ABSTRACT

There is an increasing desire to build resilience into agricultural systems to protect and preserve crop production. One rational and cost-effective method may be the implementation of increased agricultural crop diversification. Crop diversification can improve resilience in a variety of ways: by producing a greater ability to suppress pest outbreaks and dampen pathogen transmission, which may worsen under future climate scenarios, as well as by buffering crop production from the effects of greater climate variability and extreme events. Such benefits point toward the obvious value of adopting crop diversification to improve resilience, yet adoption has been slow. Crop diversification can be implemented in a variety of forms and at a variety of scales, allowing farmers to choose a strategy that both increases resilience and provides economic benefits. This chapter discusses the development of tools and decision support systems to help farmers identify the benefits and trade-offs within their systems that will be necessary to promote the successful adoption of diverse agricultural production systems.