Tackling climate change from different angles

With the recent release of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, climate change has been a familiar topic in the news and media. More recently new publications have explicitly linked climate change to food security and they show that there is much to be done by governments, big business and the public sector, if our food and agricultural systems are to be resilient to predicted changes in the climate.

A new report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of Weather Volatility and Climate Change, which builds on the IPCC report, explains how climate change will undermine efforts to tackle hunger, limiting food production and putting food supplies at risk. Higher temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns and more frequent and severe natural disasters could reduce food production growth by 2% each decade for the rest of this century.  But, the report says, US government action can curb the risks climate change poses to global food security by integrating climate change adaptation into its global food security strategy. Recommendations include:

• Passing legislation for a long-term global food and nutrition security strategy.
• Increasing funding for agricultural research on climate change adaptation.  Research priorities should include improving crop and livestock tolerance to higher temperatures and volatile weather, combating pests and disease and reducing food waste.
• Collecting better data and making information on weather more widely available to farmers.  There are significant global data gaps right now on weather; water availability, quality and future requirements; crop performance; land use; and consumer preferences.
• Increasing funding for partnerships between U.S. universities and universities and research institutions in low-income countries, to train the next generation of agricultural leaders.
• Advancing international action through urging that food security be addressed through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

Not only does the US, and other countries, have much to gain from maintaining and improving agricultural productivity and strong, stable international commodity markets but it is imperative they tackle climate change, in particular with a focus on adaptation, as part of their commitment to food and nutrition security. As Ambassador Ivo H. Daalder, president of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs stated, “For the first time since the Green Revolution, empowering the world’s poorest to improve their livelihoods is a high priority on the international agenda. But climate change puts the success of these efforts at risk.”

The report makes the link that the effects of climate change in reducing global food security and availability puts countries, developed and developing alike, at great risk in terms of national security and economic prosperity.

Yesterday, more than 500 policymakers, corporate executives, scientists, and senior leaders from international and nongovernmental organizations gathered to discuss the report, Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of a Changing Climate (PDF), at the Council’s Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington DC. Find out more about the presentations here.

A new Oxfam report shows it’s not just governments that need to consider climate change. The world’s biggest food producers and food brands need to do a lot more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The world’s largest ten food and beverage companies have been linked to an estimated 264 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2012, this is more than the emissions of Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway combined. If the group of companies were a nation, it would be the 25th most polluting country in the world.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Foresight Africa, Brookings Africa Growth Initiative

Humanity needs science, not ideology, Huffington Post

The Food Index, Oxfam

Perilous retreat from global trade rules, China Daily

101 Organizations to Watch in 2014, Food Tank

First comprehensive test to detect genetic modification in food, American Chemical Society

Got milk? The impact of Heifer International’s livestock donation programs in Rwanda on nutritional outcomes, Science Direct

New discovery could stimulate plant growth and increase crop yields, researchers say, EurekAlert

Hidden soy on supermarket shelves masks assault on nature, WWF

Conservation Agriculture: Global Prospects and Challenges, Jat, R.A, Sahrawat, K. L. and Kassam, A.H.

Frankenpolitics: The Left’s defence of GMOs, EU Observer

The right kind of helping hand for small farmers, Thomson Reuters Foundation

What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters, Grist

 

 

Imagining the future of agriculture

So often discussions around agriculture and food security focus on all or nothings: small farms or large-scale industrial farming, organic or conventional agriculture, public sector support or private sector investment. In December 2012, Oxfam asked agricultural experts, champions, farmers and knowledgeable individuals from the field to the United Nations to take part in a two week online discussion about how we can meet the world’s growing need for food in a sustainable and equitable manner. The aim was to move past the disagreements and discourse and to imagine a positive actionable future for agriculture.

This task was put to 23 essayists such as Kanayo Nwanze, Director of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Shenggen Fan, Director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Susan Godwin a farmer in Nigeria and Harold Poelma, Managing Director of Cargill Refined Oils Europe. These essays were then showcased online for two weeks allowing participants to respond. Both essayists and participants in the discussion were asked to consider the following questions:

• What if all farmers had adequate risk management systems to deal with climate trends and shocks, as well as with price volatility in input and product markets?
• What if fossil fuels were no longer required in any form of input to global agricultural production?
• What if all farmers, male and female, had full and equal control over the necessary resources for farming, and over the outputs of their labour?
• What if the ideas and innovations of resource-poor farmers leading to improvements of their natural resource base were supported by adequate access to public and private sector investments?

The results of these discussions and the 23 essays, have now been published in a report, entitled The Future of Agriculture.

There was general agreement that  we need to foster creativity and innovation. That while we possess some of the technologies and practices to achieve a more sustainable and equitable agriculture, we will need to test the limits of human creativity and idealism to meet future challenges.

Much of this innovation will come from farmers themselves, who by the nature of their job must respond to unpredictable challenges, and be inventive and adaptable. Putting this vision into action will require political will and leadership. Supporting farmer innovation within established systems, sharing innovations between farmers, linking farmers to markets and to information, and facilitating partnerships. As Roger Thurow, author of The Last Hunger season, explains , to tap into the wealth of information farmers can contribute, we will first need to create a level playing field for all the farmers in the world, most notably smallholder farmers, on whom the majority of the world depends for food.  As Thurow puts it, ” Neglected for so long, they are now indispensable to the future of agriculture and food.”

New Oxfam Discussion Paper: Private Investment in Agriculture

An Oxfam Discussion Paper, authored by Erinch Sahan and Monique Mikhail, released in 2012, lays out the need for huge investment in agriculture in developing countries. Both public and private sector investment is needed but investments must promote production in a manner that ‘does no harm’ and that ‘does more good’.

The key roles for the public sector should be to support the most vulnerable small-scale food producers, those who the private sector has little incentive to engage with, and to create the right policy environment to allow the private sector to invest. But, as the paper points out, agriculture is ‘inherently a private sector endeavour’ and thus requires private investment, both large and small.

While the paper notes that private sector investment could have a positive impact it caveats this with the warning that investments must follow ethical and sustainable business practices. From Oxfam’s work on mobilising the private sector to support smallholder farmers, certain principles have emerged which they document in this paper. The private sector should invest in staple crops, local and regional markets, processing, access to services, sustainable agriculture as well as work with producer organisations and focus on women’s empowerment. Oxfam believe that private and public sector investment should complement each another and that when private sector investment is coupled with the right enabling environment, this investment can be transformational to economic growth, environmental sustainability and poverty reduction.

Famine in the Sahel

The aftermath of the food crisis in the Horn of Africa is ongoing and the effects of the famine in Niger in 2010 are still being felt and yet a new crisis is looming. More than 18 million people in 8 countries could be affected and over 1 million children under 5 risk severe acute malnutrition if food shortages and drought in the Sahel escalate. Over the last 12 months 43 million have been added to the number of people going hungry in the world due to severe food shortages.

Calls for early action to prevent a famine in the Sahel have been made but will the international community respond rapidly enough? A failure to respond to early warnings and calls for help has been widely cited as contributing to the scale of the crisis in the Horn of Africa, and detailed in Oxfam’s report A Dangerous Delay.

The escalating drought has already depleted food stocks as of March 2012 and harvest is not until September. Grain production in many areas of the Sahel is 36% lower than for 2011. Increasing food prices due to chronic shortages and speculation as well as regional conflicts, particularly in Mali, have compounded the situation as have untreated locust outbreaks able to move across the area. As with most famines, it may have been sparked by the drought but a lot of other factors, infrastructural, political and social, have combined to cause this escalating crisis.

So far the international community has committed to half ($700 million) the total amount in aid called for in December 2011. But the crisis is expected to get a lot worse before it gets better if the international community does not take urgent and significant action.

While future plans to break the cycle of famine (this will be the third drought in the Sahel in ten years) must focus more on prevention, the situation in the Sahel, quoted as having never been this bad, demands international attention now.