Is It Possible to Completely Adapt Agriculture Production to the Effects of Climate Variability and Change in Central Argentina? New Approaches in Face of New Challenges

The adaptation of agriculture has been a priority since the advent of studies on climate change at the end of the last century. Today agriculture faces two concurrent challenges: adapting to the impacts of climate variability and change and feeding a growing world population. But responses to these issues generally do not coincide with the goal of climate change mitigation at global scale and ecosystem sustainability efforts at the local scale. This is analyzed in this article through a case study on adaptation to droughts in one of the main agricultural areas of the world, central Pampas in Argentina. Results from the analysis show that current adaptation practices do not eliminate yield variability especially to climatic extremes. Therefore, extra measures for reducing the agricultural productivity gap is not always justified against the possible social and environmental costs of such actions, reinforcing the necessity for new approaches on the adaptation of agriculture to climate variability and change and to provide, at the same time, for healthy food and environments for humanity. Here, a focus on the resilience of the socio-ecological systems to climatic shocks is considered as complementary to more conventional adaptation practices when attempting to increase agricultural production but within the limits of the sustainable development goals.