A Road Map to Sustainable Agriculture

“Food inse­cu­rity and cli­mate change are already inhibit­ing human well-being and eco­nomic growth through­out the world and these prob­lems are poised to accel­er­ate,” said Sir John Beddington, chair of the com­mis­sion. “Decisive pol­icy action is required if we are to pre­serve the planet’s capac­ity to pro­duce ade­quate food in the future.”

The report was released today at the Planet Under Pressure con­fer­ence where sci­en­tists from around the world are hon­ing solu­tions for global sus­tain­abil­ity chal­lenges tar­geted to the Rio Summit to be held June 20-22 in Brazil.

The com­mis­sion was cre­ated in 2011 and charged with iden­ti­fy­ing the best research-based approaches toward global food secu­rity in the face of cli­mate change. The new report, avail­able here, out­lines seven rec­om­men­da­tions they hope to see imple­mented con­cur­rently by a con­stel­la­tion of gov­ern­ments, inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions, investors, agri­cul­tural pro­duc­ers, con­sumers, food com­pa­nies and researchers. They call for changes in pol­icy, finance, agri­cul­ture, devel­op­ment aid, diet choices, and food waste as well as revi­tal­ized invest­ment in the knowl­edge sys­tems to sup­port these changes.

“It’s past time to real­ize that farms of every size all over the world are fun­da­men­tal to pro­vid­ing for human nutri­tional demands and eco­nomic well-being, but they also face crit­i­cal choices with sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for the way we man­age the planet for long-term suf­fi­ciency,” says U.S. Commissioner Molly Jahn, a pro­fes­sor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Further, changes in agri­cul­tural prac­tices have the poten­tial to deliver ben­e­fits for both adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion of cli­mate change. For exam­ple, in China, nearly 400 kilo­grams of chem­i­cal fer­til­izer are used on every hectare of farm­land and, in Mexico, agri­cul­ture accounts for 77 per­cent of domes­tic water use, in part due to sub­stan­tial sub­si­dies for water and elec­tric­ity used for irrigation.

Such prac­tices offer both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties to refo­cus poli­cies and bud­gets, say Jahn and the other com­mis­sion­ers, and they have urged the UNFCCC to estab­lish a work pro­gram that addresses these issues together under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice.

In addi­tion to tack­ling agri­cul­ture, the commission’s rec­om­men­da­tions explic­itly rec­og­nize the “demand side” of food inse­cu­rity, call­ing for poli­cies and pro­grams to sup­port healthy and sus­tain­able eat­ing as well as those explic­itly designed to empower vul­ner­a­ble populations.

In par­tic­u­lar, they under­score the need for improved data and deci­sion sup­port for land man­agers and policymakers.

“The ele­ments of the food sys­tem — soil, water, cli­mate, energy, peo­ple — are inti­mately con­nected and it is crit­i­cal that we under­stand how they work together as a sys­tem, and get that infor­ma­tion into the hands of those who need it most,” Jahn says.

The commission’s report presents a stark pic­ture of the chal­lenges ahead and calls for deci­sive action on a global scale to ensure a “safe oper­at­ing space” for cur­rent and future generations.

“Many pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor lead­ers are already tak­ing steps to over­come tech­ni­cal, social, finan­cial and polit­i­cal bar­ri­ers to a sus­tain­able food sys­tem,” says Bruce Campbell, direc­tor of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, which con­vened the com­mis­sion in February 2011. “The commission’s work spells out who needs to do what to take these early efforts to the next level.”

The com­mis­sion is finan­cially sup­ported by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development. The com­mis­sion brings together senior nat­ural and social sci­en­tists work­ing in agri­cul­ture, cli­mate, food and nutri­tion, eco­nom­ics, and nat­ural resources from Australia, Brazil, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, France, Kenya, India, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. Additional mate­ri­als can be found here.

Commission rec­om­men­da­tions:

1. Integrate food secu­rity and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture into global and national policies;

2. Significantly raise the level of global invest­ment in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and food sys­tems in the next decade;

3. Sustainably inten­sify agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion while reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions and other neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts of agriculture;

4. Target pop­u­la­tions and sec­tors that are most vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change and food insecurity;

5. Reshape food access and con­sump­tion pat­terns to ensure basic nutri­tional needs are met and to fos­ter healthy and sus­tain­able eat­ing habits worldwide;

6. Reduce loss and waste in food sys­tems, par­tic­u­larly from infra­struc­ture, farm­ing prac­tices, pro­cess­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and house­hold habits;

7. Create com­pre­hen­sive, shared, inte­grated infor­ma­tion sys­tems that encom­pass human and eco­log­i­cal dimensions.

[Editor's note: One ele­ment that is very inter­est­ing in these rec­om­men­da­tions is what is not included: chem­i­cal farm­ing and GMOs.]

Source: University of Wisconsin Release