Climate Change and Agriculture - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 455

estimates reviewed by de la Fuente and Villarooel (2013) for Mexico predict an increase
in poverty by roughly two percentage points from climate shifts and another two per-
cent from climate shocks. In all cases, larger changes are associated with more poverty.
Ultimately, the impacts of climate change on food security and poverty depend
on how households respond. The food system is a dynamic, behavioral system
(Pinstrup-Andersen and Watson, 2011). As the external environment changes, food
system actors are certain to change their actions in order to pursue their various goals.
These goals include meeting income and dietary needs and wants both now and in the
future, fulfilling social obligations, and producing environmental services that are val-
ued by the household.
Climate change poses at least two types of challenges to which households must
respond. One is the gradual change of environmental factors such as shifts in average
rainfall and average temperature; the other is the increasing variance of those factors
(e.g., rainfall), increasing the chance of large shocks (e.g., drought and natural disasters).
Households are likely to adapt differently to these “shifts” and “shocks” of climate change
(Baez, Kronick, and Mason 2012). Increased shocks will make agricultural conditions
in the coming season more uncertain, reducing farmers' ability to recognize, evaluate,
and respond to weather signals. This is likely to increase precautionary savings, but not
in forms that would lead to increased investment (Meza, Hansen, and Osgood 2008;
Ackerman, et al., 2009;). Yet it is investment that could potentially increase capacity to
adapt to future changes in climate. Linear projections, and many academic treatments,
do not account for agent responsiveness or social learning. To the extent climate change
leads farmers to adopt techniques that successfully mitigate its impacts, this adapta-
tion will lead researchers to overestimate its impact on agriculture. On the other hand,
as will be argued in more detail later, to the extent that increasing climate stress and
extreme weather events lead farmers to adopt more myopic strategies in order to survive
today's challenges, despite the costs they realize those events will impose on them in the
future—if they survive—they may be underestimates.
Agricultural Activities Impact the Environment and Poverty
It is obvious that agricultural activities impact the natural resources involved in produc-
tion. Agricultural activities also impact their external environment. The most impor-
tant impacts of agricultural activities on the environment include carbon sequestration,
deforestation, soil degradation, water usage, and methane production. Carbon seques-
tration refers to capturing atmospheric carbon in plants and soils. Some agricultural
practices naturally increase carbon sequestration (e.g., growing crops), whereas oth-
ers release that stored carbon (e.g., harvesting crops). Since soils contain twice as much
carbon as the atmosphere or vegetation, agriculture is an essential part of humanity's
impact on greenhouse gasses. Deforestation releases the carbon sequestered in forests
into the atmosphere. Nearby, poor people who depend on forests for their livelihoods
and the women and children who must travel further in search of firewood are likely