How Are Our Future Agriculture and Natural Resources Projected under Varying Climate?

Climate change may be one of the biggest issues facing Florida agriculture. Most countries are trying to slow global warming by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including through climate-smart agriculture (CSA). Climatesmart agriculture is an integrated approach to managing landscapes, including cropland, livestock, and forests, which addresses the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.

For example, certain management practices can increase the amount of carbon stored, or sequestered, in the soil. Carbon credits, which can be traded, are a way to reward these management activities. But how can Florida agriculture contribute to carbon sequestration? How can a producer generate carbon credits? And how can they participate in carbon markets?To help answer these UF/IFAS Extension has formed a team of specialists: the Climate and Carbon Extension Educators (C2E2).

Understanding the science, mechanisms, and policy behind the carbon cycle and trading will help Florida’s agriculture better prepare for the carbon economy. 

Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.