Landraces as an adaptation strategy to climate change for smallholders in Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil

•Smallholder farmers in Santa Catarina have maintained landraces as an adaptation to drought.•These smallholders perceive an intensification of extreme weather events over time.•Landraces are a robust local strategy for adapting agriculture to climate change.•These strategies provide an advanced starting point for locally appropriate adaptation to adapt to the expected future challenges of climate change.

Adapting to climate change has become a pressing and urgent issue given the alarming rapidity with which climate changes is taking place. Agriculture is strongly conditioned by climatic factors, but subsistence agriculture is particularly vulnerable because smallholders do not have adequate financial resources to adapt to climate change. Agrobiodiversity provides one option for smallholders to adapt to climate change. Landraces developed in the western region of Santa Catarina State, Brazil, are part of a deliberate strategy by smallholders to achieve a state of food sovereignty and independence from commercial sources of hybrid seed. The ability of smallholders to collectively conserve climate-adapted landraces indicates the depth of local knowledge and capability within local communities that can be drawn on to meet the future challenges of climate change.