Agriculture is deeply interconnected with weather and climate, the main driver of agriculture production but also the dominant source of the overall variability of food production. Agriculture constitutes the principal livelihood of 70% of the world¿s poor; many of the world¿s poor and hungry are smallholder farmers, herders, fisherfolk, forest-dwellers, including indigenous people living in climate sensitive vulnerable areas. As the silent hunger crisis has already reached a historic high with 1.02 billion people going hungry every day, raising food production by some 70% to meet needs of the world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 in light of impact of climate change may be one of the biggest challenges of the century. Climate science has offered a depth of knowledge to systematically characterize the agroclimatic resources and develop climate responsive agriculture policies, programmes and practices. However, as the food systems are expanding more and more into marginal and vulnerable areas, a renewed and holistic focus is now indispensable taking into account ecological, economic and social perspectives. National agriculture policies must therefore consider ¿climate as a resource¿ and develop synergies and embrace innovation and ideas of climate science to support land use planning, agro-ecological zoning, identify emerging areas of concern (AoC) and facilitate climate change adaptation and mitigation planning at a time when agriculture has an increased role to play to supply food, fodder, fibre and energy. In order to meet the needs of food system communities, a number of existing gaps in climate based agriculture services related to content, lead-time and communication must be addressed. Nonetheless, the emerging ability to translate timely, skilful climate information to optimize sustainable agriculture practices and communicate to the farmers through cost effective means provide opportunities for managing current ¿climate risks¿ and move towards strategic ¿climate resilient¿ adaptation and mitigation. The approach combining historical climate data, modern climate information products and communication technologies for real-time analysis of impacts; and delivery of optimal management practices at farm level is needed for farm adaptive dynamic optimization (FADO). The action-oriented climate advice should contain seasonal (climate and crop yield forecasts, crop-weather insurance indices), intra-seasonal (information on rainfall, dry and wet spells, hot and cold waves, land slides, floods, pest and diseases, and agronomic management practices) for risk reduction and long term (changing vulnerability and risk profiles, environmental services, biodiversity conservation etc.,) strategies for optimal and sustainable use of land, water and genetic resources. Strong partnership and collaboration among international institutions, national focal agencies, community based organizations and social networks are precondition. All these efforts present key challenges, but offers immense opportunities for both climate science and agriculture services to support sustainable agriculture.JRC.DDG.H.4-Monitoring agricultural resource

The water footprint (WF), based on irrigation water quality, is important as a decision-making tool for crop selection based on the comparative advantage of water consumption and yield to maximize agricultural water productivity and sustainably improve water use efficiency. This paper presents a generic link between climate variability and water footprint. To support this link, a case study is presented for wheat and maize in different agro-climate zones in Egypt. In this study, the three agro-ecological zones, Nile Delta, Middle Egypt, and Upper Egypt, were selected to represent three different microclimates. The climate data were analyzed to estimate reference evapotranspiration (ETo) and calculate crop water use (CWU) for wheat and maize from 2015 through 2019. Cultivated area and yield data were analyzed during the study period. Water footprint (WF) was calculated for old land (clay soils) and new lands (sandy soils) in three climate regions based on blue and grey water. Green water was excluded due to negligible rainfall depths in Egypt. The results showed that the mean values of WF for maize were 1067, 1395, 1655 m³/ton in old land and 1395, 1634, 2232 m³/ton in new land under the three climate regions, respectively, while it was 923, 982, 1117 m³/ton in old land and 1180, 1258, 1452 m³/ton for wheat in new land for the three regions, respectively. The results show that the crop water use fluctuated over regions due to climate variability where the CWU values were 6211, 7335, 8007 m³/ha for maize and 4348, 4825, 5774 m³/ha for wheat in the three regions, respectively. The results show an 11% and 33% increase in maize and an 18% and 29% increase in wheat CWU in Middle and Upper Egypt regions comparing to what was observed in Nile Delta due to an increase in solar radiation, temperature, and wind speed. The Egypt mean value of wheat water footprint was 1152 m³/ton and mean value of maize water footprint was 1563 m³/ton. The data clearly show the effect of microclimate variability on WF and irrigation requirements between regions. The methodology and results from this study provide a pathway to help the policy makers to mitigate climate change impacts on crop yield and to enhance water resources management in major crop production regions by redistribution of the cropping patterns based on the comparative advantages of each crop within each region. The crop choices relative to the soil water retention characteristics could also contribute to the moderation of microclimate, which affects ETo and ETc and the water footprint.