ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies three kinds of effort: those are techniques which improve climate-marginal food production, policies and strategies which minimize the impact of future bad weather and technology which makes food production essentially climate-independent. Techniques to improve food production in regions of harsh climate or vacillating weather include more efficient irrigation, climate-defensive agronomics, genetic improvements which resist unfavorable weather, and the management of crops with information systems. While rising energy costs and loss of prime farmland are slowly constraining conventional agriculture, they are also nudging many of the climate-independent food technologies closer towards cost-effectiveness and commercial reality. Irrigation, or artificially supplied water, is widely used to minimize the impact of excessively dry climate or unusually dry weather on food crop production. Native food supplies come in seasonal bursts, depend on marginal and fragile distribution paths, and are especially vulnerable to losses due to bad weather and unfavorable climate.
