UXBRIDGE, Canada, Apr 2 (IPS) – Don’t forget about agriculture in the
upcoming global negotiations to combat climate change, experts warn.
Not only is farming most at risk in an increasingly variable and
tempestuous climate, it is also a major emitter of greenhouse gases.
But with the right policies in place, agriculture could both continue
to feed the world and play a crucial role in solving the climate
problem.
“Agriculture has been missing in the run-up talks to Copenhagen,”
says Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute
(IFPRI).
The nations of the world will meet in Copenhagen this December to
hammer out a new climate treaty to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases
(GHGs) and establish a fund to help poorer countries adapt. The complex
process began in 2007 at the Bali talks, continued in Poznan, Poland in
2008 and is ongoing this week in Bonn.
Agriculture accounts for about 15 percent of human emissions of GHGs,
IFPRI says, although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts
it higher at 25 percent. Much of those emissions come from developed
countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels and fertilisers and raise
far more methane-emitting livestock.
With climate change the world is facing reduced yields of up to 20
percent in maize and rice by the year 2050, Rosegrant told IPS. Much of
that yield decline will be in the developing world, mainly because
sub-tropical and tropical regions are expected to be hit hardest by
significant changes in water availability and warmer temperatures.
Climate change could mean ever-rising food prices and therefore
significant investments are needed in agricultural research to help
countries cope with the coming changes, he says: “We’re trying to work
out what the costs for adaptation in agriculture might be.”
IFPRI seeks sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty. It
is one of 15 centres supported by the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
Countries have been talking about creating an adaptation fund, but
agriculture hasn’t been a part of that yet. Agriculture is where forests
were about 10 years ago – known to be important but peripheral to the
actual negotiations, Rosegrant says.
“It is going to be very tough to get anything like this (an adaptation fund). Who is going to pay?” he noted.
And pay for what? There is major divide about the direction the next “green” revolution should take.
The technology-oriented view sees a future involving genetically
engineered seeds, fertilisers and new technologies designed to cope with
higher temperatures and drought conditions. The eco-agricultural view
sees a knowledge-intensive future applying skilled on-farm management to
create resilient, smaller-scale operations.
Scientists say climate change doesn’t just mean hotter or drier, it
means far more variable weather in the future, says Marcia
Ishii-Eiteman, senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network, an
environmental NGO in San Francisco.
“Future conditions will not be like the past. All bets are off. We
need to focus on creating adaptive, resilient farming systems,”
Ishii-Eiteman said in an interview.
The technological approach of conventional agriculture in developed
countries is not only fossil-fuel intensive it is ill-suited to high
levels of variability and volatility in weather, she said.
And a three-year assessment of global agriculture completed in 2008 reached similar conclusions.
The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology
for Development (IAASTD) tapped some 400 scientists and other
specialists, including Ishii-Eiteman, to conduct an evidence-based
assessment of what direction agriculture should take to feed the world
in an era of climate change. The main conclusion: the dominant practice
of industrial, large-scale agriculture was unsustainable, mainly because
of its dependence on cheap oil, negative impacts on ecosystems and
growing water scarcity.
The way forward for agriculture, according to the non-partisian
IAASTD, are agro-ecosystems that marry food production with ensuring
water supplies remain clean, preserving biodiversity, and improving the
livelihoods of the poor.
“The ag assessment (IAASTD reports) should be used as the starting
point,” for finding ways to adapt and reduce GHGs, said former IAASTD
Co-chair Hans Herren, president of the Arlington-based Millennium
Institute, a body that undertakes a variety of developmental activities
around the world.
“Agriculture could be a major sink for CO2,” Herren told IPS.
U.S. long-term studies have shown that an agro-ecosystem farming
approach such as organic farming used 28 to 32 percent fewer energy
inputs, retained soil carbon and soil nitrogen better when compared to
conventional agriculture, and offered a higher profitability over
conventional systems.
Converting just 10,000 medium-sized farms in the U.S. to organic
production would store enough carbon in the soil that it would be like
taking 1,174,400 cars off the road, according to the Rodale Institute, a
U.S. organic research centre.
Simply considering future energy costs makes it clear radical changes
are needed in agriculture, says Herren. Where research is truly needed
is at the small landholder level, which provides food and livelihood for
more than half of the people on the planet.
Even in Africa organic or near-organic farming were not only
practical, they outperformed conventional methods, a United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) study reported last year. On 114
small-scale farms in 24 African countries, yields had more than doubled
where organic or near-organic practices had been used, the study found.
“Simply ratcheting up the fertiliser and pesticide-led production
methods of the 20th century is unlikely to address the challenge (of
food security)”, said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.
Continuing along that path undermines “…the critical natural inputs
and nature-based services for agriculture such as healthy and productive
soils, the water and nutrient recycling of forests, and pollinators
such as bees and bats,” Steiner said in statement about the study.
The IAASTD also concluded that government subsidies of conventional
agriculture systems that emit high levels of GHGs should be reevaluated.
Research should be focused on water harvesting and conservation
technologies for small landholders along with policies that enhance and
protect agro-biodiversity and increase the diversification of
agricultural systems to boost resilience and adaptability.
Although there is strong European interest in this agro-ecosystem
approach, the big global agricultural organisations like the Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO), IFPRI, CGIAR and others aren’t, asserts
Herren. “They haven’t yet realised we need big changes in agriculture.”
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