Building agricultural resilience to drought in Italy

Author(s):  
◽  
One Earth ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy M. Bowles ◽  
Maria Mooshammer ◽  
Yvonne Socolar ◽  
Francisco Calderón ◽  
Michel A. Cavigelli ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 721-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Sardos ◽  
Sara Muller ◽  
Marie-France Duval ◽  
Jean-Louis Noyer ◽  
Vincent Lebot

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. N. Anderson ◽  
Barbara Anderson

Maya agriculture is currently outperforming alternatives across the Yucatán Peninsula, while changing to incorporate new ideas that fit with its basic commitment to shifting agriculture based on maize as the staple and over 100 minor crops. Considerable research over the last 60 years has shown the reasons for agricultural resilience, which include thorough understanding of the Yucatán environment and use of a range of resources and techniques that allow fine-tuning in particular situations while remaining flexible overall. Development efforts have usually failed in this environment, which has shallow and fragile soils and suffers from frequent droughts, typhoons, and pest outbreaks. The predictor of development success is usually supply and demand: where there is a market, the Maya will work to develop supply capability; where there is no market, traditional subsistence methods are better than the introductions. Government or international help is, however, needed to help develop markets and to provide expert knowledge of how to mobilize for them and connect to them. When this has been done, some important successes have followed. A current problem is the international subsidy economy. Neoliberalism in the Maya context involves a reduction of government help to local and small-scale enterprises while large-scale multinational firms are given enormous direct and indirect subsidies by their home governments and by commodity-producing nations. The resulting unfair competition is a block on development. Actual free markets—in the sense of local grassroots enterprise being given something like a level playing field—could be an improvement.Key words: Maya; neoliberalism; Indigenous agricultural knowledge; access to markets


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-862
Author(s):  
Simbarashe Kativhu ◽  
Marizvikuru M. Mwale ◽  
Jethro Zuwarimwe

Abstract Smallholder farmers in South Africa are facing increased pressure to manage water use due to growing scarcity and environmental water demand. This prompts the need to build resilient irrigation systems particularly for smallholder farmers. Building resilience is more pertinent in Limpopo province, where crop and animal production is hampered by water scarcity. Currently, there is an array of generic adaptation strategies for attaining resilient irrigation schemes in South Africa and beyond. However, the effectiveness and feasibility of these resilience measures at farm level, particularly among smallholders in marginalised areas, are not well researched in Limpopo Province. The current paper draws lessons from adaptation mechanisms in Southern Africa, indicates areas that require further studies and recommends ways for enhancing smallholder resilience against water scarcity. The article contributes to efforts for enhancing water security and fulfil the targets set in sustainable development goal 2 of zero hunger, South Africa Vision 2030, and the government's food security mandate, particularly through suggesting ways for enhancing smallholder farmer resilience and water security.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agne Zickiene ◽  

The increasing frequency and magnitude of adverse meteorological events together with the growing uncertainty in the upcoming future pose more and more challenges to agriculture. Therefore, the future sustainability of agriculture will increasingly depend on its resilience, i.e. the capacity to withstand various perturbations and to recover from them. The direct payment (DP) system of the EU Common agricultural policy (CAP) is the most financed EU support scheme for agriculture; however, research on its impact on the important phenomena of resilience is scarce and fragmented. In order to fill this gap, this paper offers an extensive overview of literature and a summarized list of factors that are mentioned most often as potentially influencing the agricultural resilience. Based on this, the possible impact of DP on agricultural resilience was analyzed. In this paper, it is argued that this impact is transferred mostly through changing farms’ financial capabilities as well as farmers’ attitudes and behavior, and is both positive and negative. Such phenomena as low crop insurance uptake and decrease in productivity may be due to the overcrowding effects of direct payments. These hypotheses are being tested in a survey, conducted in the meantime.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
IP Holman ◽  
TM Hess ◽  
D Rey ◽  
JW Knox

Droughts affect a range of economically important sectors but their impacts are usually most evident within agriculture. Agricultural impacts are not confined to arid and semi-arid regions, but are increasingly experienced in more temperate and humid regions. A transferable drought management framework is needed to transition from coping to adapting to drought through supporting improved planning and policy decision-making through the supply chain from primary producers to consumers. A combination methodology using a Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) approach, an analysis of weekly agricultural trade publications and semi-structured interviews were used to explore drought impacts and responses, using the 2018 United Kingdom drought as a case study. While most reported responses were on-farm, a diverse range of measures were implemented across institutional scales and through the supply chain, reflecting complex interactions within the food system. However, drought responses were dominated by reactive and crisis-driven actions to cope with, or enhance the recovery from, drought; but which contributed little to increased resilience to future droughts. Our transferable drought management framework shows how improved collaboration and multi-sector engagement across spatial, governance and supply-chain scales to develop human and social capital can enable the transition from coping (short-term and reactive) to adapting (long-term and anticipatory) strategies to increase agricultural resilience to future droughts.


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