Abstract
This paper aims to analyse what shapes farmers’ vulnerability and adaptation strategies in the context of rapid change. Xinjiang is semi-arid, with extremes of temperature, growing seasons and winds. Favourable socioeconomic conditions have boosted the wellbeing of farmers in the past decades. Interviews with forty-seven farmers led to the categorization of five groups according to the predominant type of farming activity: animal farmers, government farmers (leasing land from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Group), crop farmers, agri-tourism operators and entrepreneurs. High government support has aided farmers to deal with climate challenges, through advanced technology, subsidies and loans. Farmers, however, greatly contribute to their own high adaptive capacity through inventiveness, flexibility and a high knowledge base. Although the future climate will entail hotter temperatures, farmers can be seen as generally well equipped to deal with these challenges because of the high adaptive capacity they currently have and utilize. Those that are most vulnerable are those that have difficulty to access credit e.g. animal farmers and those that do not want to change their agricultural systems e.g. from pastoral lifestyles to include tourism-based operations.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the support of the Swedish International Development Agency and Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2010DFA32520) for funding this project and the staff at the Institute of Desert Meteorology, the Chinese Meteorological Authority, Urumqi and the Key Oasis Eco-agriculture Laboratory, Xinjiang Production and Construction Group, Shihezi University, Shihezi, as well as the farmers and managers who gave their time to aid us in this work.
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Wilk, J., Hjerpe, M., Yang, W. et al. Farm-scale adaptation under extreme climate and rapid economic transition. Environ Dev Sustain 17, 393–407 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-014-9549-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-014-9549-2