Abstract: An integrated modelling framework (IMF) has been developed and applied to analyse climate change impacts and the effectiveness of adaptation measures in Austrian agriculture. The IMF couples the crop rotation model CropRota, the bio-physical process model EPIC and the bottom-up economic land use model PASMA at regional level (NUTS-3) considering agri-environmental indicators. Four contrasting regional climate model (RCM) simulations represent climate change until 2050. The RCM simulations are applied to a baseline and three adaptation and policy scenarios. Climate change increases crop productivity on national average in the IMF. Changes in average gross margins at national level range from 0% to + 5% between the baseline and the three adaptation and policy scenarios. The impacts at NUTS-3 level range from -5% to + 7% between the baseline and the three adaptation and policy scenarios. Adaptation measures such as planting of winter cover crops, reduced tillage and irrigation are effective in reducing yield losses, increasing revenues, or in improving environmental states under climate change. Future research should account for extreme weather events in order to analyse whether average productivity gains at the aggregated level suffice to cover costs from expected higher climate variability.

Abstract: Maize (Zea mays L.) is the most prominent crop in the Northeast Farming Region of China (NFR), and drought has been the largest limitation for maize production in this area during recent decades. The question of how to adapt maize production to drought has received great attention from policy makers, researchers and farmers. In order to evaluate the effects of adaptation strategies against drought and examine the influences of policy supports and farmer households’ characteristics on adopting decisions, a large scale household survey was conducted in five representative maize production counties across NFR. Our survey results indicated that using variety diversification, drought resistant varieties and dibbling irrigation are the three major adaptation strategies against drought in spring, and farmers also adopted changes in sowing time, conservation tillage and mulching to cope with drought in spring. About 20% and 18% of households enhanced irrigation against drought in summer and autumn, respectively. Deep loosening tillage and organic fertilizer are also options for farmers to resist drought in summer. Maize yield was highly dependent on soil qualities, with yields on land of high soil quality approximately 1050 kg/ha and 2400 kg/ha higher than for normal and poor soil conditions, respectively. Using variety diversification and drought resistant varieties can respectively increase maize yield by approximately 150 and 220 kg/ha under drought. Conservation tillage increased maize yield by 438–459 kg/ha in drought years. Irrigation improved maize yield by 419–435 kg/ha and 444–463 kg/ha against drought in summer and autumn, respectively. Offering information service, financial and technical support can greatly increase the use of adaptation strategies for farmers to cope with drought. However, only 46% of households received information service, 43% of households received financial support, and 26% of households received technical support against drought from the local government. The maize acreage and the irrigation access are the major factors that influenced farmers’ decisions to apply adaptation strategies to cope with drought in each season, but only 25% of households have access to irrigation. This indicates the need for enhanced public support for farmers to better cope with drought in maize production, particularly through improving access to irrigation.

Abstract: This study shows an average yield increase of 415–1,338 kg ha−1 per unit increase of the Shannon diversity index for feed barley cultivar use. There is a global quest to increase food production sustainably. Therefore, judicious farmer choices such as selection of crop cultivars are increasingly important. Cultivar diversity is limited and, as a consequence, corresponding crop yields are highly impacted by local weather variations and global climate change. Actually, there is little knowledge on the relationships between yields of regional crops and cultivar diversity, that is evenness and richness in cultivar use. Here, we hypothesized that higher cultivar diversity is related to higher regional yield. We also assumed that the diversity-yield relationship depends on weather during the growing season. Our data were based on farm yield surveys of feed and malting barley, Hordeum vulgare L.; spring wheat, Triticum aestivum L.; and spring turnip rape, Brassica rapa L. ssp. oleifera, from 1998 to 2009, representing about 4,500–5,500 farms annually. We modeled the relationships between regional yields and Shannon diversity indices in high-yielding (south-west) and low-yielding (central-east) regions of Finland using linear mixed models. Our results show that an increase of Shannon diversity index increases yield of feed barley. Feed barley had also the greatest cultivar diversity. In contrast, an average yield decrease of 1,052 kg ha−1 per unit increase in Shannon index was found for spring rape in 2006 and 2008. Our findings show that cultivar diversification has potential to raise mean regional yield of feed barley. Increasing cultivar diversity thus offers a novel, sustainability-favoring means to promote higher yields.