Page 155 - Climate Change and Food Systems

chapter 4: an overview of climate change impact on crop production and its variability in europe, related uncertainties and research challenges
modelling, for integrated assessments at farm level, and through regional, national and global IAMs.
The current approach of using process-
based biophysical impact models across scales, assessment variables and crop management options needs further study and possibly revision. Alternative methods, such as agroclimatic indices approaches (Trnka et al., 2011) combined
with crop modelling (Rötter et al., 2013a), or a combination of empirical-statistical and crop simulation modelling (van Oort et al., 2012;
Rötter et al., 2013b), may be promising and should be explored further.
Finally, for some reason, methodologies for assessing CC impacts on global and regional food supply have paid little attention to capturing short- term variability occurring simultaneously at different locations, nor have crop simulation models and other assessment tools been made sufficiently fit to reliably capture climate variability and extremes, and their impact on food production at regional and global scale (Wheeler et al., 2000; Rötter et al., 2011b; Lobell and Gourdij, 2012; Lobell et al., 2013; Wheeler and von Braun, 2013). Biophysical and bio-economic CC impact assessment methodologies and tools need to be further developed, to allow integrated studies of such situations at multiple scales, from farm to global level and back, for ex ante evaluation of alternative adaptation responses in various iterations (as indicated schematically in Figure 11).
Such information is needed to guide formulation of trade and climate policies and inform decision-making on adaptation strategies at different levels of organization and spatial scales (farm household, district, country, etc.).
References
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