Category: Information

The international conference on Food Security and Climate Change in Dry Areas got off to a stirring start with a long, passionate and scientifically very literate speech from the guest of honour, HRH Prince El Hassan Bin Talal. That was followed by keynotes from Drs Mahendra Shah and Mahmoud Solh, who have a huge amount of experience at the highest level of agricultural research and strategic planning in this region and beyond. Now, I did tweet some key points from their talks via my mobile, but as I write this over lunch they haven’t turned up in our stream yet. For all I know, they never will. Wifi access in the conference room is problematic, so you may have to be satisfied with these occasional summaries.

Anyway, here are some selected soundbites — the agrobiodiversity themed ones, mainly — from the morning session, including the Q&A:

We will need to trade an extra 500 million tons of cereals by 2080.

175 million extra people (over the 1 billion hungry today) will go hungry due to climate change by 2080. Remember we were supposed to cut that figure by half.

In the dry areas, production increases will need to come almost exclusively from yield improvement. 90% of potentially new arable land is in only 7 countries!

Genebanks are key to the intensification that will be required if agriculture is to adapt.

Synthetic wheats, winter sowing of chickpea, IPM of Sunn pest are some of the success stories of crop diversity use for adaptation.

ICARDA has identified those small ruminant local breeds which are expected to be most adaptable to climate change. What about the poor others, though?

Both “protected agriculture” (greenhouses, hydroponics etc.) and conservation agriculture have a role to play in adaptation (and possibly mitigation too).

Why are we closing down agricultural extension services around the world?

Global models for the effects of climate change are fine, but downsizing to community level is often problematic, and THAT is where adaptation occurs. Or doesn’t.

What can we learn from how local people manage the oasis ecosystem?

Governance is a problem, sure, but let’s not hide behind the failings of politicians in assessing why science and technology innovations haven’t worked.