Modelling climate change impacts on maize and soybean yields in Central and Eastern Provinces of Zambia

Chilambwe, Alice

Modelling climate change impacts on maize and soybean yields in Central and Eastern Provinces of Zambia

Master Thesis

2021

Abstract

It is widely recognised that the unfavourable impacts of climate change on agriculture production may add up significantly to the developmental challenges of ensuring food security and reducing poverty. In Zambia, climate change impact assessments on crops are mainly carried out using large spatial scale climate data, jeopardizing on local scale impacts and adaptation capability that reveal the range of agronomic conditions under which farmers in specific areas operate. Through two major maize and soybean producing provinces in Zambia, this study enhances the understanding of district production variations under location specific climate change. This study aims at providing a climate change impact assessment in the light of three Global Climate Models (GCMs), under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and a crop simulation model Agrometshell (AMS). This allows for an exploration of crop production choices best suited at district scale, to feed into larger provincial and national future production programs. Two future climate periods were selected to cover both near (2020 – 2039) and long-term (2050 – 2069) climate. It was shown that the impacts of climate change on crops in Central and Eastern provinces will be beyond historical natural variation and will vary across districts and crops. Maize yields in majority of the districts will be impacted negatively whilst soybean yields will moderately benefit from future climate as five out of eleven districts studied are projected to have yield increases. These results suggest that climate change will increase the risk of food insecurity in the provinces studied and the country considering that maize is a central crop in overall agricultural crop production. Soybean which may offer an opportunity to balance with some maize loss could be accounted for in policy making to achieve future food security. This study improves knowledge and understanding of the impacts of climate change on district agricultural food production systems, and the need of good location specific knowledge to better address the challenge of climate change.

Keywords

Climate Change and Development

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