"SEC S20W1: Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture"

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Hello Agro friends, welcome to the Steemit engagement Challenge for season 20, week 1. We are happy to be particpatimg here. We promise to make our course more explicit from start to finish.

Agriculture is part of humans, and humans depend heavily on agricultural-based activities for survival and advancement in many of their endeavors. Our week 1 topic would be centered on the teaching; "Impact of Climate on Agriculture".

Course Outline

• Introduction to Climate Change
• Impacts of Climate change on Crop yield, Livestock, and Global Food Security
• Climate Change, the Vulnerability and Adaptation patterns
• Mitigation aganist impacts of Climate Change
• Home work Task

Impact of Climate on Agriculture

For this week's teaching, we would review holistically the impact of climate change on agricultural activities. Climate is one major factor we just have to consider each time we discuss agriculture because of the seasonal changes inherent in its presence. A factor caused by both natural and human activities.

Human activities from greenhouse gas emissions like burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, agriculture, and industrialization top some of the human activities attributed to the changes we have today. Whereas chanhes in solar variations and earth orbit, and volcanic eruptions, top natural causes.

Climate change has continued to have significant impacts on agricultural activities, which affect most of its operations. Operations like crop yields, livestock production, and overall food security cannot be left alone, given the threats from climatic factors. Let's take an individual impact assessment on some of these significant areas we find worrisome.

Climate Change, the Impact on Crop Yields:

This could be primarily tailored to the unstable variations in temperatures observed across the globe due to the continued distortion in the ozone layers, an effect attributed to human activities.

Variations in temperatures over time, drastically affect our crop yields and quality type through alteration of growing seasons.

This has seen that inconsistencies in growing seasons periodically alter our yields. Warmer temperatures are not ideal for the best yields and not good seasons for crops to do well.

The increasing heat waves across the globe have been a threat over time as this affects crop yield. We could see farmers without commensurate support and skill sets complaining about these intense and unusual temperature variations.

How about the observed precipitation changes? This is known to be the major cause of drought or flooding. The effect of these duo cannot be quantified relative to agricultural activities.

Climate Change, the Impact on Livestock Production

Our livestock are not left out from the effects of temperature variations. If this could be seen to also affect humans, there is no doubt that these livestock could be worse hit if precautionary measures aren't taken. Their productivity, reproduction index, and entire health system are affected either due to excessive heatwaves or flooding incidences that dislodge and eventually cause deaths.

Impacts on feed availability and sufficiency due to altered growing conditions also raise concern. If crop yields could be affected, livestock depend mostly on most of these plant foods for survival and optimal performance. Quality and quality are usually the subject of concern.

Unpleasant and unfavorable climate changes also bring about changes in livestock disease dynamics. There are usually alterations in animal disease dynamics when there are temperature variations over time. If concerted efforts aren't taken timely, there are usually incurred losses from death rates due to disease outbreaks.

Incidences of droughts and flooding are usually the first point of worry during climatic impacts. This, hence, affects the grazing pattern of animals, poses challenges in their habitation, and reduces their performance either due to poor nutrient yields from plant foods or relocation factors from flooding concerns.

Climate Change, the Impact on Global Food Security

The reduced and threatened shortages from the poor performances of crops and livestock caused by climate changes pose a huge risk to the world food security system. There is a direct distortation of crop productivity as a result of temperature variations that alter growing seasons, disease outbreak dynamism, and improved crop performance.

This instability in the agricultural sector brings about food inflation due to shortages in overall productivity. A situation where demand pressures outweigh supply in a growing world population.

The resultant effect of this menace over time causes food malnutrition. A case where nutrition and health in this value chain are threatened severely.

Climate Change, Impacts on Vulnerability and Adaptation

We won't fail to align our teachings to our humans and as well adapt. in all these scenarios. Due to climatic factors, small-scale farmers are most vulnerable due to the limited resources within their space unlike the large presence of infrastructure within the medium and large scale farmers. While considering the size of farmers, women, in this case, are likely the most affected gender because of some of the social and economic attachments within our societies.

But in adaption, we may see that though we may have climatic changes, there is some resilience along the path. Traditional agro methods, while carrying out our activities, are the best in adaptation to climate change. Notwithstanding, practices like conservation and agro-forestry help in withstanding climate changes.

Mitigating Impacts of Climate Changes

Humans have their way of responding to situations within their space, be it of good or bad outcomes. Climate change isn't different from any of that. These are some of the ways humans have responded to climate change below;

1. Promoting sustainable agro practices by limiting greenhouse emissions
2. Development and deployment of more climate-resilient crops and livestock that are capable of withstanding thin and thick seasons.
3. In the case of drought, proper management of irrigation channels would help ameliorate these problems.
4. Proactiveness in our early warning signals. Predicting and responding to these climatic factors is another best way to overcome potential threats.

In summary, by understanding these impacts vis-à-vis how they affect crop yield, livestock productivity, and global food security, we can better handle climatic impacts on agricultural activities and address more sustainable food security.

Homework for students

• Describe in detail how agricultural productivity is affected by climate change.

• Discuss how extreme rains and extreme droughts damage crops.

• Discuss in stages how new pests and diseases are emerging as a result of climate change AND what measures farmers can take to prevent them.

• Discuss what changes in irrigation systems are required due to climate change.

• Explain the two best ways to respond to climate change.

Guidelines and Rules

• The title will be: "SEC | S20W1: Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture"

• The post must contain a minimum of 350 words, be free from plagiarism, and not use Artificial Intelligence (AI).

• In your first three tags, use #agro-s20w1, #country (eg. #nigeria or #bangladesh), and #steemesclusive.

• If using the hashtag #burnsteem25 make sure you give 25% of the reward to @null

• Invite at least 3 friends to participate.

• Use copyright-free images with proper sourcing.

• "All entries should be made in the steem-agro community or on your personal blog"

• Paste your post link in the comment section, and don't forget to Vote and Resteem this post.

• This contest starts Monday, 9th September, 2024 at 00:00 UTC and ends on Sunday, 15th September, 2024, at 23:59 UTC.

Rewards/Prizes

Note that students with outstanding and quality publications would be selected for each week while considering adherence to all stipulated guidelines and post-presentation. However, five (5) students would be presented for support as required by the steemit team for their prizes.

Kind regards
@xkool24
For:Team-Agro

Cc: @mainuna