World farming to get US$200 million in climate aid

Development agencies worldwide are joining forces to spend US$200 million in a 10-year programme to help the agricultural sector adapt to climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions, farm research groups said on 17 November. 

The funding will go to research on how to feed a growing, more affluent world population in the face of expectations of worsening floods and droughts. The programme will use an Australian climate model to look at how rising temperatures and rainfall changes affect 50 major crops worldwide, including sorghum, millet, sweet potato, wheat, rice and maize.

Climate models point to accelerating declines in production of rain-fed wheat worldwide of 2.2 percent by 2020, 4 percent by 2050 and 18.6 percent by 2080, unless climate change is curbed or effective adaptive measures are put in place, scientists said.

In India’s Indo-Gangetic plains, a major rice and wheat breadbasket that feeds 600 million people, higher temperatures in March would damage wheat crops, reducing harvests. Maintaining adequate food production in the face of climate pressures may require some societies to switch their staple crops, if varieties more tolerant of drought, floods and pests cannot be successfully developed.

In one example of how to increase production and cut greenhouse gases at the same time, herders could curb emissions of methane from their livestock and as much as triple milk and meat production by grazing animals on specialized grass species rather than wild pasture.

Agriculture produces between 20–33 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, depending on whether the conversion of forests to farmland is included (Reuters, 17.11.10, www.reuters.com).