Global warming and agriculture: what solutions are there for this sector ?

Apr 26, 2023 • 3 min read

On 20 March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a new summary report. It once again details the consequences of climate change and the solutions for dealing with it.

It is a certainty: the Earth's surface temperature has risen by +1.1°C compared to the pre-industrial era (1850-1900). The same is true of sea levels, with a confirmed rise of 20 cm between 1901 and 2018. Despite efforts, the stabilisation of global warming is far from being on the agenda.

What are the risks from a meteorological point of view?

While farmers are already subject to the unpredictability of often uncertain weather, global warming will continue to accentuate certain weather phenomena. They will become more extreme, more dangerous and all regions of the world will be affected. In concrete terms, the heat waves we are already experiencing will last longer and be more intense and frequent. Precipitation could also be more abundant, leading to fears of flooding after periods of severe drought. "Extreme daily precipitation will increase by about 7% for each additional degree of global warming," the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recently warned.

The IPCC is also concerned about sea level rise, for example, as mentioned at the beginning of this article. During strong storms, and in a context of high tidal coefficients, marine submersion will become more frequent. Flooding, stronger than what we know today, is to be feared.

Agriculture and climate change

This is a profession that is directly affected by global warming. It is already causing significant agricultural losses across the globe each year.

In its latest conclusions, and in the event of a scenario with a 3°C rise in temperature on Earth, the IPCC indicates that the risks of agricultural losses will increase tenfold. A loss multiplied by 2 or 3 due to very high temperatures leading to "thermal stress" of the plant. Not to mention "water stress", which has been widely discovered in recent years through periods of drought that are already intense and sometimes historic, particularly in the west and south of the continent.

In some European countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, global warming also means more widespread forest and vegetation fires. Many fires in the heart of agricultural areas were observed in 2022. The importance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era is essential, as the signs of global warming seem to get stronger with each passing season.

But fortunately, solutions exist.

In the second part of its 6th report published in 2022, the IPCC recommends that farmers increase their climate resilience by "diversifying crops and livestock", while "planting trees and shrubs on fields for shade and organic manure".

Moreover, the near future will necessarily involve abandoning certain crops and adopting others that are better adapted to these climatic changes.

The study of soils and sustainable farming techniques allows for better conservation of water, which, once it falls as rain, is a source of great interest. Farmers themselves are promoting it on social networks. "Soil conservation agriculture and plant cover help fight climate change," explained farmer David Guy in February 2019.

Sencrop, helping farmers adapt to climate change

Sencrop's mission is to help farmers make better decisions on a daily basis for greater comfort, better yields and controlled environmental impact.
By allowing farmers to access ultra-local weather data directly from their fields, the Sencrop solution acts on two levels.

Sencrop enables farmers to anticipate future weather events and phenomena.

For a sector so dependent on weather conditions and in a context of climate change, access to accurate and reliable weather data is essential. This allows farmers to anticipate future risks and to adapt their agricultural work to their needs.

Sencrop enables farmers to reduce their environmental footprint.

Indeed, Sencrop helps producers to reduce :

their treatment frequency. Carrying out a treatment in optimal weather conditions means avoiding product drift, ensuring its effectiveness and thus reducing the number of applications.

the number of journeys made and therefore fuel savings.
the amount of water used for irrigation. Users have reported saving up to 80 mm of water over a season, or 800 m3 per hectare, with the Sencrop solution. It allows users to monitor the water status of their plots and trigger their irrigation at the optimum time.