Climate change and crops

Change in our climate directly affects the agricultural sector. This article focuses on the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, and considers how future climate predictions could alter the land management of the area, including the crops that are grown. It will be of interest to those studying the impacts of, and adaptations to, future climate change, an important topic in both AS and A2 geography. It is also useful for topics involving hydrology and river basin management.

Suzanne Elliott and Dave Favis-Mortlock

Agricultural land in the Ards Peninsula

As climate change is a key environmental issue, it is vital that we know how farmers are likely to respond to it. This article is based on a study into farmers’ choice of crop type under a scenario predicting future climate. The aim was to understand the hydrological consequences of adopting new crops better suited to future weather patterns.

The study was carried out on the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland (Figure 1). There are approximately 630 farms here, and 78.8% of the land is farmed. Farming is very much the dominant land use in the region. This is partly because of the favourable climatic conditions: the area has a long growing season at 280 days. Even so, shortage of precipitation can be a problem, with less than 800 mm rainfall annually (contrast this with the west of Northern Ireland, which receives up to 1,700 mm annually). The Ards Peninsula is thus one of the mildest and driest regions of Northern Ireland. Another reason agriculture is so dominant in this region is its high-quality soil, which is intensively managed for mixed farming, pasture and arable.