the question need to be rephrase, however, implications of drought on agricultural production include, reduced yields leading to reduced income and food insecurity. This will also affect consistency in food supply there affecting trade and market shares.
Agricultural drought leads to lower yields depending upon the phenology state the crops are. Excessive precipitation amounts might affect the crops in different ways: 1 - dropping / aborting flowers; 2 - hardening the use of pesticides / herbicides / fertilizers and so on; 3 - making things worse for the harvesters and any other kind of tractor to get on the crop field, even more complicated in clay soils.
To experience drought and excessive precipitation in the same season would clearly imply a very poor distribution of the rains. If this occurs where rainfall is markedly seasonal, crop production will suffer losses with the extent of loss being a function of crop in question and the timing of the extreme events relative to its phenology as implied by Denis in an earlier response. Production losses would clearly impact on trade flows where the crop is a major item of trade. If David will provide a context for his question, answers can be more tailored to the situation of interest but, generally speaking, extreme rainfall events, droughts (especially agricultural drought) and floods, are possible in the same season in large swaths of the semi-arid and sub-humid regions of the world. Such seasons will be characterised by reduced incomes and economic difficulties for the farmers and the large array of individuals and groups who line the value chain; the buyers of the crop, the transporters, the processors, the consumers. Lowered income for the farmers could result directly in reduced willingness to cultivate the land the following season and in many marginal regions of the world, such aversion to risk is forcing many families off the farm and into the urban fringes in search of 'easier' means of livelihood. The implications of this trend are already dire as rising poverty levels exacerbate socio-political tensions and induce raging conflicts.
It is for this reason that instruments are required to enhance the resilience of farming systems and reduce the vulnerability of farmers to such losses.
These requirements would include: improved seeds/seedlings capable of withstanding extreme weather; more accurate, timely and appropriately-worded seasonal forecasts of the onset, cessation and length of growing season; early warning information on extreme weather events; knowledge transfer on farming best practices; agricultural insurance, among others....
Can David be more specific if the answers appear tangential?
Dear all, thanks a lot for the response and for the request to rephrase the question. We all do know that issues with weather are quite complicated and prediction of weather indicators more uncertain. Incidences of extreme weather events have over the past decade been on the rise, characterized at times by contrasting events (e.g. precipitation and drought, heat stress and cold waves among others) in a given season. These have the capacity of imposing or yielding some detrimental or adverse effects on various dimensions of agriculture (including food production, trade, food security issues, poverty, changes in land use, land degradation, etc.). My interest however is more on the production and trade dimension of agriculture, and want to know some of the production and trade impacts contrasting extreme events could have on farm households should they occur in a single growing season. thanks