Agribusiness Outlook: Climate Change Will Affect Future Food Availability

Climate change will directly affect future food availability and compound the difficulties of feeding the world's rapidly growing population, FAO said at the opening of a U.N. climate change conference in Nairobi.
In an address to the conference's scientific and technical body, Castro Paulino Camarada, FAO Representative in Kenya, stressed that greater attention must be given to the impact of climate change on agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and on mitigation and adaptation measures.
Bioenergy
According to Camarada, there are a number of areas where FAO's expertise can contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change. "There is likely to be a significant transition toward biofuels during the next 50 years, with agriculture and forestry among the leading sources for both liquid and solid fuels," he said. "Although there is no single solution for all countries, bioenergy has a role to play in both climate change adaptation and mitigation."
With the right technologies, converting biomass such as wood and crop residues, grass, straw and brushwood into fuel could provide an abundant supply of clean, low-cost energy while helping spur economic development in rural communities, raise farmers' incomes and improve food security, according to FAO. Crops like sugar cane, corn and soybean are already being used to produce ethanol or bio-diesel. FAO's International Bioenergy Platform and its recent agreement with the Government of Italy to host the Global Bioenergy Partnership are important first steps toward promoting the sustainable and equitable development and use of bioenergy, Camarada said.
Forest Management
In the field of forestry, FAO believes that better forest management can play a key role in global efforts to deal with climate change. When over-harvested and burned, forests become sources of the greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, forests and the wood they produce capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, playing a major role in mitigating climate change. Camarada highlighted FAO's recent hosting of a U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change workshop on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries and emphasized the Organization's readiness to provide technical support in this area. Adapting To Climate Variability
Working to strengthen the resilience of crop systems to climate variability is a key priority for FAO. According to Camarada, FAO's most effective contributions in the area of climate change adaptation lie in providing countries with tools and information for adapting their agriculture, fisheries and forestry policies and practices to changing climate regimes. This includes agro-meteorological data and tools for assessing the impact of extreme weather and for guiding adaptation; vulnerability assessment tools; land cover mapping; global assessments of crop and forest resources; and guidance on rural livelihood development related to cropping decisions by farmers.
Agriculture amongst biggest environmental threats, says WWF
According to a new WWF book, agriculture - the largest industry in the world - is one of the biggest threats to the environment. Inefficient food production and harmful agriculture subsidies are causing deforestation, water shortages and pollution.
The WWF book, World Agriculture and the Environment, argues that while agriculture employs an estimated 1.3 billion people and produces approximately $1.3 trillion worth of goods annually, it also contributes to serious environmental, social, and economic problems, particularly in developing countries. The book points out that agriculture uses more than 50 per cent of the habitable area of the planet, including land not suitable for it. This is destroying 130,000 sq km (an area more than four times the size of Switzerland) of forests annually, as well as critical habitats such as savannahs, montane areas and wetlands. Agriculture is also destroying the habitats of many species.
The book highlights palm oil as the commodity posing the biggest threat to endangered large mammals. Asian elephant, Sumatran rhinoceros, orangutan, and tiger populations are all declining because palm oil plantations are encroaching on their habitats. According to the book, agriculture wastes 60 per cent, or 1,500 trillion litres, of the 2,500 trillion litres of water that it uses each year. Water resources are already being used close to or beyond their limit, particularly in the Americas, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, China, and India. The impacts of global warming are likely to further disrupt water supplies.
"Agriculture has had a larger environmental impact than any other human activity and today it threatens the very systems we need to meet our food and textile needs," said Dr. Jason Clay, author of the book and Vice President of the Center for Conservation Innovation at WWF-US. "New kinds of agriculture can produce the food needed to feed an increasing population and still accommodate all the other life forms on the planet."
The book warns that government subsidies currently encourage intensive monoculture farming practices, which use chemicals and heavy machinery harmful to the environment. In England, for example, this has led to a 77 per cent decrease in bird populations over the past 30 years.
The book recommends that governments - especially those of big consuming countries like China, Japan, the United States, and the EU - redirect funding from subsidies and market barriers that promote unfair competition towards the adoption of better management practices. These include government payments for environmental services that farmers provide, such as watershed protection, erosion prevention, clean water, and carbon sequestration.