Climate Change and how it Affects Agriculture

Running head: CLIMATE CHANGE AND HOW IT AFFECTS AGRICULTURE 1
Climate Change and how it Affects Agriculture
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CLIMATE CHANGE AND HOW IT AFFECTS AGRICULTURE 2
Climate Change and how it Affects Agriculture
Agriculture is a very important sector for any economy. Products from various
agricultural activities such as farming, fishing and livestock keeping constitute a significant
portion of any country’s GDP. For example, in Canada agriculture injects over $200 billion into
the economy annually. Agricultural success depends entirely on climate which in the past decade
has continued to shift to the negative extreme. Davidson (2018) stipulates that “climate change
occurs when long-term weather patterns begin to shift.” The shift maybe as a result of natural or
human activities. According to Fountain (2019), “Climate change and its effects are accelerating,
with climate related disasters piling up, season by season.” The continued change of climate to
the negative extreme has caused the temperature of the earth to increase in unprecedented rates
consequently causing deleterious impacts on the socio-economic life of human beings. The effect
of climate on agriculture leads to a reduction in the frequency, quality and quantity of plant and
animal production which poses a threat to national food security. Impacts of climate change on
agriculture is as a result of its side effects such as floods, droughts, heat stress and rise in plant
and animal diseases (Mount, 2019).
First and foremost, floods are an impact of climate change cased by human or weather-
related factors. Human factor include land -cover alterations, altered drainage and structural
failure of dams while weather related factors include prolonged and heavy precipitation,
snowmelts, hurricane surge storms, debris jams, ice and thunderstorms (Intergovernmental panel
on climate change, IPCC, 2007). Floods cause loss of lives, destruction of property, erosion of
farming lands and destruction of plantations. Moreover, floods carry along contaminations and
diseases. The floodwaters flow along with raw sewer, toxic chemicals from industrial or
domestic leakages and wastes form hazardous sites (Denchak, 2019). These materials pollute air

CLIMATE CHANGE AND HOW IT AFFECTS AGRICULTURE 3
and water causing respiratory, eye and skin related infections to animals and human beings some
of which maybe key stakeholders in the agricultural sector. Moreover, after the floods are over,
bacteria and other germs may remain, increasing the rate of illnesses for both human being and
livestock (Wilkinson, 2011). The polluted flood water maybe evaporated back to the
environment by the high environmental temperatures and fall back as acid rain (Mount, 2019).
The acid rain reduces the pH of the soil, a factor which may negatively affect the growth and
production rate of certain plants. Besides, the acid rain may cause total destruction of vegetation
and death of livestock thereby posing a threat to food security and the economy (Denchak,
2019).
While climate change has led to heavy precipitation in some areas leading to heavy rains
or floods, in other areas it has resulted to the emergence of drought conditions. Like floods,
draught conditions are associated with various factors both human and weather related (Panda,
2017). The primary causes of draught that are linked to climate change include; reduction in the
rates of precipitation, variations away from light and moderate to short rainy seasons, earlier
snow melts and increased evaporation from the earth surface and vegetation due to increase in
temperatures as a result of global warming (Steuer & Knight, 2018). Drought directly or
indirectly affects agricultural production. Direct effects are associated with reduced or poor-
quality agricultural products while indirect effects are noticeable by the increase in the price of
agricultural products. Plants and livestock depend on water for survival, which during draught
seasons is in limited supply and hence may die or have other problems due to dehydration
(Wahid, Fujita & Basra, 2014). Ranchers may be forced to spend anticipated high amount money
to feed and water their herds while farmers may incur losses as a result of the destroyed
vegetations.