Abstracts
Farmers' vulnerability to climate and other risks: a comparative assessment from the Okanagan Valley, B.C.
B. Bradshaw1, S. Belliveau, B. Smit and B. Sawyer
1University of Guelph
bbradsha@uoguelph.ca
In the literature on climate change adaptation in agriculture, it has been increasingly acknowledged that climate represents only one of many sources of risk to which farmers are potentially vulnerable. Events such as commodity market downturns, changes to government support programs, or the loss of export markets due to consumer health concerns, may present significant risks to producers at certain times. While this fact has been long recognized, its incorporation into research efforts has been understandably limited. As part of a larger project examining the interactive effects of multiple risks on farm-level decision-making in Canadian agriculture, this paper reports the findings of a comparative assessment of the current vulnerability of apple and (wine) grape producers in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley to climate and other risks. In short, the research suggests that producers' climatic concerns, both current and future, are intrinsically tied to their marketing concerns given increasing consumer demands for quality product. However, this demand is especially problematic for apple producers given the emergence of low-cost international competition in what was once a regionally-oriented sector. While most producers currently have the tools to manage extreme weather events, such as those associated with hail or a deep freeze, there is less certainty around their capacity to regularly produce and market quality product in light of non-extreme yet still challenging biophysical conditions.
2005-04-05 |
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