Climate Change Consortium for Specialty Crops: Impacts and Strategies for Resilience

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) convened the Climate Change Consortium, a diverse group of individuals involved in California specialty crop agriculture, to identify specific climate change adaptation strategies for growers.

Changes to the climate as a result of anthropogenic activities are well recognized and acknowledged by the scientific community. Therefore the Consortium assumed, as charged by CDFA, that climate change is now occurring and will continue to occur in the future. The realities of climate change were not debated, nor were mitigation measures identified although, some adaptation measures could also be also considered mitigation measures.

The Consortium was asked to evaluate climate change impacts and to propose potential strategies for adaptation so that California agriculture and CDFA can prepare for impacts. The Consortium discussed and documented challenges faced by growers due to climate change. The Consortium addressed climate change impacts to temperature, water resources, pests and pollination. Growers will face new challenges from changed environmental averages, trends, variability, and extremes. These challenges are summarized below. While specialty crops are the focus of this report, the Consortium’s work on climate change impacts can be applied widely to California agriculture.