Abstract: Soils are vital for supporting food security and other ecosystem services. Climate change can affect soil functions both directly and indirectly. Direct effects include temperature, precipitation, and moisture regime changes. Indirect effects include those that are induced by adaptations such as irrigation, crop rotation changes, and tillage practices. Although extensive knowledge is available on the direct effects, an understanding of the indirect effects of agricultural adaptation options is less complete. A review of 20 agricultural adaptation case-studies across Europe was conducted to assess implications to soil threats and soil functions and the link to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The major findings are as follows: (a) adaptation options reflect local conditions; (b) reduced soil erosion threats and increased soil organic carbon are expected, although compaction may increase in some areas; (c) most adaptation options are anticipated to improve the soil functions of food and biomass production, soil organic carbon storage, and storing, filtering, transforming, and recycling capacities, whereas possible implications for soil biodiversity are largely unknown; and (d) the linkage between soil functions and the SDGs implies improvements to SDG 2 (achieving food security and promoting sustainable agriculture) and SDG 13 (taking action on climate change), whereas the relationship to SDG 15 (using terrestrial ecosystems sustainably) is largely unknown. The conclusion is drawn that agricultural adaptation options, even when focused on increasing yields, have the potential to outweigh the negative direct effects of climate change on soil degradation in many European regions.

Abstract: The first research project concerns methods of management with processes and resources in organizations and the economy. In order to address socio-economic problems, methods for evaluating the way in which natural resources are globally utilised in the face of the adverse effects of climate change must be developed. Previous findings of the project MACSUR allow to formulate the hypothesis that the method developed in UTP integrated with models of MACSUR partners is useful to assess the impact of climate change on food security in the context of growing economic risks in agricultural production. Verified hypothesis allows us to expect a common understanding on the assessment of the impact of climate change on food security in the light of the growing threat of food production.The second research project is to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the system of drip irrigation in the cultivation of selected crops in the area of particularly large water shortages. Field studies are carried out in parallel on two soil types in the Research Centre of the University of Technology and Life Sciences near Bydgoszcz. The results confirm the possibility of a significant increase in productivity of irrigated plants on very light and light soils. The most important result of the synergistic relationship of this project to MACSUR project can be economic evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of surveyed plants under conditions of increasing drought probability. The results will be presented to stakeholders – agricultural producers, which will confront their usefulness in the management of farms.This work was co-financed by NCBiR, Contract no. FACCE JPI/04/2012 – P100 PARTNER

Abstract: Climate change scenarios suggest that long periods without rainfall will occur in the future often causing instability of the agricultural products market. The aim of our research was to build a model describing the amount of precipitation and droughts for forecasting crop yields in the future. In this study, we analysed a non-standard mixture of gamma and one point distributions as the model of rainfall. On the basis of the rainfall data, one can estimate parameters of the distribution. Parameter estimators were constructed using a method of maximum likelihood. The obtained rainfall data allow confirming the hypothesis of the adequacy of the proposed rainfall models. Long series of droughts allow one to determine the probabilities of adverse phenomena in agriculture. Based on the model, yields of barley in the years 2030 and 2050 were forecasted which can be used for the assessment of other crops productivity. The results obtained with this approach can be used to predict decreases in agricultural production caused by prospective rainfall shortages. This will enable decision makers to shape effective agricultural policies in order to learn how to balance the food supplies and demands through an appropriate management of stored raw food materials and import/export policies.