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Land Use Policy
jou rn al hom epage : www.elsev ier .com/ locate / landus epol
andraces as an adaptation strategy to climate change formallholders in Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil
na Carolina Feitosa Vasconcelosa,∗, Michelle Bonatti a, Sandro L. Schlindweina,uiz Renato D’Agostinia, Larissa R. Homema, Rohan Nelsonb
Federal University of Santa Catarina – Research Group on Environmental Monitoring and Appraisal NUMAVAM, P.O. Box 476, Florianopolis/SC 88034-900,razilUniversity of Tasmania – Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture, Private Bag 98, Hobart, Tas 7001 Tasmania, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o
rticle history:eceived 27 March 2012eceived in revised form 18 March 2013ccepted 26 March 2013
a b s t r a c t
Adapting to climate change has become a pressing and urgent issue given the alarming rapidity withwhich climate changes is taking place. Agriculture is strongly conditioned by climatic factors, but subsis-tence agriculture is particularly vulnerable because smallholders do not have adequate financial resources
to adapt to climate change. Agrobiodiversity provides one option for smallholders to adapt to climatechange. Landraces developed in the western region of Santa Catarina State, Brazil, are part of a deliber-ate strategy by smallholders to achieve a state of food sovereignty and independence from commercialsources of hybrid seed. The ability of smallholders to collectively conserve climate-adapted landracesindicates the depth of local knowledge and capability within local communities that can be drawn on to
es of c
xtreme weather events meet the future challeng
ntroduction
Changes in climate have promoted and motivated cultural trans-ormations in different periods of evolutionary history. Evidencef these changes has been observed in agriculture because it istrongly conditioned by climatic factors (Fagan, 2009). Individ-als and societies dependent on agriculture have been vulnerableo climatic hazards and extreme events, and this vulnerabilityan act as a driver for adaptive resource management (Adger,003).
Adaptation is an essential response option worthy of researchnd assessment in order to reduce the vulnerability of people tohe impacts of climate change and to minimize the costs asso-iated with these impacts (Grothmann and Patt, 2005). This isspecially so given expected future changes in climate (IPCC,007).
The uncertainty surrounding anthropogenic climate change hased to controversy over the magnitude of its potential impacts. This
ncertainty is of little practical consequence when it comes to theurvival of communities who are vulnerable to extreme eventshether they originate from natural climate variability or longer
term climate change (Bonatti, 2011). Extreme weather events havecaused losses in many places in the world and predictions of theirincreasing frequency have raised the importance of adaptation inagriculture as a scientific and political issue (Otto-Banaszak et al.,2011). This uncertainty can be proactively management throughrobust adaptation strategies that preserve flexibility to respond todiverse future climate conditions (Lempert and Collins, 2007).
Agricultural production remains the primary focus of liveli-hoods for most rural communities, particularly in developingcountries. Predictions of significant climate variability and changemean that adaptation is fundamental to protecting the livelihoodsand food security of vulnerable communities (Bryan et al., 2009).It is generally assumed that subsistence agriculture practiced bysmallholders is particularly vulnerable to climate change becausethey lack the financial resources to cope or adapt their productionsystems (Glantz et al., 2009; FAO, 2011).
One mediating factor to this general perception is that thefarming practices of smallholders are characterized by the culti-vation of a wide diversity of crops. This agrobiodiversity remainsan important raw material for adapting agroecosystems to copewith climate change, because it provides germplasm from whichplant breeders and farmers can select resilient and climate readytraits (Ortiz, 2011). Landraces not only tend to have high levelsof genetic variation, but that variation is already tightly coupled
with the environmental variation presented in a region (Merceret al., 2012). Despite this potential, agrobiodiversity has rarely beenconsidered as a source of strategies to cope with the impacts of achanging climate (Pautasso et al., 2012).
Recent research shows that many smallholders around theorld cope with and prepare for climate change by minimizing
rop failure through the increased use of drought tolerant localrop varieties, water harvesting, mixed cropping production sys-ems, agroforestry, soil conservation practices, and the adoptionf a range of other traditional farming techniques (Altieri, 2009).bservations of agricultural performance after extreme climaticvents in the last two decades have revealed that resilience tolimate disasters is closely linked to the level of agrobiodiversityAltieri et al., 2012).
Agriculture in the southern Brazilian State of Santa Catarina isased on smallholder production. According to IBGE (2006), 87% ofarm in the region have been managed by family holders for gener-tions. The western region of Santa Catarina has been under severeressure from extreme weather events, mainly from increasinglyrequent and intense droughts and rainfall extremes. This combina-ion of smallholder farming and climate extremes is contributing ton increase in the vulnerability of agricultural production systemso climate change in the region (Bonatti, 2011).
One response to this vulnerability in western region of Santaatarina has been the use of landraces by smallholders to main-ain low but stable levels of agricultural production despite therowing impact of climate extremes. This paper presents two casetudies1 carried out in the municipalities of Anchieta and Guara-iaba to investigate the use of landraces by smallholders as partf their evolving adaptive agroecosystem to cope with extremelimate events.
The purpose of the research is to document the history and rea-ons why landraces have been adopted as a climate adaptationtrategy by smallholders in this region with a view to informinguture participatory interventions of this kind.
he municipalities of Anchieta and Guaraciaba
The case studies were carried out in the municipalities of Anchi-ta (26◦33′ S and 53◦18′ W) and Guaraciaba (26◦33′ S and 53◦33′
) (EMBRAPA, 2004) in the western region of Santa Catarina State,razil (Fig. 1). These municipalities have populations of 6587 and0,604, respectively, most living in rural areas (IBGE, 2010). Theverage farm size is 30 ha, utilized mainly for subsistence cropsncluding maize, soybean, wheat and cassava (data available at
ww.sidra.ibge.gov.br. Last access: July 25, 2012).According to the Köppen climate classification, the climate is
fa subtropical temperate, humid, and mesothermal with warmainy summers. The annual average temperature is 18 ◦C, with theccurrence of frosts as well as temperatures up to 33 ◦C (Cancit al., 2004). An intensification of extreme weather events haseen observed in the region, and the first tornado recorded inrazil occurred in Guaraciaba in 2004 (Pezza and Simmonds, 2005).dverse climatic conditions, such as decreases in average precipita-
ion, more frequent intense precipitation and increases in extremeemperatures have impacted this region in recent decades (INPE,009). An increased frequency of droughts, heat waves, torrentialains and thunderstorms is threatening the region with more fre-uent heat stress, scarcity of drinking water, decrease driver flows,nd increased flooding that damage agricultural production andural properties (Mattedi et al., 2009).
The vulnerability of agriculture in Anchieta and Guaraciaba toxtreme climatic events has been exacerbated by the social andconomic constraints facing these municipalities (Bonatti, 2011).
1 These case studies were part of the CLARIS LPB Project (“A Europe South Amer-ca Network for Climate Change Assessment and Impact Studies” from the Europeanommunity’s Seventh Framework Program – FP7/2007-2013) that aimed at predict-
ng the regional climate change impacts on La Plata Basin, in South America.
Policy 34 (2013) 250– 254 251
These constraints include the small area of farms, a reliance onfamily labor, low levels of agricultural mechanization and limitedfinancial resources. Subsistence agricultural production is an essen-tial element of food security for most household, since limitedopportunities for wage earning restrict their capacity to purchasefood.
Faced with this growing vulnerability, smallholders across thesemunicipalities have learned from experience that agricultural pro-duction can be maintained using the landraces identified oversuccessive generations as tolerant of climate extremes, especiallydrought. Observation of this local knowledge motivated the devel-opment programs by the Rural Extension Service and ResearchCorporation of Santa Catarina State (EPAGRI) and Federal Universityof Santa Catarina (UFSC) to conserve landraces in the municipalitiesof Anchieta and Guaraciaba.
In Anchieta, a local on-farm maize breeding program was startedby EPAGRI and UFSC in 1996 based on landraces sown in the areafor more than 30 years. In Guaraciaba, a similar program for con-serving landraces started in 2005 in response to growing concernover the falling number of smallholders using landraces on theirfarms. At the time, the smallholders cultivated and maintained 34main species of landraces for their own consumption with consid-erable intra-species diversity totaling more than 200 local varieties(clones) (Canci et al., 2004). The landraces produced in Anchieta andin Guaraciaba result from the selection and breeding of plants moreadapted to local soil and climate conditions. These varieties havenever been sown on a large commercial scale (Canci et al., 2004).
Method
Semi-structured key informant interviews were conducted withsmallholders in the municipalities of Anchieta and Guaraciaba whocultivate landraces on their farms and with agricultural techniciansfrom EPAGRI who assist those smallholders. We took the approachto this interview technique of Sautu (2005), who described itas “a systematic conversation that aims to obtain, to retrieveand to record everyday life experiences of farmers or their con-cepts”.
The interviews focused on three main aspects of agriculture inthese municipalities: (1) features of current local climate, (2) inten-sification of extreme climate events, and (3) strategies adopted bysmallholders to adapt to climate adversities. The interviews wereaudio taped with the permission of the interviewees, without not-ing their names. Each interview was divided into three parts: (a)introduction, (b) general questions about the local climate (variabil-ity and change) and its influence on agricultural production, and (c)the history of landrace cultivation, and important events associatedwith it. The average duration of each interview was 45 min.
Two parameters set the number of respondents: (a) the propor-tion of families in each community that cultivate landraces (50% inAnchieta and 30% in Guaraciaba); and (b) the number of answersobtained through the interviews that were necessary to identifypatterns in meaning, symbolic systems, codes, values, attitudes andideas. The interviews were discontinued once nine families and twoagricultural technicians had been interviewed in Anchieta and afterten families and two agricultural technicians had been interviewedin Guaraciaba. The interviewees aged between 30 and 70 years old,with an average of 45 years old, and all interviewed smallholdersowned their properties.
For both sets of interviews, data were analyzed by: (a) transcrib-ing the responses and identifying key words emerging in the dialog;
(b) diagnosing apparent contradictions, recurrent statements; (c)examining and cross-referencing rhetorical statements and subtledetail (silence, doubt and hesitation); and (d) comparing responsesbetween the municipalities of Anchieta and Guaraciaba.
252 A.C.F. Vasconcelos et al. / Land Use Policy 34 (2013) 250– 254
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In order to link and promote the advantages of landraces, small-olders, agricultural technicians, scientists, students and the widerommunity worked together through a participatory process run byPAGRI and UFSC to create a “biodiversity kit” to be used in Anchi-ta and Guaraciaba. This kit was composed of local varieties of cropsore adapted to the farming conditions, and it was organized by
gricultural technicians and smallholders, comprising several stepsCanci et al., 2010):
Step 1: Raising awareness and building capacity to motivate thecommunity to develop germplasm conservation strategies basedon local socio-cultural aspects;Step 2: Understanding the local context to identify the geneticresources in the region, to recognize the farmers’ role in devel-oping food production and also to diversify their options forlivelihood;Step 3: Developing capacity building of institutions to manage thegenetic resources, to evaluate the community needs by establish-ing priorities based on available resources, and to prepare a workplan for community participation;Step 4: Establishment of modalities of work in the community inorder to coordinate and devise strategies and plans for managinggenetic resources as well as to establish connections betweeninstitutions;Step 5: Consolidating the roles of the members in the communityto plan and implement the programs for biodiversity manage-ment;Step 6: Raising of financial resources to assure credit and benefitsfor the community;Step 7: Setting up a community system for monitoring and eval-uating the activities related to biodiversity conservation; andStep 8: Fostering social learning and collective action to amplifythe good practices for biodiversity management by increasing thenumber of farmers and communities using such practices.
esults – the use of landraces in Anchieta and Guaraciaba
According to the smallholders and agricultural techniciansnterviewed in Anchieta and Guaraciaba, the landrace breedingrograms were developed jointly by smallholders and EPAGRI and
FSC as part of a broader strategy to conserve germplasm that haseen under cultivation in the region for generations. This strategy,
n turn, is part of a policy to achieve pesticide-free food sovereignty,hich includes farmer’s independence from the large-scale
ciaba in Santa Catarina State, Brazil.
commercial seed industry through the production of their owndrought tolerant seeds.
Responses by the smallholders suggested that the mainte-nance of local varieties and knowledge of how to use them wasinfluenced by the social cohesion and reciprocity within their com-munities. When the smallholders where asked who would helpthem in case of any adverse situation, they acknowledged thatthey rely on the assistance of their neighbors, since in these com-munities the number of relatives is usually small mostly due torural exodus. Another reason for the use of landraces in Anchi-eta and in Guaraciaba was the costs of seeds. Landraces aremuch less expensive than hybrid seeds, and in most cases theseeds are obtained by a seed exchange network among smallhold-ers.
The smallholders expressed resistance to the use of trans-genic crops adapted to droughts, often expressing a belief thatseed industries are appropriating a resource that belongs tohumanity. Smallholders were also concerned that the effects oftransgenic crops on the biodiversity of their environment areunknown. The respondents expressed a sense of communitypride in maintaining local agricultural practices, and resistingthe displacement of local practice by external source commercialpractices.
The smallholders producing their own seeds in Anchieta and inGuaraciaba demonstrated a high degree of environmental aware-ness. They understand local trends in climate, and that the abilityto incorporate these into their decision making processes is essen-tial for the success of farming. Although smallholders may notunderstand the causes and consequences of climate change, theyperceive an intensification of extreme weather events occurring inthe region, particularly droughts.
Respondents reported that cultivation of several open pollinatedvarieties has been maintained to adapt to local climate adversities,especially droughts. Additional reasons why the smallholders inGuaraciaba continue to cultivate these landraces include their taste,their cultivation as a family tradition and because their use reducesfarm maintenance costs.
The agricultural technicians who work the smallholders inthis region confirmed the smallholders’ selection strategy. Theyreported that while landraces varieties tend to have lower pro-
ductivity in years with favorable seasonal conditions comparedto commercial hybrids, landraces can be a safe strategy to keepproducing, even in the years with irregularities in precipitationfrequency.
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iscussion – factors contributing to the evolution of localdaptation
The retention of drought resistant landraces within these localarming systems have evolved mainly as a strategy for adaptinggricultural production to extreme climate events. However, thenvironmental awareness of these communities to the increasingrequency of extreme weather and their impact on agriculturalroduction suggests these strategies can in part be attributed todaptation to longer term climate change.
The retention of local landraces is a robust strategy for adaptingo climate change. Its success does not depend on whether droughtsn Anchieta and Guaraciaba are becoming more frequent as a resultf climate change or whether they are a normal feature of climateariability. The important issue is the agility of smallholders toespond to the futures changes in climate. Maintaining landracess a robust response because it maintains an option to adapt touture change at the cost of some yield potential in favorable sea-ons when the surplus is less critical for household subsistence.iven scientific projections of climate change, this strategy is also
imely.The responses of smallholders and agricultural technicians sug-
est that the plant breeding programs developed in Anchieta anduaraciaba are a reactive adaptation strategy built on smallholders’xperience with landraces that have remained productive underrought conditions. Without their cultivation and exchange bymallholders over successive generations, many of these local croparieties are likely to have disappeared under pressure to adoptommercial varieties with higher yield potential in favorable sea-ons.
A key finding of this research is the importance of social andnstitutional factors in fostering this kind of local strategy for adapt-ng to climate change. The reciprocity, commitment to tradition,nd strength of social networks all contributed to the ability of theseommunities to maintain landraces over successive generations.he autonomy derived from the cohesion of these communities alsonabled them to resist the complete displacement of local varietiesy commercial varieties. Autonomy from industrialized agricultureas valued by these communities, and contribution of landraces inreserving this autonomy is a key part of their perceived value.
A lack of money or access to credit is often a serious con-traint to adaptation in agriculture (Bryan et al., 2009; Glantzt al., 2009; Wilks, 2010). In Anchieta and Guaraciaba the lackf financial resources drove the development of local and lowost adaptation measures to maintain the livelihood of small-olders. Reciprocity within the strong social networks in theseommunities was also important for maintaining access to seed andther resources for agricultural production, especially in times ofrought.
onclusions
The ability of smallholders in Anchieta and Guaraciaba to collec-ively conserve and breed local varieties of climate-adapted cropsas evolved as a locally appropriate and robust strategy to copeith adverse climate conditions. It builds on the basic principle
f diversification to maintain future options to respond to change.he key factors contributing to the development of this strategy arehe self-reliance and social cohesion of these communities, and theeciprocity and autonomy that have developed as a result. Auton-my is highly valued by these communities, and local varieties are
alued in part for the contribution to maintaining an independencerom commercial hybrid seed sources.
Whether or not the maintenance of local landraces continues toy an effective strategy for adapting to climate change in Anchieta
Policy 34 (2013) 250– 254 253
and Guaraciaba depends to some extent on whether these socialand institutional conditions are maintained. Rapid social changecould influence the future viability of this strategy. The presenceof similar social and institutional factors also influences the extentto which this strategy is transferable to other contexts. Its viabilityalso depends on whether the extent of future change occurs withinthe climatic range of local landraces.
The deeper learning for future adaptation research is thedepth of local knowledge and capability that can exist withinlocal communities. Strategies that build on this existing capabilityprovide an advanced starting point for locally appropriate inter-ventions to adapt to the expected future challenges of a changingclimate.
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received fundingfrom the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program(FP7/2007-20013) under Grant Agreement N◦ 212492: CLARIS LPB.A Europe–South America Network for Climate Change Assessmentand Impact Studies in La Plata Basin.
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