Climate change impacts on crop yields and adaptive measures for agricultural sector in the lowlands of Lesotho

Sammanfattning: Summary: Climate change has emerged as the most outstanding of the environmental challenges and there is a necessity to evaluate its impacts on the vulnerable development sectors such as agriculture. In this study, spatially adjusted general circulation models and crop models were used to simulate climate change scenarios and the associated cereal crops yields for the western lowlands of Lesotho for the year 2030-2050 and 2080-2100. Focus was placed on three main cereal crops namely sorghum, wheat and maize. The models predicted an increase in monthly mean temperature and a decline in monthly rainfall for the area. With these variations on temperature and rainfall, the study indicated that the yield per hector for the three cereals would decline considerably. These findings suggest that Lesotho should initiate adaptive measures, such as switching to drought resistant crops, in order to offset the negative impacts of climate change on crop yields. The government is advised to organise small farming groups into larger farming communities and to strife for efficient irrigation. Research geared towards the development of technologies that may equip farmers to adapt to climate change effects is recommended for the country.