During this Congress, there has been a deep debate about the future CAP Green Architecture. The Congress was organized by the Spanish Ministry on Agriculture, Fishing and Food on the 29th– 31st of May of 2019 in Zafra, Badajoz, Spain. It hosted 170 participants from: national and regional agrarian administrations of Spain, agrarian union farmers and cooperatives, NGO’s, and agrarian national representatives from other Member States (Italy, France, Portugal, Holland, Poland, etc.) and even representatives from the Agriculture Commission and Environment Commission of the European Union.
During this congress Fundación Global Nature has presented general recommendations and sustainable measures to adapt to climate change, derived from the work realized during LIFE AgriAdapt in the 32 Spanish pilot farms where and assessment of the vulnerability to climate change, and action plans have been developed to increase the pilot farms resilience to climate change.
The most relevant climate events for the pilot farms are hail & frost days, hydric deficit, droughts and high temperatures. Hail is mainly problematic for permanent crop farms. High temperatures are a problem for all pilot farms, with drought increasing in frequency. In the near future, the days over 30°C in May-June will increase, as well as the number of days with heat stress for cattle and the minimum night temperature. Through our analysis on the pilot farms we have identified several sustainable adaptation options that are applicable to farms in all climate risk regions but even sustainable adaptation measures applicable at farm level in concrete cases. Although the project tools have shown a high efficiency to design sustainable adaptation measures (depending on the climate risks and their near future projections, together within the agronomic management and local conditions) at farm level, there are several sustainable adaptation recommendations that can be applicable to the different agrarian systems as part of the future Eco-schemes. For arable farming and permanent crops, the focus of the sustainable adaptation options is on the improvement of soil structure and fertility. With improved soil fertility, water can be taken up more easily and stored for a longer period of time. These are measures for reducing the amount of bare soil, increasing the on-farm biodiversity by increasing the crop diversification and rotation and measures for increasing the thermal comfort of livestock. Sustainable adaptation options for livestock focus mainly on the reduction of heat stress and the grazing management plans to increase quantity and quality of pasture in extensive livestock systems.