Posted on behalf of Natasha Gilbert.
Governments in the world’s richest nations must cough up the US$20 billion they promised in 2009 for agricultural development in poor countries as a starting point for helping to feed the world’s burgeoning population, a group of leading scientist say.
The call for greater global investment in environmentally friendly agriculture comes from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change led by John Beddington, the United Kingdom’s chief scientific adviser, in a report launched today at the Planet under Pressure conference in London (see ‘Climate-smart agriculture is needed‘).
Nearly 1 billion people were undernourished in 2010, and these numbers will grow as the global population balloons to 9 billion by 2050. Most of those people going hungry will live in poor nations such as those of sub-Saharan Africa, the commission’s report says.
Governments need to provide funding for research and monitoring to improve agriculture and food systems, including pilot-scale research trials on alternative agricultural practices (see ‘African agriculture: Dirt poor‘). Funding for high-quality time series data on land-use change, food production, human health and well being is required to demonstrate improved agro-ecological and socioeconomic outcomes, the scientists say.
“To produce enough food for our rapidly growing population, much greater investment is needed to dramatically increase agricultural yields now and in the long-term,” says Nguyen Van Bo, president of the Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Science and a member of the group of scientists.
Discussions around climate-friendly agriculture must be central to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June, the scientists say. Beddington expressed disappointment that food security was sidelined in the climate-change conference in Durban, South Africa, last year.
The scientists call for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to set up a programme looking at how to adapt agriculture to a world in a changing climate and to mitigate the environmental effects of agriculture, particularly reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from agricultural activities.