Project : Climate change vulnerability in the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean : final report : Modeling of present-day and future agricultural yields for regionally important crops.

Abstract

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the effects of near-term climate change (to the 2030’s) on the productivity of key crops in the Latin American and Caribbean region through the use of both process-based and niche-based crop models. A two-tiered approach is used, taking advantage of state-of-the-art global and regional datasets and crop models and covering a wide range of crops, to produce regional-level projections of climate change impacts on agriculture in LAC. More specifically, yield impacts are estimated for a first group of crops (i.e. maize, rice, wheat, dry bean and soybean) using the Decision Support System for Technology Transfer (DSSAT) mechanistic crop model (Jones et al. 2003). For a second group of crops, namely banana, cassava, potato, coffee (robusta and arabica), sugarcane, and yam, the EcoCrop niche-based model is used to estimate crop suitability changes rather than yield.