ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN AGRICULTURE: ECOSYSTEM BASED OPTIONS

Climate change induced great challenges for agriculture, particularly implementation of new farming practices. Adaptation to climate change requires sustainable and environmentally friendly farm-level management practices and methods, and most promising of them are offered by an ecosystem approach and agroecological principles. The paper presents the results of the research, which has twofold aim: 1) to determine the most promising ecosystem based adaptation measures to climate change for Latvia's crop farms via evaluating recommendations; 2) to evaluate the implementation and possibilities of adaptation measures via assessing trends in Latvia, as well as comparing status among the countries in the Baltic Sea region. The data was obtained from the EU and national statistical database. The mixed research, combining suitable qualitative and quantitative research methods, was used. Most promising adaptation measures to climate change for implementation in the Latvia's crop farms could be combination of conservation agriculture practices (i.e. minimum soil disturbance, crop diversification, and permanent soil cover) with agroecological farm management practices. The results show that in Latvia, with the exception in the organic agriculture sector, in particular in the organic farming, the above mentioned climate adaptation measures at farm level have not yet been introduced and implemented sufficiently and effectively, especially compared to other EU countries in the Baltic Sea region.