Climate Change and Irrigation Water: Should the North/South Hierarchy of Impacts on Agricultural Systems Be Reconsidered
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Climate Change and Irrigation Water: Should the North/South Hierarchy of Impacts on Agricultural Systems Be Reconsidered? Delphine Barberis 1 & Ines Chiadmi 1 & Pierre Humblot 1 & Pierre-Alain Jayet 1
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Anna Lungarska 1 & Maxime Ollier 1
Received: 17 July 2019 / Accepted: 17 July 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Pressures on resources and climate change are likely to strongly impact the availability of water, which directly affects agricultural systems. To estimate these impacts, we develop a prospective approach combining an agricultural supply side economic model and a crop model. We extend previous work by incorporating water resource constraints and apply our model to a large part of the French agricultural sector under three climate scenarios over 2010–2010. Results indicate that, at a given water price, potential change in irrigation water demand would differ strongly according to the region concerned and the scenario applied. In France as a whole, irrigation increases in all scenarios, by 60% under the intermediate scenario, by 40% under the least extreme scenario, and by 20% under the toughest scenario. Differentiating the northern and southern regions, the relative increase is more pronounced in the north, while demand in the south significantly increases under the intermediate scenario and decreases under the toughest scenario. When considering autonomous adaptation of farming systems to climate change, agricultural income in northern regions is likely to be negatively affected to a greater extent than in southern regions. Keywords Irrigation water demand . Climate change . Water price . Agro-economic supply model
1 Introduction Agriculture is a water-intensive economic sector in France. In 2009, 3 billion cubic meters of water were extracted, among which 1 billion came from groundwater [1, 2]. Since water for agriculture is extracted without immediate return, this sector accounts for the greatest net withdrawal. Given the projected 50% increase in food demand between 2012 and 2050 [3], the growing bioenergy market requiring more feedstock, the intensification of production factors, and the expansion of irrigated land, water demand is expected to increase in the upcoming years. As domestic and industrial water uses sharply increase, the competition over water for agriculture can only intensify [4] and further aggravate water scarcity. The vulnerability of farms to less reliable water availability could be reduced by access to multiple water resources [5]. However, water availability for agriculture is expected to drop by 18% as a result of competition over water resources by 2050 [6]. This risk is enhanced by the potentially harmful * Pierre-Alain Jayet [email protected] 1
UMR Économie Publique, INRAE, Université Paris-Saclay, F-78850 Grignon, France
consequences of climate change (CC). Changing precipitation patterns and inter-annual variability, rising temperatures (which increase crop water requirements and alter growing season length), and increasing frequency of ex
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