On-farm management in a changing climate: A participatory approach to adaptation Steven Crimp 1 , Don Gaydon 1 , Peter DeVoil 2 and Mark Howden 1 – 1 CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and 2 Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries Take Home Messages • There is firm evidence that, in addition to climate variability, there are also changes (trends) in key climate indices (i.e. rainfall and temperature) resulting from human activity, which will have important consequences on agricultural production in Australia. • Good risk managers need to consider both climate variability and change in their on-farm plans in order to ensure future sustainability. • Under changed climate conditions (up to 1.1 o C warmer and up to 6% drier) expected around 2030 simulation studies show that in the Wimmera Mallee region yield losses can be offset through improved residue management and longer fallows. • Under the same set of climate changes, but with no change in management, simulated median yields may be 15% lower than present long term yields. By changing current management practices to include longer fallows these losses can be ameliorated (i.e. only 6% lower). Your management can have a positive impact. • Local crop management adaptations are likely to play a significant role in maintaining or increasing current productivity under variable and changing climate conditions. • Climate variability and change are likely to continue to have different impacts in different regions and will require locally specific adaptation strategies. Background There is now firm evidence that the global climate has changed over the past century and will continue to change throughout the 21st century in response to continued growth in global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2007). There is growing evidence that current changes in climate are linked to both human activities and natural variability (CSIRO, 2007; IPCC, 2007) and that current patterns of change in Australia (particularly temperature but also rainfall) are consistent with those projected (Cai and Cowen, 2007; Timbal et al., 2006). History has demonstrated that natural resource based industries, such as agriculture, are particularly sensitive to climate with yields highly responsive to climate variations. For this reason a strong incentive exists to enhance the adaptive capacity of agricultural systems in order to deal with further changes expected as a result of human-induced climate change. Our current farming environment is complex, being already characterised by market risk and variation in resource conditions and technologies. Climate change will further add to this complexity. However, there are many potential incremental adaptation options available to offset projected impacts (Howden et al., 2007). These incremental adaptation options often involve modification of current practises to offset risk associated with climate variability (Howden et al., 2007). Implementation of these options is likely to have substantial benefits