Climate change and agriculture in the United States: effects and adaptation

The report analyses the effects of climate change on U.S. agriculture on the basis of research needs categorized within a vulnerability framework addressing specific actions that would improve understanding of the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity to: (i) improve projections of future climate conditions, including extreme temperatures, precipitation, and related variables; (ii) evaluate and develop process-level understanding of the sensitivity of plant and animal production systems; and (iii) develop and extend the knowledge, management strategies and tools needed by U.S. agricultural stakeholders to enhance the adaptive capacity of plant and animal production systems to climate variability and extremes through new adaptive management strategies and robust risk management approaches, among others.

The document presents: (i) the U.S. agriculture and climate; (ii) an overview of U.S. agriculture; (iii) an overview of the changing climate; (iv) climate change science and agriculture; (v) climate change effects on U.S. agricultural production; (vi) climate change effects on the economics of U.S. agriculture; and (vii) adapting to climate change.