The climate change observed in the Brazilian Sertão in the last 40 years is remarkable. Average temperature has risen at a rate of 0.26oC per decade, and the number of days without rain over the year increased from an average of 254 in the 1970s to 275 in the 2010s. The paper recently published by Alexandre Gori Maia and colleagues at the International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management highlights how farmers tend to shift their activities mainly to cattle and dairy farming in response to increasing temperatures. Although the overall productivity tends to reduce with the recurrence of droughts, several measures to mitigate the impacts of more extreme climate conditions have successfuly proven to improve the agricultural production of small impoverished farmers.
