It said that efforts should be made to promote food security and nutrition by increasing efforts to support vulnerable people through approaches such as social protection systems and safety nets, school feeding and public procurement programs, targeted research and innovation. It also called for scaling-up adaptation and resilience activities and responses in order to reduce the vulnerability of all farmers, fisherfolk, and other food producers to the impacts of climate change.
While agriculture is essential to human life and cannot be shut down like fossil fuels, efficient practices and products can help reduce greenhouse house gas emissions.
And its future is very important in India, where 44 per cent of the labour force works in agriculture, according to the World Bank.
Paradoxically, an increase in global warming also endangers food production at a time when there is growing hunger.
Although for ideological and political reasons, the WRI avoids the word “vegetarian”, the underlying message is clear
It said that the consumption of meat from cattle, sheep, and goats which is expected to grow from what it was in 2010 by 88 per cent in 2050 should be reduced.
Solar-based processes for making fertilisers, organic sprays that preserve fresh food longer, and plant-based beef substitutes, are other WRI suggestions.
While attention has been focused on greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and power generation, agriculture is only now getting due attention as a factor in climate change even as hunger stalks hundreds of millions, and the global population is set to rise.
The UAE Consensus document adopted at the summit this month in Dubai called for climate-resilient food and agricultural production and the supply and distribution of food, as well as increasing sustainable and regenerative production and equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all.
At the meeting known as COP28, 159 leaders adopted a detailed Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action to help keep global warming at 1 degree centigrade. The world leaders pledged to work for shifting from higher greenhouse gas-emitting practices to more sustainable production and consumption approaches, including by reducing food loss and waste and promoting sustainable aquatic blue foods.
The importance of agriculture in containing global warming can be seen in a study by a team led by Atul Jain, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that found that food-based agriculture accounts for 35 per cent of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions, with over half of that from animals, and non-food agricultural production like cotton and rubber contributing another 14 percent. The Food and Agriculture Organization said that addressing the immediate food security and nutrition needs must not come at the expense of jeopardizing future requirements.
The FAO said that substantial endeavors are essential in adaptation to achieve increased productivity with reduced resource consumption. Cognizant of the UN data that people facing hunger could be as high as 783 million, the leaders’ sustainable agriculture declaration paid attention to also the questions of fighting hunger and improving the lives of agricultural workers in the Global South. The WRI sets up the challenge the world will face on the food front: By 2050, the global population will be about 9.8 billion, up from the current 7 billion, requiring a 50 percent increase in food production.