Climate Change: Horticulture

The climate conditions for world horticultural regions are projected to change. Farmers will be required to cope with increasing temperatures, changes to water availability, lack of winter chilling and increased extreme weather exposure. Compared with other agricultural pursuits, horticulture remains particularly exposed due to higher infrastructure and set-up costs and a lack of temporal and spatial flexibility in farming practices. Some regions may benefit from these climatic changes and become better suited to growing horticultural crops whereas in sites where the climate is already at the hotter end of the growing spectrum, continuing production may be judged too risky.