Policies Promoting Adaptation to Climate Change in Australian

Agriculture

Background

Farming remains an important component of the Australian economy with

360,000 people employed in the sector and with 120,000 farms. 60 per cent of
Australia’s land mass is used in agriculture and 70 per cent of Australian water
use is agricultural.

As productive enterprises Australia’s farms draw heavily on environmental inputs

and will be significantly impacted on by climate change. Moreover, famers
contribute about 18 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, mainly as
methane and potentially can contribute significantly to the mitigation of carbon
emissions through carbon capture schemes based, for example, on forestry.

Climate change policies include mitigation policies which seek to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation policies which seek to help households
and firms to adapt to the climate change which is expected to occur because
mitigation efforts are imperfectly successful. This paper is concerned with
adaptation efforts in Australian agriculture.

Australia’s Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council have prepared a

National Agriculture and Climate Change Action Plan 2006-09 (the ‘Action Plan’)
which, among other things, seeks to promote the resilience of Australian
agriculture to climate change by means of adaptation policies, to develop
appropriate research and to provide information to farmers. Australia’s farmers
have grown used to living in an environment which has a highly variable climate.
They have accordingly developed highly adaptive land management practices.
Climate change might indicate the need for adaptations that go beyond past
experiences and which ultimately threaten the viability of certain forms of
agriculture. Uncertainty is likely to increase.

In a broad sense climate change will mean increased temperatures, changed

rainfall patterns and levels and altered – often reduced – water runoff levels.
There may also be an increased frequency of extreme climatic events such as
droughts and floods as well as new problems of pest, weed and disease control.
It will also mean that the relative prices of different types of agricultural
production will change as climate change impacts on agricultural production
possibilities both in Australia and globally. Water availability will change and
while the viability of current agricultural outputs may be threatened, improved
prospects for other types of developments may occur. Market opportunities may
develop.

Generally the issue of how agriculture will respond to climate change is part of
the broader question of how agriculture is expected to evolve in the future
(Kingwell (2008)).
Climate Change Forecasts and Effects

The climate change that is expected to occur is highly uncertainty despite the
fact that the science that underlies the belief that it will occur and why it is
occurring is becoming more solid. The uncertainty is greater when forecasts are
made for specific regions rather than as national or global averages.

In agriculture the main effects will be (Kingwell (2008)):

• Changes in the seasonal distribution of rainfall with some regions

becoming drier while others, particularly pastoral regions becoming
wetter.

• Rising temperatures that have a range of effects on yields.

• Reduced salinity via a more evaporative climate offset buy more intense
daily rainfall events.

• Increased demands on farm water storage and irrigation water.

• Reduced availability of water for environmental flows.

• More extreme weather events (consecutive days of extreme heat,

thunderstorms) causing stock and crop losses.

• Increased risk of insect pest and weed competition, increased disease

risks.

• Extinction of native species with limited mobility.

Many of these effects will be gradual and it might be difficult to isolate short-
term trends from background random climatic events. This might raise the
prospect of ‘boiling frog syndrome’ for those farmers not aware of gradual
change eventually leading to catastrophic outcomes.

Private sector and public sector responses

Farmers will respond to market signals that reflect climate change (such as price
increases that reflect supply scarcities), changed input prices (increased fertiliser
prices, increased water prices) as well as policy responses toward climate
change mitigation (increased carbon pricing). These responses are welcome and
ameliorate the need for further specific public adaptation policies.

Public policies will be needed to build on market-driven responses and need to be

targeted primarily to address market failures. Most importantly updated climatic
forecasts needs to be supplied to farmers as well as forecast information on
future climate change mitigation responses and on likely changes in product and
input prices. Regional policies might also be called for to address structural
change issues in rural communities which will be forced to abruptly change their
commercial foci. Finally irrigation investments and other resource input issues
that involve public provision might also need to be adapted to encourage
efficient adaptations to climate change.

References

S. Mark Howden, Jean-Francois Soussana, Francesco N. Tubiello, Netra Chhetri,

Michael Dunlop, & Holger Meinke, Adapting agriculture to climate change,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 11, 2007, 19691-
19696. (here)

Ross Kingwell, ‘Future Broadacre Farming Systems: A Personal View’, 2008, at

http://www.agrifood.info/connections/autumn_2005/Kingwell.htm.

Ross Kingwell, ‘Climate Change in Australia: Agricultural Impacts and

Adaptation’, Australasian Agribusiness Review, 14, 2006 (here).

National Resource Management Ministerial Council, National Agriculture and

Climate Change Action Plan 2006-09, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra,
2006 (here).

John Quiggin & Joel Horowitz, ‘Global Warming: Dynamic and Comparative Static
Analysis’, Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 47, 4, 429-
446 (here).

Good webpages here, here, here, here (major recent CSIRO report), here, here,
here, here, here, here.