Defining, managing and coping with weather and climate related risks in agriculture: Multiple cropping

Abstract

Advantages of intercropping of crops like coffee and cocoa with shade trees were most recently exemplified in the context of climate change by Stigter and Abdoellah (2008). Their argument was that any contribution to diminishing climate change from increasing carbon sequestration on a large scale would be an example of managing a weather and climate related risk, while fighting land/forest degradation in its wake (Anim-Kwapong and Frimpong 2005). In improving on present situations, there is the need for forest reserves as public goods and the prevention of timber extraction in these reserves as well as the prevention of bushfires at certain periods of years, under village control (Ruf and Zadi 1998). Shade trees should be kept or introduced (Anim-Kwapong and Frimpong 2005). Only in such cases as the special rainforest systems in Brazil (Silberner 2008) and Costa Rica (Rainforest Alliance 2008), cocoa may be introduced. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.