Farmers' Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change - SA Case Studies: A case study project from the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia

摘要

There has long been a debate about the viability of grain farming on the upper Eyre Peninsula (EP) in South Australia due to the low average rainfall and fragile sandy soils. Climate change with projections of a warming and drying trend is reinvigorating this debate. The five years of growing seasons leading up to this study [2003 to 2007) are the driest run of five years on record. They are also drier than most of the projections for 2030. Over this dry period, some grain farming enterprises have fared better than others. If the recent run of seasons is used as a temporal analogue for 2030, the features of currently successful farm businesses may offer some indications of sources of resilience for a drier future. This resilience could come from agronomic practices, from enterprise mixorfarm management. Case studies were conducted by local farm management consultants on eleven farming businesses who had maintained their financial viability despite the recent run of poor seasons. All farms were involved in grain cropping but the percentage of total arable farm area used for cropping ranged from 100% to 60% and the remaining percentage was livestock, primarily sheep. Most cropping enterprises were zero till and ten of the eleven grew break crops (field peas and canola) but the area of break crops was small (about 5% or less of arable area). There did not appear to be any aspect of farming operations at the agronomic or farm enterprise level that could explain the success. This led to the conclusionthat farm management was more important than the particular farming system. Some common features of these successful businesses were as follows: They aimed to improve their business but in a measured and conservative way. An important business goal wasto achieve high equity and to recover that high equity after major expansions or investments. They were often not the earliest adopters of new technology. When they did adopt they did it well and consolidated before moving on to the next phase. They werekeen to learn (though often not formally educated), used a variety of information sources, were organised and allocated time to planning and reviewing. A conclusion of the study was that these businesses had successfully managed the succession of dry seasons and this provided a sense of optimism for grain farming on the Upper Eyre Peninsula in coping for the mild to moderate climate change scenarios projected over the coming decades.