Climate Change: readjusting the levers

Agriculture is one the first business sectors to feel the effects of climate change. Heat, heavy rainfall, droughts, and storms have a direct impact on agricultural production, including crop yields and quality. This demands essential flexibility for farm management practices. At Agritechnica 2025, exhibitors from around the world will demonstrate how technical solutions can address the challenges of climate change within the trade fair’s international technical programme.

As a result of global warming, extreme weather conditions are becoming more frequent, making agricultural land management increasingly difficult. Extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts, hail, heavy rainfall and flooding are raising the risk of damage and making harvests increasingly unpredictable. The future of agriculture will largely depend on the measures farm managers undertake in response and the solutions offered by partners such as agricultural machinery dealers and plant breeders.

To ensure agriculture is resilient to climate change, multiple levers need to be adjusted. Many farms have already adapted to changing climate conditions while others continue to consider appropriate measures. Due to regional differences, there can be no one-size-fits-all solution. Suitable adaptation strategies must be developed in a differentiated manner. The toolbox of potential measures is extensive, ranging from soil cultivation and other management practices to extended crop rotations and plant breeding.

Water use, combined with forward-looking water management, is a key factor in successful climate adaptation. Soil cultivation offers a promising starting point. No-till or minimal tillage practices can lead to positive changes in soil properties, which can significantly enhance soil moisture retention. However, not all soils are suitable for such measures.

In this context, regenerative arable farming is also coming into focus. In addition to reduced soil cultivation, it includes continuous soil cover as part of the cultivation practices. Both aim to improve soil quality and thereby increase the soil’s water retention capacity. Keeping the soil covered as much as possible — through cover crops, catch crops, undersowing, or mulch layers — can also help prevent or mitigate erosion caused by heavy rainfall events.

Irrigation increases in importance

The growing risk of drought means that agriculture must increasingly address the issue of irrigation in order to maintain current yield levels. To use available water sustainably, water-saving irrigation technologies are essential. The most efficient and resource-conserving method is drip irrigation. However, it is expensive and primarily used in vineyards, orchards, hop cultivation, and specialty crops. In arable farming, mobile irrigation machines “irrigation cannons” are the most commonly used system in Germany. Their efficiency can be improved through GPS-controlled sector management. Semi-mobile center pivot and linear irrigation systems are more water-efficient but require large areas to be economically viable. These systems can also benefit from intelligent control technologies that regulate water use precisely and according to demand. Additionally, nozzle carts are gaining importance due to their lower susceptibility to wind and higher efficiency. Irrigation involves not only technical aspects but also legal ones, such as water extraction rights. Agricultural irrigation requires a water use permit. In past drought years, allocated water quotas have already been exceeded in some regions. This further highlights the importance of technologies with high water-use efficiency.

Precision seeding for cereals and rapeseed

A healthy, vigorous plant is better able to withstand drought stress. At the same time, having fewer plants per square meter helps conserve water. This makes precision seeding (single-seed sowing) an interesting option for cereals and rapeseed as well. With optimal spacing, plants face less competition and can develop their root systems more effectively. Both factors enhance the plants’ resilience to drought-related damage.

Diversified crop rotations and mixed cropping

A more diversified and extended crop rotation can help spread the risk of climate-related impacts. For example, winter crops can make targeted use of winter moisture. Drought-tolerant legumes can also be a valuable addition to crop rotations, especially in light of increasingly dry summers. They offer the added benefit of nitrogen fixation. When evaluating such crop rotations, it’s important to consider not only financial aspects but also factors like reduced fertilizer requirements and improved soil fertility.

In addition to adapted crop management practices, breeding for improved tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress is of great and lasting importance in meeting this challenge. New, climate-adapted varieties are expected to use limited water availability more efficiently for yield formation. Further progress in breeding can not only lead to increased yields and better adaptation to changing cultivation conditions, but also enable crops to make more efficient use of available resources. In the future, plant breeding can contribute not only to optimizing the genetics of widely grown domestic crops, but also to adapting alternative crops — such as promising C4 plants — to local growing conditions.

Sorghum instead of maize?

With climate change and the resulting longer growing seasons, crops from warmer and drier climates that have so far been uncommon in Germany are becoming increasingly possible. One potential candidate is deep-rooted sorghum, which, due to its high tolerance to heat and drought stress, could be a viable alternative to maize. However, major challenges in cultivating sorghum include its lower tolerance to cold stress and its unadapted ripening behavior. In addition to further breeding progress, the use of later-maturing varieties could increase sorghum’s yield potential and reduce productivity risks.

Thinking outside the box

To tackle and assess the challenges ahead, it is sometimes necessary to think outside the box. This can help uncover new solutions and explore cultivation practices from other regions of the world, offering insights that may be applicable to one’s own farm or region. Often, these involve medium- to long-term measures that are the result of many years or even decades of development. For example, researchers at the University of Maine found in a study that, between 2008 and 2021, farmers across large parts of the U.S. adapted their crop choices to better suit recent local climate changes. One possible response to the effects of climate change, therefore, is to adjust crop rotations.