Climate change is already affecting global agricultural value chains and the lives and livelihoods of those who depend on them. Climate change is slowing down global farming productivity growth, increasingly putting harvests and storage at risk of pests and disease and decreasing the nutritional value of staple crops, especially in the warmer, more vulnerable regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, global demand for food is expected to increase by 50% between 2010 and 2050.  Agricultural stakeholders need to understand how climate risks and their exposure to them are changing, so that they can make plans, decisions and investments that will reduce vulnerability and build resilience.

Learn more about AgriAdapt

Watch the launch event

AgriAdapt was co-developed with agricultural decision-makers to provide free, reliable, accessible climate information to help them identify and understand the climate change risks they face. The beta version provides global, map-based and crop-specific data for coffee, cotton and rice value chains in Colombia and India respectively. It includes information on changing land use suitability, projected shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns and much more. The goal is to inform decisions about which crops to grow where and when, and ways to make processing, distribution and storage more resilient, ultimately enhancing the climate resilience of people working in the most vulnerable parts of these supply chains.

WRI designed and built the beta version of AgriAdapt over the course of a year through a collaborative, stakeholder-driven process. Through interviews, small group discussions and a workshop series, intended users of the tool guided its development by indicating what information is most important to them and in what format it would be most useful. WRI also partnered with two key organizations for on-the-ground expertise and stakeholder outreach: Clima y Café in Colombia for the coffee value chain and National Agro Foundation in India for the rice and cotton value chains.

Users of AgriAdapt can access and interact with data to identify current and future climate risks in value chains and regions of interest to them. For example, users can view rising temperature and water scarcity projections layered over crop productivity throughout different municipalities and then use these inputs to inform which climate adaptation measures to take and where.

Stacked screenshots of AgriAdapt tool.

In its first iteration, AgriAdapt is available in 4 languages –English, Spanish, Telugu and Tamil—and includes 3 main pages:

  1. The Home page provides a quick view of what can be found on the platform, introducing users to each section and providing suggested preset data overlays for a quick start.
  2. The Crops page provides a narrative page for each selected crop (Coffee, Cotton, Rice), which uses data to tell the story of how climate change affects different parts of the value chain.
  3. The Map page includes two different sections: In "Layers," users will find the complete catalog of data layers available in AgriAdapt, while the "Analysis" section permits aggregated analysis of the selected layers in specific geographic points selected by the user.
Screenshot of platform including modules to explore coffee, cotton and rice.

For more information on the participatory approach taken to design and develop the tool, please see the working paper documenting the process: AgriAdapt: Strategies for Participatory Design and Development of a Climate Risk Tool.

AgriAdapt is currently in its second phase, during which we’ll be updating and expanding the platform’s data offer, as well as developing an adaptation solutions menu feature.

AgriAdapt was made possible thanks to funding from the Walmart Foundation.

Cover Image by: Tea Tüür, WRI