Quelle adaptation de notre agriculture au changement climatique ?

Abstract

Agriculture is the result of a balance between soil, climate, plants and cropping techniques applied by the farmers. Once one of those elements, in this case the climate, is perceptibly modified in a sustainable way, it is important that the other elements are also modified to respect the balance. To adapt to climate change farmers can modify their strategic or tactic decisions. But the very first point is to have good ideas of what are to be expected in terms of climate modifications and their agronomic consequences: acceleration of crop cycles, increase of summer droughts and increase in inter-season and inter-annual variability. Concerning strategic choices, one must not expect revolution and climate change will not deeply modify cropping systems. Yet rainfed crops will be more difficult in the south while summer crops and crop successions will become easier in the north. Escape strategies in terms of crop and genotype choices could be advantageous. An important point of discussion is about sowing dates. If they could theoretically be advanced for summer crops, the soil water status may not be adequate for allowing farmers to enter fields with heavy machines. It is also because of soil dryness that winter crops sowing should be delayed. In order to provide the farmers with more quantified results an ANR project, CLIMATOR, is proceeding.

Keywords

• agriculture
• climate change
• crop management