Managing climate risks to support on-farm resilience

Published: December 17, 2025 by Vincent Gauthier

Effective climate risk management enables ag lenders to build resilience in their portfolios and help farmers adapt.

Farmers across North America are facing rapidly changing weather patterns, making it harder to grow crops and raise livestock that sustain their livelihoods and our food supply. These shifting conditions can lead to declines in farm production, driving down farmland values and revenues, and increasing the likelihood of agricultural loan defaults. As a result, farmers’ financial partners are also exposed to risk related to climate impacts. When farmers face climate risk, their lenders do too.

Building agricultural resilience to increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather will require significant investment from farmers with support from their key financial partners — agricultural finance institutions. Environmental Defense Fund is working with ag lenders to assess climate-related risks across their loan portfolios and deliver holistic financial solutions that help farmers adapt.

Climate impacts on credit risks in agriculture

Explore our climate and credit risk webtool to learn more about projected impacts of climate change on farms in North America, along with strategies to manage climate risks.

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Five ways you can use climate data in your business

Strategies to address climate risks and capture opportunities

This guide presents five strategies that agricultural finance institutions can adopt to manage climate risks and help their farmer borrowers adapt to climate change.

The strategies outlined in this guide will help agricultural finance institutions navigate the challenges posed by climate change and support their farmer borrowers to sustainably produce food and other agricultural products into the future.

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