chapter - Atmospheric and Oceanic Science

The main services and problems of water resource
last one is part of the border between Brazil and Uruguay. Table 8.2 presents a summary
of the areas devoted to agriculture in the countries of the La Plata basin. It can
be observed that irrigation is limited to the 4.6% of the potentially agricultural soils.
Table 8.2. Farming areas in thousands of hectares. [CEPAL 2003]
Country
Agricultural
Soil
2000
Permanent
Crops
2000
Irrigated
Area
2000
Rice
2001
Corn
2001
Soy bean
2001
Wheat
2001
Argentina 25.000 2.200 1.561 151 2.745 10.318 7.108
Bolivia 1.944 262 132 149 306 556 110
Brazil 53.200 12.000 1.910 2.147 12.355 13.935 1.702
Paraguay 2.290 88 67 27 353 1.209 171
Uruguay 1.300 40 180 154 57 11 128
Total
% of
83.734 14.590 3.850 2.628 15.816 26.029 9.219
agricultural
area
17,4 4,6 3,1 18,9 31,1 11,0
Long droughts strongly affect the agricultural sector, both in the commercial
crops and in the subsistence farming. The lack of water or the reduction of its quality
and the lack of grass lead to losses of weight in the cattle, milk productivity
reduction or even to animal deaths.
The vulnerability of the agriculture to Climate Change has been a matter of
concern of numerous studies in the region and in the world. However, there are at
least two reasons to assume that, unless the change leaded to extreme scenarios as
permanent flood or very important reduction of the soil moisture because of temperature
rise or less precipitations, the adjustment to the Climatic Change would be
very rapid. The first one is that being an activity of annual cycle, producers are able
to adapt rapidly and in autonomous way to the progressive but relatively slow climate
changes. An example of fast autonomous adaptation is the extension of the
agricultural frontier that accompanied the positive rainfall trends in Argentina
(Chapter5). The second reason is that current development of biotechnology is so
formidable that surely it will be able to overcome many of the problems caused by
climatic adverse trends (Barros 2004).
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