Our simulations strongly indicate that future climatic conditions
may be unfavorable to early-planted soybeans in central-northern
Brazilian productive regions. Specifically, ESOY productivity is
likely to decrease until the middle of the century, regardless of the
scenario. Nevertheless, although climatic conditions become worse
at the start of the crop calendar, Y improves for laterdates (HSOY),
indicating that adapting planting dates has the potential to offset
soybean productivity losses caused by climate change.
Given that delaying planting dates improves productivity
responses after climate change,we assess the opportunity to maintain highly productive double cropping systems by delaying the
soybean planting dates to times of the year when the climate
may be more favorable. As previously mentioned, commodity agriculture in central-northern Brazil occurs on large ranches where
soybean cropland may be as extensiveas 10,000ha and the sowing
operation may take2-4 weeks.To simplify this analysis, wethere-
fore consider the duration of an average planting operation to be
20 days.