The LWEC Agriculture & Forestry Climate Change Impacts Report Card is the fifth in a series of such cards published by Living With Environmental Change Network.
The Agriculture and Forestry Sectors play a major role in UK primary production contributing to economic activity, jobs and the wellbeing of society; they produce food, fibre and fuel with UK agriculture currently providing around 50% of the food consumed in this country.
This LWEC Report Card is aimed at anyone who works with, or has an interest in, Agriculture, Horticulture & Forestry in the UK. It gives an overview of how climate change is affecting agriculture and forestry in the UK, and how it might affect these two types of land use in future. It focuses on both threats and opportunities from climate change relevant to crop, livestock, wood and other production in the agriculture and forestry sectors. The aim is to improve understanding of the scale of possible change and to help inform decisions on adaptation measures needed. The card provides a high-level summary of the main findings from 9 detailed technical papers prepared by leading experts in their fields using the best available science from the research literature. This report card and the technical papers provide an important evidence base on impacts and opportunities. It identifies three of the same top six risks in the UK identified by the recently published UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2017 Evidence Report: Risks to domestic and international food production and trade; Risk of shortages in the public water supply, and for agriculture, energy generation and industry; New and emerging pests and diseases, and invasive non-native species, affecting people, plants and animals.
The card has been designed primarily to be downloaded as a click-through pdf and is now available on the LWEC website at http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/partnerships/lwec/products/report-cards/agriculture/. You can also access the technical papers which underpin the card and other relevant information from the website or the click-through document.