The afternoon plenary (see here for the morning) consisted of talks by Drs Adel El Beltagy (GFAR) and Mark Rosegrant (IFPRI). Again, here’s what struck me particularly out of the many interesting things they said.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides a Noah’s Ark for the world’s crop germplasm collections, which we’ll need for both adaptation and mitigation.
Transboundary livestock diseases will increase, but there are opportunities for mitigation through better livestock genetics, feeding and management.
Agro-ecosystems will be disrupted by climate change, and we don’t have the methods to predict what the new ones will look like, or whether they will be able to function.
Nanotech can be used not just in a bunch of molecular genetics applications, but also for smarter delivery or inputs.
It’s not just climate change: there’s a host of both demand and supply drivers behind the bad stuff that’s happening to food security.
Biophysical models predict following changes in global production: irrigated rice -27% (but N. China a winner); rainfed rice -13%; irrigated maize -13% (it will reach the Canadian border!); irrigated maize -16% (N. China a winner again); irrigated wheat -42% (disaster in India); rainfed wheat -28% (India again in trouble).
Add economic models to that and you have a predicted doubling of prices by 2050, a 22% drop in calorie consumption in developing countries and a 21% increase in child malnutrition in developing countries.
To fix this, via expansion of irrigation, better roads and more research, will cost an extra $7 billion a year, on top of the current $12 billion being spent on those things now.
Increased productivity is fundamental, sure, but let’s not forget rural infrastructure.
There may well be a potential $150 billion a year up for grabs for agriculture if a decent C trading system develops. But will need low-cost monitoring and verification, and innovative payment schemes.
We’re going to need better local scenarios, but the danger of that is that you begin to not see the wood for the trees (too much weather, not enough climate).
Luigi, what is the reason for irrigated crops being projected to have steeper declines in production as compared to rainfed crops?
Also, are papers from the conference available to the public? I would like to see what is being said on the C trading system.
Something about them being more sensitive to input prices, I think. I think the papers will eventually be available in the proceedings volume, but I don’t think there will be much in there about C trading systems. Mitigation per se is not a big thing in the region, really. Adaptation is difficult enough. Of course, if you can do the two things together…