alleviating the extreme events as was observed during the 2012 drought. Producers with soil practices that increased organic matter produced record grain yields. Reducing the sensitivity of agricultural systems occurs through management practices that reduce the likelihood of the system being exposed to an extreme event, e.g., changing planting date to shift the flowering stage to earlier or later in the season or changing crop rotation to avoid exposure to the extremes. There are opportunities for enhanced management decisions to offset the impacts of extreme weather events and these require an understanding of how mitigation and adaptation practices are interrelated.