Mar
31
Adapting to Climate Change remains a Challenge to the Ailing Agricultural Sector in Developing Countries
March 31, 2008 | | 3 Comments
By Eva Chang (7)
Reports on the impact of climate change to the agricultural sector in different regions varied but point to the long-term serious problems of decreased agricultural production with implications to food supply and hunger.
In Finland, World Resource Institute reported that the warmer winter resulting to a shorter winter season could boost the country’s agricultural production with the lengthening of the planting season. Other European countries should experience a similar situation. However, even with the expected lengthening of the planting season, agricultural lands could be susceptible to flooding, which is the focus of the upcoming International Conference on Flood Recovery Innovation and Response to be held in July in London. The agricultural sector in Europe would experience a longer planting season but has to deal with the threat of flooding.
In the Philippines, the Department of Agriculture reported that the dry season in the country has lengthened resulting to a longer dry season and delayed commencement of the planting season. This difficulty also extends to other Asian countries, such as Indonesia, India and Vietnam, albeit in varying degrees, which rely on the shifting of the dry and wet seasons to support agricutural production. The difference in the impact on the agricultural sector in these countries depend on a number of factors including geographic characteristics, with the Asian countries such as India and Vietnam located near large river deltas holding greater advantage over archipelagos such as Indonesia and Philippines.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported that persistent high temperatures in the Middle East and Africa resulting to drought have led to the postponement of the planting season. Degradation of the quality of agricutural lands worsens the situations. With a largely undeveloped agricultural sector, food security could become an issue with the persistence of climate change.
As a policy response to the agricutural situation in Europe, the Agricultural and Rural Development appealed to the global agricultural sector to adapt to projections on climate change by developing flexibility in adjusting the planting seasons, rotating the crops planted depending on the availability of rainfall, and shifting to crops that grow well with the change in climate. This resolution emerged as part of the Common Agricultural Policy issued by the European Commission to provide European countries with practices that allows them to adapt to the impact of climate change in Europe.
The World Bank added that adaptation should include international financial support to developing countries primarily reliant on the agricultural sector together with the strategic planning at the national level. Adapting to climate change involves sufficient policy support from state governments since the undeveloped agricultural sector in developing countries cannot carry, on its own, the burden of adaptation.
However, adaptation is not easy and simple for the agricultural sector in developing countries because restructuring the sector even with policy support involves a complex and protracted task, which justifies concerns over the scarcity of food supply.
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This links into what Rachel was saying in her earlier post on rising food prices…
An older report from FAO -
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000698/index.html
saying that the FAO was thinking about
earlier this month i came across this article which said that the UN and some european officials were looking at the possibility of using spare agricultural land in central and eastern europe, to alleviate the food crisis. apparently, 23m hectares of arable land had been taken out of use in the region, 13m hectares of which could potentially be put back to use!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/10/food.unitednations
it seems like with economic/industrialization policies, land is taken out of use for agriculture, but now we are seeing some of the effects of this..