Soybean area to reduce by 28% for climate change in Brazil

Researchers from the Brazilian Research Network and Global Climate Change (Climate Network) say that there will be rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns in various regions of Brazil in the coming decades. As a consequence, there will be a direct impact on the agribusiness areas, with the decline in soybean area by 28%.
 
The data was revealed on September 9th, during the 1stNational Conference on Global Climate Change (Conclima) . The results were obtained from the intersection of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Brazilian regional models, and “global warming” was the main influence.

Considering planted area in 2009, projections for 2030 indicate reductions in various cultures. Corn, the most optimistic scenario, predicts a decrease in the planted area of 7% reaching up to 22 %. The decrease for beans goes from 54.5% to 69.7%. In wheat from 20% to 31.2%, while rice would go to 9.1% to 9.9 %, and cotton 4.6% to 4.9%.
 
The decrease is a lot more aggressive for beans because of the varieties need special climatic conditions. On the one hand, it provides up to 4 harvests a year, but is more susceptible to variations in temperature and precipitation. Organized by FAPESP and sponsored by Rede Clima and the National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change (INCT - MC), the event occurred on September 13th, at the Espaço Apas, in Sao Paulo.
 
"Our efforts are directed towards producing applications from a research base. This means seeking solutions for adaptation and mitigation of the global warming effects on agriculture. With the study of cultivated areas, we now have a list of cities with the highest and lowest risk of being affected by climate change, an important tool for research and decision-making, " said Hilton Silveira Pinto, coordinator of the Agriculture subnet and researcher at Unicamp(University of Campinas).
 
The papers will be forwarded to Embrapa Information Technology (Embrapa/CNPTIA) , the coordinating institution of the Agriculture subnet. Another activity is the Simulation of Futures Agricultural Scenarios(SCenAgri) , that traces predictions for the coming decades considering the increase in temperature, rainfall and climatic demand of each culture.
 
"Coffee, for example, needs 18-22ºC annual average. Anything different, the culture does not develop. We pass this information to the computer and simulate different scenarios, "says Silveira Pinto. The SCenAgri now has 19 planting fields, 3,313 rainfall stations with daily data, 23 masters and 3 regional models for climate projections.