Improving coping strategies with weather and climate risks in agricultural production, including the improved use of insurance approaches: Multiple cropping

Abstract

As we consider mimicking nature part of sustainable agriculture designs (e.g. Lefroy and Hobbs 1998; Van Noordwijk and Ong 1999; Elevitch and Wilkinson (1999-2008), ways in which nature survives weather and climate onslaughts can be used to improve coping strategies with their risks in agricultural production. Weather and climate risks related protective uses of perennials and other multiple cropping in ecologically based agriculture as listed by Altieri (1999), that we mentioned in Sect. III.3.5.(α), were (a) soil improvement (e.g. Boffa 1999 for parklands and PTFM 2008 for watersheds); (b) erosion control, including drought control (e.g. Lefroy 2001; DFID 2004a); (c) frost protection (Snyder 2001); (d) flood/runoff control (CIFOR/FAO 2005); (e) wind protection (e.g. Stigter 1984); (f) weed/disease/pest control (e.g. De Melo-Abreu et al. (2010) for pests). © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.