Software for agriculture climate risk management focused in smallholders

Abstract

Taking Persimmon (Diospyros kaki L.), Fig (Ficus carica L.) and Papaya (Carica Papaya L) fruits in Sao Paulo State, southeast of Brazil, as a case of study, we present here new software that was designed to support smallholders to manage their climate risk on the production area. The main idea of this new software named \"Brazilian Mapping for Agricultural Zoning System\" (BRAMAZOS) is to transform scientific knowledge into useful information for crop climate risk management, indicating the risk of crop failure and which is the limiting meteorological element for the area unsuitability. The software was developed based on user experience design, focusing on the users facilities with a friendly interface. We simulated these fruits climate risk in current and future scenarios of climate change using ETAHadgem ES Regional Climate Models (RCM), which is a downscaling of the Global Climate Model HadGEM2-ES, based on the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5). We observed changes in the climate risk zone distribution for Persimmon and Papaya cultivation, which could lose almost 30% and 9% of the suitable area respectively. On the other hand, fig did not present significant reduction in the climate risk zone. The results presented here suggested that the temperate fruit examples used here seem to be more sensible to the temperature increase and, the tropical example seems to be more precipitation decrease sensitive. We discussed the significance of BRAMAZOS software as tool to support efficient information to climate risk management, providing agroclimatic information that are efficient to assist decision making, increase food security with the intention to reduce the climate impact on smallholders development and resources management issues.