Some Climate Change Adaptation Options to Agricultural Production in Uruguay The aim of proposal was to outline an Action Plan with recommendations of responses and strategies, to contribute with a better adaptation to climate variability and extreme climate events impacts in Uruguay’s agricultural production systems. -Barrenechea, P. et al, Estudio Nacional de Economía del Cambio Climático en Uruguay. Dinama, MVOTMA, Uruguay. -Catadores, Impacto de la helada en los viñedos fue una catástrofe. Disponible en: -Geilfus, F., herramientas para el desarrollo participativo: diagnóstico, planificación, monitoreo, evaluación / Frans Geifus – San José,. C.R.: IICA, Climate variability and occurrence of climate extreme events (frost, hail, droughts) result in very important damages for the agricultural sector, and is very frequent that this sector requires several years for economically and financially recover from such damages. Recent example in Uruguay is the drought, where according to data from government statistics office, losses were in the range between 2% to 3% of average PIB in the last years (Barrenechea, 2009). Late frosts occurred in October 2008, affected to out of a total of vineyards installed in Uruguay, with a production loss estimated in 30% average (Catadores, 2008). Soil water content excess occurred in the last decade had high impact on plant growth and yield of winter crops (wheat and barley), provoking collapse of agricultural insurance services for such conditions, and also caused important losses in peach plantations due to root asphyxia. That is why variability and adverse climate events in Uruguay are an important factor, and every action and effort leading with identification, development and implementation of response options to contribute to climate risk management and adaptation are fundamental for achieving good results in the agricultural production sector. 1. Introduction 2. Objective 3. Methodology 4. Results 5. References As result of the workshops, three main extreme climate events affecting agricultural production in Uruguay were identified: a) Water deficit, mainly in sumer field crops. b) Water excess, mainly in winter field crops c) Early and late frost occurrence. From a global point of view, “interannual climate variability” was determined as the main factor provoking climate damage risks in agricultural production in Uruguay. Finally, eight response options were priorized for climate risk adaptation, to develop an include in an Action Plan (table 1). The Climate Change and Information Systems unit (GRAS) from the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) of Uruguay, jointly with the World Bank and the University of Cornell from the United States of America, developed the project “Vulnerability to climate change in agricultural production systems in Latin America and Caribbean: development of responses and strategies, chapter Uruguay”. The basic strategy applied in the project for achieving the objective was making workshops with active participation of workgroups, including mainly representatives of producers associations, companies and institutions directly involved and linked to agricultural production activities in Uruguay, and experts in matters of weather, climate change and agriculture. Therefore, whole process and final proposal for the resulting project’s action plan was the result of work and interchange of information, experiences, opinions and additions made by such workgroup. In each workshop the methodology of “Participative Work with Visualization" was applied, integrating techniques of “Brain storm”, “Priorities Matrix” and “Options Creation for an Action Plan" (Geilfus, 2002). As result of work in shops, the group identified and further developed eight options of response that were ordered by priority according to the punctuation shown in Table 1. Based on the exercise of priorities definition, an action plan was created using the best three classified options. It is worth to mention that the eight options of response emerged from the workshop were considered important by the workgroup. Although the project was mainly focused on field crops production, the results and identified proposal are inclusive and wide scoped. Therefore, they can be applied to most of the sectors of agricultural production systems in Uruguay. Agustín Giménez y Bruno Lanfranco INIA-Uruguay