2210-7843 © 2010 Published by Elvier B.V .doi:10.1016/j.aaspro.2010.09.014
Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia 1 (2010) 116–125
Available online at
International Conference on Agricultural Risk and Food Security 2010
worth的用法绿豆芽的营养价值Farmer’s Adaptation to Climate Risk in the Context of China
-A rearch on Jianghan Plain of Yangtze River Basin
CHEN Li a , ZUO Ting a *,Rabina G. Rasaily a
a 1.Introduction
No.2 Yuanmingyuan West Road, Haidian Districk, Beijing, 100193, P.R.China Abstract
Frequently unknown climate change increas the risk of agriculture,more attention have been paid to agricultural system itlf in the rearch field, but few has been attached to the perspective of social dimension.Bad on the rearch on Yangtze River Basin of China, the paper has adopted vulnerability theory including the exposure of agricultural ecosystem, farmers’nsitivity to exposure and adaptive capacity to climate risk,to explain farmer’s adaptation to climate risk.It concludes that climate change has incread climate risk in agriculture and the uncertainty of agricultural production.Confronting climate risk in agriculture, different farming bodies have shown different farm and off-farm/non-farm adaptations in pre-risk, during risk and post-risk,which has reduced their short-term vulnerability.Houhold life cycle, pressure, institution,available resources and technologi
es are the key influential factors.From the adaptation in long term, it still requires external support and more investment including agricultural insurance system,village-level information and technology dismination mechanism.
©2010Published by Elvier B.V.
Key words:Climate risk;vulnerability; adaptation; traditional knowledge; exposure-nsitivity 1S
With large emissions of greenhou gas, changes in temperature and humidity,as well as extreme weathers [1], climate change has been an existing and obvious fact in our world and more and more rearch are taking on in this field. Agriculture is arguably referred as one of the most climate nsitive ctors [2] and it has produced positive and negative implications to climate change. Olen et al. [3] summarizes that the intensive farming systems would have great impact on emissions of greenhou gas such as in Western Europe, whereas some of the low input farming systems currently located in marginal areas may be most verely affected by climate change like in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, in the context of global climate change, more attention on reducing agriculture’s contribution to the greenhou gas should be paid to intensive farming systems while the subsistence farming systems should work more on decreasing agricultural vulnerability to climate change. The latter situation will be discusd in this paper.
Agricultural production has always been a risky endeavor [4] and the agriculture vulnerability to climate change is widely recognized in scientific and policy circles, as identified in international policy agreements [5]. The rearch on climate change in international rural development began in the 18th to 20th century, and it mainly concentrated in the climate impact on crop growing environment and crops itlf adaptation. When came to 21st century, with the frequent occurrence of extreme events in the world, farmers’adaptation perspectives become the dominant theme.Actually, many studies in different countries have explored farmers’ vulnerability and adaptation
Chen Li et al. / Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia 1 (2010) 116–125117 to climate risk such as in USA, Canada and Africa [5] [6] [7]. All of the studies have provided some empirical evidence and remarkable lessons for farmer’s adaptation to climate change.Adaptation science and international framework for joint or collective action are also in the on-going process [2]. Besides, Monirul et al. [8] believes that developing countries are vulnerable to extremes of normal climatic variability, and climate change is likely to increa the frequency and magnitude of some extreme weather events and disasters.
As a developing country, China is also facing the similar problem in the arena of rural development. However, in the context of China, farmer’s respon to climate risk, as one of the issue on social dim
ension rearch on climate change, has yet to become a high priority item and there is little evidence and lessons being taken to facilitate the adaptation.
Bad on empirical rearch at farmer level in two administrative villages of Jianghan Plain of China,which are located in the Middle and Low Reaches of Yangtze River Basin, this paper explores Chine farmers’exposure, nsitivity, adaptive respons and adaptive capacity to climate risk in crop farming systems.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2reviews the adopted theories. Section 3 provides an overview of agriculture and climatic variance in Jianghan Plain. Section 4 discuss rearch approach and methodology, rearch framework, study area, data collection and analysis. Section 5prents results and concludes.
kangaroos2.Climate change,vulnerability theory and adaptation
Climate change has been an existing fact in today’s world.For rearch issues on climate change, at first, many studies focud largely on predicting how certain biophysical systems were being affected by and would respond to climate change. After getting better understanding of how climate changes affect biophysical process, the rearch has been shifted into its implications to human activity and that requires attention to human dimensions [10]. Since farmers are nsitive and expos
ed to a range of climatic and non-climatic forces which do not act in isolation of each other[5], systematic analysis method has been introduced to explore the complicated relationship between climate change and farmer’s adaptation. Vulnerability theory is such a kind of method.
Vulnerability is such a concept that was mentioned in different rearch traditions [11]. Rearch on vulnerability to the impacts of climate change spans all the antecedent and successor traditions [12], becau it is explicitly referred to in the United Nations F ramework Convention on Climate Change where commitments are made by countries to promote adaptation to address vulnerable regions and peoples[10].
In order to target the vulnerable regions and peoples, many indicators and measurement methods have been explored.One of the most influential and widely-ud components is the one defined by IPCC,and it includes exposure, nsitivity and adaptive capacity[10].Exposure in this ca is the magnitude and duration of the climate-related exposure such as a drought or change in precipitation, nsitivity is the degree to which the system is affected by the exposure, and adaptive capacity is the system’s ability to withstand and recover from the exposure [13].
For the relationship, Ford et al. [10] believe that exposure-nsitivity is dependent upon both the cha
racteristics of climatic conditions and the nature of the community in question which varies among groups of the community; adaptive capacity is dynamic, varying over space and time with the characteristics of the human system; there are not mutually exclusive between exposure-nsitivity and adaptive capacity and here is the example, the range of technological available for adaptation may enable exposure to be managed while the same technology may also affect risk evaluation strategies and result in more risk taking behavior.Bad on the experimental rearch in Africa, Hahn et al. [14] have given some further major sub-components and indicators, such as Socio-Demographic Profile, Livelihood Strategies, Social Networks, Health, F ood, Water and Natural Disasters and Climate Variability. Multiple factors including broad-scale and local factors have been approved to affect vulnerability too.
Depending on the scale of the target group, vulnerability concept can be applied in different levels including the state level, the institutional level, community level and farmer level.Top-down approach and bottom-up approach are two different modes for asssing vulnerability perspective.Since farmers are the first actor confronting the change of climate and farming system change,it is necessary to understand and gather farmer’s perception and adaptation to climate changes.
Adaptation is a process of deliberate changes, often in respon to multiple pressures and changes t
hat affect people’s lives,and successful adaptations may be viewed as tho actions that decrea vulnerability and increa
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resilience overall, in respon to a range of immediate needs,risks and aspirations[15].In order to create a harmonious environment both internal and external;and to invest in social adaptation, it will be very favorable to identify the preci drivers and determinants and understand the strategic process of adaptation at farm-level.
奖杯英文
上海笔记本维修培训3.Overview of climate change and agriculture in Jianghan Plain of China
China is a developing country in the world with large land area, which determines that in the context of China, climate change and agriculture varies in relation to time and space. The Jianghan Plain in Hubei Province,located in the central area of China and as one of the four plains in Yangtze River Basin, is lected as the rearch study site. It was formed by the rushing water of Yangtze River and Hanjiang River and located at north latitude of 29°26ƍ-31°10ƍand east longitude of 111°45ƍ-114°16ƍ[16].Water table is usually 0.5-1.0 meters away from the earth’s surface[16], which makes water logging easily happen in the rainy days.
杭州英语翻译For climatic resources,Jianghan Plain has a subtropical monsoon climate with 2000 hours in Sunshine Duration, 460-480 KJ per square centimeter in Annual Solar Radiation, 240-260 days for frost-free period and 5100-5300 ćfor active accumulated temperature[16].The abundant agricultural climatic resources make the local area famous for “a land of milk and honey”and the well-established agricultural infrastructure, especially the irrigation facilities, has incread the advantages for the local villagers in the area of agriculture farming.
However, the global climate change also influences the local agricultural climate resources. According to the data provided by the 147 climate sites in Yangtze River Basin, the average temperature in 1990s had incread by 0.33 ćand during 2001-2005, the temperature had incread by 0.71 ć;as for the rainfall of the whole years in 1961-2005, the change was not so significant but with slender increa, while in asonal trend, it changed a lot[17]. The rearch also predicts that in the following 50 years, the ground temperature in Yangtze River Basin would rai 1.5 -2ćand the frequency of extreme climate occurrence will show a further increa trend. Bad on the meteorological data in Hubei Province, related rearch also shows that the main agricultural climate risk is just increasing, and asonal wind, temperature and rainfall are the key climate risky factors[18] [19].
Traditionally, the agriculture of Jianghan Plain is double-crop rotation annually and two types of farming field, the paddy field and dry land can be found.Different crops are grown in different types of land and different demands for water are required depending on the growing periods.Accordingly, the farmers in Jianghan Plain have relatively strong adaptive capacity to climate change due to the available facilities in the area such as infrastructure and relative high economic status compare to the other regions,however, it couldn’t prove that the climate risk on agriculture is negligible towards the external environmental risks and farmers have to respond to the climate change by themlves.
4.Rearch approach and methodology
This paper is bad on both, a review of the existing literature and empirical rearch methods have been adopted. Since climate risk is usually connected with many other attributes of farmer’s livelihood system, humanism methodology[20]is also ud to understand the real circumstance;farmer’s loss to climate risk and decision-making process to cope with all the risky factors involved.
4.1.Conceptual framework
Chen Li et al. / Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia 1 (2010) 116–125119 The conceptual fr
amework employed in the study has been shown in F igure 1. Agricultural climate risks are embedded in a ries of changes in agricultural climate environment. The risks have been expod to agricultural eco-system and a combination of forces in social dimension takes place dependently, which can be called “farmer’s exposure-nsitivity”. F armer’s agricultural income becomes changeable and finally farmer’vulnerability occurs. As agriculture is part of farmer houhold’s livelihood system and farming risk is usually shared within the members of the whole family [21], farmer’s adaptation is interlinked not only to the agricultural system, but also to the off-farm activities and human, social capital of the houhold. After deep consideration of all the surrounding factors such as;social, environmental and economical, farmers continues for adaptation to changes, which can also bring new risky opportunities for them.
妩媚的英文
Figure 1 Conceptual Framework of Farmer’s Adaptation to Climate Risk
4.2.Data collection and analysis
The conceptual framework shows the relationship between climate risk and farmer’s adaptation. Various internal such as structure of the family and external factors such as social curity policy can influence farmer’s vulnerability金融英语证书
120Chen Li et al. / Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia 1 (2010) 116–125
in climate changes.The empirical rearch was designed to document farmer’s perception, direct and indirect influences and decision-making progress. Key informant interview and houhold mi-structured questionnaire ud to identify individual farmer’s specific attributes of livelihood. Key informant interview was designed to know about the general picture of the villages and the former climate risk, thus would help finish the preparation for designing the houhold mi-structured questionnaire, which is a guideline and reference to do the in-depth interview of individual houhold.
In order to avoid the predominated factors and bias on respon,firstly, the information collected on demographic characteristics and socio-economic conditions of the family/houholds,as well as of tho members living in the same hou and who income and expenditures are counted as part of
the family economic conditions. Secondly,we reviewed the yield and income of houhold’s from agricultural farming system, the variation of yield compared with former years and extreme climate change affects to the main crops.Thirdly, agricultural production (inputs and costs); fourthly, income from other off-farm activities Lastly,open-ended questions were asked about the perception on agricultural climate resources such as the direction of the change of asonal precipitation, temperature, natural hazards and their n on the international finance crisis, agricultural insurance, agricultural policy,market mechanism and price ,available and applied technology.
As of the main agricultural production zone/area, farmer’s adaptation strategies ascertained by asking questions about the various influential factors and the actions they take to counteract the perceived agricultural risk. The way in which the question was phrad aimed to parate out a “farmer’s respon to agricultural risk” rather than from their respons to focus mainly on climate change.Data were analyzed using SPSS. During the data processing, each houhold’s attributes of vulnerability, livelihood situation, exposure-nsitivity and adaptive capacity was identified and validated from one houhold situation to the other considering the causality behind each attributes.report是什么意思
4.3.Rearch area
XT County is a typical region in Jianghan Plain of China with large agricultural farming population. The climate risk has occupied 85% of the natural hazards in the county [22]. Two administrative villages(A and B), conducted in-depth interview in 70 houholds using mi-structured questionnaire.According to the official statistics, the farmers’net income per capita of the county is about 769.4 $ (1$=6.82 RMB, hereinafter) in 2008 [23] including relative developing agricultural industries and convenient work opportunities for working outside. The relative higher income has made the farmers here with more adaptive capacity to climate risk in finance. Meanwhile, the farmer’s heterogeneity can’t be ignored.
, Village A has245 houholds with 1200 persons and total of 120 hectares farming land while Village B has 408 houholds with 1600 persons and total of 200 hectares farming land..Crop farming, animal husbandry and non-farm activities(migrant workers)are the major source of income..However, majority of the population are involved in crop farming business. After 30 years’of development, farmers have formed a relative stable structure in crop farming business.Rice, cotton, wheat and cole are the main crops and other crops like barley, corn, soybean and same are grown in the area.
烟台外语学校Since 1990s, along with the development of market economy, the young and elite’s population involv
ed in the market oriented business which become relatively more comparative advantage towards the agriculture ctor. It also contributed to that some farmers give up farming and migrating to the city areas for work.The houholds members like the elderly and disadvantaged couples have been left behind in the village and they were engaged in the agriculture farming which ultimately affected the function of agriculture farming.
The relative high area in farming land and part-time migration has improved the life quality of the crop farming group. From the total structure of their livelihood situation, they were first in lf-sufficiency level and then came to the well-off level.However, from the nature of the farmer’s livelihood, they are still in the developing process and the lack of risk insurance and social curity always expo them to vulnerable position.
5.Rearch findings
5.1.Climate risk and agricultural ecosystem
