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Project properties |
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| Title | Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) |
| Group | Water Systems and Global Change |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Ronald Hutjes
Iwan Supit Thomas Kirina Bart Kruijt Raffaele Vignola (raffaele.vignola@wur.nl) Bert van Hove (bert.vanhove@wur.nl) Thomas Kirina (thomas.kirina@wur.nl) |
| Examiner(s) | Carolien Kroeze |
| Contact info | Maria del Pozo (maria.delpozogarcia@wur.nl) MIL
Wouter Smolenaars (wouter.smolenaars@wur.nl) MCL, MES and MUE |
| Begin date | 2024/01/01 |
| End date | |
| Description | Theme introduction
Global population is expected to grow with one-third, while income will triple, with its consequences for food demand. Agriculture is both a significant contributor to, as well as suffering from climate change. Climate change and climate variability have diverse effects on crop production. In temperate regions crops may profit from climate change but only when introducing cultivars adapted to warmer conditions. In tropical regions temperatures may become limiting even under well-watered conditions. Almost everywhere, increasing climate variability forces farmers to adopt more risk-aware strategies instead of yield maximizing strategies with potential food security consequences especially on smallholders. At the same time water, C sequestration and greenhouse gas emission management should reduce the overall agricultural footprint. Solutions include agroforestry systems, where productive tree or palm crops are combined with crops in the understorey. Projects and possibilities for students WSG does research on climate smart agriculture on a local, regional and global scale. Activities include agricultural model data analysis (Iwan Supit, Bert van Hove, Ronald Hutjes), field studies (Ronald Hutjes, Bart Kruijt, Raffaele Vignola) and governance.We look at perspectives from subsitence farming to multinational food and beverage industries. Also, collaboration with institutes in e.g. Brazilian Amazonia focus on the ecophysiology of agroforestry. We are looking for students with an interest in quantitative modelling and more social research oriented students as well as students who want to combine the two. We want to answer questions like: How can we make crop production more climate resilient while minimizing its impact on climate? What is the carbon sequestration capacity of these systems? How can we, by better crop and water management, increase agricultural yield in such a way that the additional fresh water demand remains limited? How can the adoption of CSA practices be promoted in farming systems? The research can focus on long term climate change impacts and scenario analysis as well as seasonal predictions or field work. The key to CSA is the combination of mitigation and adaptation strategies. What changes are we expecting? What can we do about it? and how do end-users and governance institutes adapt and mitigate through CSA? |
| Used skills | Possible methods to be used in a thesis:
- Scenario analysis - Data processing & analysis - Field studies & experiments - Case study analysis - Policy document analysis - Social network analysis - Interviews, surveys & focus groups - Mixed methods |
| Requirements | |