Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA): assessment of rain-fed crops in the state of Ceará from 1945 to 2020

Abstract

One of the characteristics of the semi-arid region is rainfall instability. In this sense, this research sought to answer the following question: Can it be said that farmers in Ceará who cultivate rainfed crops develop adaptive characteristics to the difficulties caused by rainfall instability that allow them to say that they practice climate-resilient agriculture in the period from 1945 to 2020? In order to answer this question, it has the following specific objectives: a) to classify the distribution of rainfall in Ceará from 1901 to 2020 into three periods; b) to examine the years in which these periods occurred between 1945 and 2020; c) to evaluate the behavior of rice, bean, cassava and corn production in the state in each of these periods; d) to estimate the instabilities of rainfall, as well as those associated with the variables that define the production of the crops studied; e) to verify whether there is resilience in the production of these crops to the occurrence of droughts, as defined in this study. The rainfall data used was taken from NOAA (2022) covering the period from 1901 to 2020. Information on the crops studied is available from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for the period 1945/2020. The research shows how rainfed crops can contribute to regional development. Instabilities were estimated using the coefficients of variation. Factor analysis was used to construct the synergy index. The results showed the existence of self-resilience in the production of the crops studied.

Keywords: dryland food crops; drought; rainfall instability; rural development in semi-arid regions; regional development.