Impact assessment of climate change on farming systems in the South Mediterranean area: a Tunisian case study

Abstract

This study considers a quantitative approach for assessing the performance of Tunisian farming systems to face climate change. It is based on the resilience concept and the calculation, with a modelling chain, of three indicators: land stock, labour stock, and income flux. Two system states, “base” and “climate change”, and a time horizon of 2010–2025, are developed and compared for representative farming systems. The study shows that 55% of the farming systems were identified as being resilient to climate change. They are diversified and mostly grow cereals, vegetables, and forage crops combined with livestock, increasing their capability to mitigate climate change by reorganizing crop activities. 35% of the farms identified as being non-resilient are dominated by orchards, or cereals and orchards. They showed an important drop in farm income (−45%), mainly due to their inability to adapt their cropping systems to water stress and soil salinity. Finally, only 10% were identified as being poorly resilient farming systems. Those farms have mainly intensified cereal cropping systems based on a strategy of purchasing land to increase the surface area of profitable activities (forage and livestock). Overall, the methodology can be adapted for other dry land areas in the Mediterranean region and help experts and policy-makers to propose and test strategies for adapting to climate change.