The best way to mitigate climate change and gain food security is to support small-scale, ecological farming is what has been recommended by scientist and economist in Rome, Italy at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Governing Council that convened in late February.   This would be a completely different strategy from that of promoting the use of biotechnologies and monocropping as had been the international agricultural strategy of the past two decades.

No policies have been implemented as yet to solve the impact of climate change while there has been much discussion about averting the problem.

Dr Josef Schmidhuber, head of the global perspectives study unit at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) admitted, “Nobody has really thought yet about how and if we can mitigate climate change in agriculture”.

Climate change is expected to put 49 million additional people at risk of hunger by 2020 and 132 million by 2050 according to IFAD.

The consequences of climate change will impact smallholder farmers with less than two hectares of land by increased crop failure, a rise in diseases, indebtedness, migration and a dependency on food aid.  Alongside this will be land degradation, desertification, rising sea levels with flooding, diminishing natural resource productivity and in some instance an irreversible loss of biodiversity.

Especially in sub-Saharan Africa climate change is expected to lead to a downward spiral of health and education.  Agriculture is the main source of income for poor rural people in the developing world and at the same time it is the human activity most directly affected by climate change.

Hans Herren president of the Washington DC-based Millennium Institute, a non profit organization promoting long term, integrated global thinking said, “ We have to invest heavily into research on how to increase eco-agricultural production.”  He believes that industrial agriculture is “bankrupt by definition” as too much energy is required in production with chemicals systematically destroying the soil causing mineral depletion, erosion and reducing the soil’s ability to retain water.

Herren has said, “It starts and ends with governance, with convincing key decision makers to change strategy.  In agriculture, it takes a long time to rebuild what we destroy.  It takes years to replenish soils and re-create diversity.  We have to go back to the source and ensure that healthy soils grow healthy crops.”

Michael Griffon, executive director of the National Research Agency of France said, “We need a holistic approach to the entire ecosystem, including soil, water, plants, animal management, pests and diseases.  It will be an immense challenge.”