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Australia’s graingrowers will have to adapt to climate change
Australia
March 17, 2006

It’s hardly a new message that CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems climate researcher Mark Howden delivered to a recent Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) Update for Advisers, but it was highly relevant.

Dr Howden’s message was that Australia’s graingrowers will have to “change with the times” as they adapt to the expected climate changes. But then, he said, they’ve been adapting already to the early stages of climate change.

They’ll have to cope with more erratic, and sometimes more intensive rainfall, El Nino conditions becoming “almost the norm, rather than the exception”, higher temperatures, fewer frosts and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations which will improve crop growth but decrease grain protein.  

More than 120 private and public sector advisers attended the Dubbo Update, one of the annual round organised by the GRDC to ensure the grains industry remains aware of the latest, locally relevant, research results.

The NSW and Queensland DPIs, CSIRO, universities and agribusiness collaborate with the GRDC in presenting the Updates, while the corporation’s northern region coordinator of Updates, John Cameron, liaises with local committees to ensure Update speakers address issues of local research interest.

Dr Howden told his Dubbo Update audience scientists had detected changes in rainfall patterns, sea levels, rates of glacial retreat and biological responses consistent with expectations of “greenhouse” climate change.

Last year was the warmest in Australia’s historical record – 1.09 degrees higher than the average between 1960 and 1990 – and the last 10 years had been the warmest decade ever recorded instrumentally.

The last 100 years were the warmest of the millennium, perhaps even the last 800,000 years.

The most up to date predictions were for a further increase in global average temperatures of 1.5 to 6 degrees by the end of the present century, and it was hard to believe such changes would not have implications for Australia’s cropping industries.

Dr Howden said while Australian farmers would have to be even more adaptable, there were a number of sensible things growers and industry could do to cope with, and even take advantage of, climate change.

The tools and approaches for managing existing climate change variability would be a good start, but they would need some additional improvements and capabilities, such as taking account of factors likeincreased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

“Higher carbon dioxide levels make plants more water and light-efficient, resulting in greater forage biomass or grain production, especially in dry years, but there will also be a tendency towards reduced plant nitrogen levels and grain protein,” Dr Howden said. 

“The direct impacts of climate changes on Australian agriculture will be the result of the combined effect of carbon dioxide increases, rises in temperature, changes in evaporation and changes in rainfall averages, variability and intensity.

“It will be the integrated impacts of these changes that we will need to adapt to, either to counter negative impacts or take advantage of positive ones.  Commonsense management choices in these areas could be worth between $100 million and $500 million a year to the grains industry.

“Farmers could look at their own climate records for evidence of trends in climate and, if there are trends, then it may be worth looking at the management implications, particularly where the trends are consistent with climate change projections.”

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