By Walter Rossing, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands
Farmers on the highly fertile south Romanian plain – the bread, sunflower and corn basket of Europe – are faced with unprecedented weather extremes. Recent years have shown record high and low temperatures and heavy rainfall events.
How are farmers dealing with these consequences of climate change? Are they adjusting their field activities, are they changing farm strategies or are they just hoping for a better next year? What are effects of climate variability on yield losses? Can we find ‘typical’ farmer responses and how does this knowledge help for supporting farmers in the future?
To address these questions, Cristiana Necula, who runs a family farm not too far from Bucharest, interviewed 30 colleagues as part of her studies at Wageningen University. She then organised responses into typical farmer strategies using a method called archetype analysis.
Responses to climate variability at field and farm level
Farmers considered drought as the most disconcerting of the climate variability phenomena experienced in the 5 years before the study, in 2021. Late frost, scorching heat during the time crops needed to be pollinated, and torrential rains were other phenomena mentioned. This had prompted adaptations.
Mentioned by 80% of the 30 farmers were risk management tools against price volatility, such as forward contracting or investing in storage facilities. Crop insurance and including other on-farm activities were other financial management adaptations used by many. The majority of farmers also mentioned changes in their field-level management, including tillage, including leguminous and niche crops in the rotation, and using cover crops.
Other field-level changes were mentioned by less than half of the farmers, such as prioritising drought-tolerant local wheat varieties over internationally available varieties, giving up particular crops (especially rapeseed, due to the dry sowing conditions in autumn) and moving to liquid fertiliser applications. Changes at farm level implemented by close to 60% of interviewees involved setting up of irrigation facilities. Some 20% of farmers mentioned they had started practicing organic production to maximise profit and lower financial risks related to climate variability.
Typical farmer strategies: Relying on irrigation, adopting minimum tillage, embracing ecological and economic diversification
For about half of the farms the changes at field and farm level were not haphazard but occurred as part of (implicit or explicit) strategies. We found three dominant strategies (‘archetypes’ as we call them in the paper):
- A focus on irrigation for summer crops, with few adaptations at field level and forward contracting as financial risk reduction tool. These were typically conventional farms producing cash crops for global markets in short rotations.
- The adoption of minimum-tillage and stubble mulching to reduce soil water loss. While the rotation is conventional grain-based, niche grain legumes such as chickpea are introduced. Marketing is through spot markets.
- Diversification at both field and farm level, along with a complete change from conventional tillage to a no-till system. Not only crops were diversified in response to the climatic disruptions, also livestock was integrated, and income was diversified through contractor or crop storage service provision. Storage also allowed the flexibility to sell crops at times of high prices.
And did it work?
The farms relying on irrigation reported high (over 60%) production losses of winter crops and low to moderate (between 0 and 50%) production losses of summer crops, showing the efficacy of irrigation.
The same crop loss pattern was found for farmers that had adopted minimum tillage.
The third farmer strategy of diversification was associated with production losses of less than 40% in both seasons.
So what?
Climate adaptation in Romania apparently requires redesigning the way crops are grown to deal with ‘expected unexpected’ weather.
Farmers who reported fewer crop losses had engaged in such redesign, addressing not only the way they grow crops but also which crops they grow and how they hedge their income through new types of activities. Those merely adjusting the traditional ways of doing were found to suffer greater crop losses. The study cannot make statements about how many Romanian farmers adopted which farming strategy.
Also from other studies it is clear that optimising one technique without considering all others is insufficient to respond to the deeply impacting effects of climate variability.
Interestingly, the strategies were not connected to farmer age, farm area or farmer networks. The diversified farms provide inspiration for all farmers and extensionists as well as for policy makers, to tune the national strategic plans in the EU to effective climate adaptation support.
Find out more
For more information on the study find Cristiana Necula on Linkedin.
Read the full paper Archetypes of climate change adaptation among large‑scale arable farmers in southern Romania, April 2024, by Cristiana Necula, Walter A. H. Rossing, Marcos H. Easdale
See the Practice Abstract in our Resources section.