The effect of climate change on cotton production in Uganda.

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of the Ugandan economy and as the population explosion is a concern, there is a high demand of food from the increasing population. Hence, there is a need of high agricultural production for both cash crops and food crops to from available land by using modern agricultural practices. Cotton is the most important fiber plant in Uganda and the world. The effect of climate change on cotton production is being felt in Uganda in various forms including very high temperatures, erratic nature of rains, floods, and droughts. Climate has been changing in the last three decades and will continue to change regardless of any mitigation strategy. Cotton growing is climate dependent and hence it"s highly sensitive to climatic changes and nevertheless, there is a knowledge gap when researchers intend to assess the production of same crops for which data or models are not available. The aim of this study was to assess the potential effect of climate change on cotton production in Uganda. The EcoCrop module in DIVA-GIS was used to predict the adjustment of cotton suitability in Uganda. The model uses climate datasets and expert-derived temperature and rainfall ranges as inputs to determine the main niche of a given crop and then produces a suitability score as output. For the current climate, data from WorldClim for temperature and precipitation was downloaded and was used, a dataset of global climate surfaces representative of the years 1950 to 2000.Cotton-suitable areas for future climate scenarios were also predicted where the future climate datasets projected by the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) 4 for the year 2050 under a Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 emission scenario were used. The cotton site suitability index was analyzed in which marginal, suitable, very suitable, and excellent suitability sites were obtained in Uganda. The findings revealed that Uganda will witness a decrease in suitable cotton growing by 2050. The study also assessed the most suitable adaptation options for cotton production under the changing climate in Uganda using the multi-criteria analysis and recommendations were made.