The role for scientists in tackling food insecurity and climate change

Abstract

To adapt to climate change and ensure food security, major interventions are required to transform current patterns and practices of food production, distribution and consumption. The scientific community has an essential role to play in informing concurrent, strategic investments to establish climate-resilient agricultural production systems, minimize greenhouse gas emissions, make efficient use of resources, develop low-waste supply chains, ensure adequate nutrition, encourage healthy eating choices and develop a global knowledge system for sustainability. This paper outlines scientific contributions that will be essential to the seven policy recommendations for achieving food security in the context of climate change put forward by the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. These include improved understanding of agriculture's vulnerability to climate change, food price dynamics, food waste and consumption patterns and monitoring technologies as well as multidisciplinary investigation of regionally appropriate responses to climate change and food security challenges.

Review Paper: The Fundamentals of Biochar as a Soil Amendment Tool and Management in Agriculture Scope: An Overview for Farmers and Gardeners

“…Agriculture has to address at the same time three intertwined challenges: ensuring food safety through increased income and productivity, adapting to climate change and contributing to climate change mitigation [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].…”

Agriculture in the climate change negotiations; ensuring that food production is not threatened

“…The IPCC recognized that agriculture is an important sector in global climate change efforts as it is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and at the same time represents a significant part of the global emissions. It is necessary to increase agricultural production and its efficiency in the context of decreasing availability and declining quality of natural resources, often exacerbated by climate change (Beddington et al, 2012).…”

Assessing the Impact of Climate Variability on Food Security in Kenya: A Case Study of Kisii County

“…While global population is set to grow to approximately 9 billion people by 2050 from the present 7 billion, which would require increased volume of food production, it is estimated that by 2080 the agricultural output in developing countries would decrease by 20% due to climate change [5,13]. In Africa; for instance, about 250 million people are likely to face food insecurity due to crop failure, loss of livestock and lack of water as result of climate change by 2020.…”

“…Apart from the weather effect, food insecurity and famine can be caused by a number of factors such as low harvest, post-harvest losses, under nutrition [5,11], increase in food prices and population increase. While global population is set to grow to approximately 9 billion people by 2050 from the present 7 billion, which would require increased volume of food production, it is estimated that by 2080 the agricultural output in developing countries would decrease by 20% due to climate change [5,13].…”

“…This will further contribute to national efforts towards achievement of vision 2030. 3 that temperatures were projected to increase at a rate of 0.3/0.4 0 C/decade under RCP4.5/8.5 scenarios in both equatorial GHA region leading to an approximate temperature increase of 2/2.5 0 C by the middle of twenty first century.Apart from the weather effect, food insecurity and famine can be caused by a number of factors such as low harvest, post-harvest losses, under nutrition [5,11], increase in food prices and population increase. While global population is set to grow to approximately 9 billion people by 2050 from the present 7 billion, which would require increased volume of food production, it is estimated that by 2080 the agricultural output in developing countries would decrease by 20% due to climate change [5,13].…”