Climate Change, Food Security and Nutrition
Climate change directly affects food and nutrition security of millions of people, undermining current efforts to address undernutrition and hitting the poorest the hardest, especially women and children. It impacts people’s livelihoods and lifestyles through different pathways. Farmers, pastoralists, forest dwellers and fisherfolk are already facing more challenges in producing and gathering food due to changing weather patterns, such as erratic rains. In the short term the impacts can be linked to extreme weather events which contribute to casualties, household food insecurity, disease and handicap, increased population dislocation and insecurity. In the longer term, climate change affects natural resources and therefore food availability and access, but also environmental health and access to health care. In the most affected areas these long-term impacts eventually can lead to transitory or permanent migration, which often leaves female-headed households behind.
Climate change is therefore seen as a significant “hunger-risk multiplier”. In fact, some forecasts anticipate 24 million additional malnourished children by 2050 – almost half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Poor health and undernutrition in turn further undermine people’s resilience to climatic shocks and their ability to adapt.
Climate change will exacerbate the crisis of undernutrition through three main causal pathways:
- impacts on household access to sufficient, safe and adequate food;
- impacts on care and feeding practices; and
- impacts on environmental health and access to health services.
Unless severe measures are taken, and countries reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and increase the removal of these gases from the atmosphere, it will be increasingly difficult and expensive to adapt to climate change.
Climate-smart agriculture is one of the solutions that have been proposed to fight climate change. It is an approach that aims at combining food security and development, adaptation to climate change as well as reducing and removing emissions, whenever possible. It will not be an easy task to transform agriculture and food systems so that they would be truly climate-smart, also taking into account nutrition considerations. So far limited attention has been given to the interface between climate change and nutrition and relevant policies, programmes and projects remain by and large disconnected. The Rome Declaration on Nutrition and Framework of Action adopted by the 2nd International Conference on Nutrition in November 2014 recognized “the need to address the impacts of climate change and other environmental factors on food security and nutrition, in particular on the quantity, quality and diversity of food produced, taking appropriate action to tackle negative effects” and recommended to “establish and strengthen institutions, policies, programmes and services to enhance the resilience of the food supply in crisis-prone areas, including areas affected by climate change”.
The objective of this consultation is to gain a better understanding of the impact of climate change on food security and nutrition as well as the impact of current dietary preferences and the related food systems. In addition, we invite you to identify possible measures to protect and/or improve nutrition and to adapt to climate change, while reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions thus ensuring long-term food security.
We are well aware of the richness of relevant knowledge existing around the world and are looking forward to learn from your experience. We would therefore like to invite you to share your views on this thematic area. You may want to consider the following questions:
1) What are the main issues for policy-makers to consider when linking climate change on the one hand and food security and nutrition on the other, in particular when designing, formulating and implementing policies and programmes?
2) What are the key institutional and governance challenges to the delivery of cross-sectoral and comprehensive policies that protect and promote nutrition of the most vulnerable, and contribute to sustainable and resilient food systems?
3) In your experience, what are key best-practices and lessons-learned in fostering cross-sectoral linkages to protect and improve nutrition while preventing, adapting to climate change and reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions in projects?
This consultation is part of the online learning event Climate Change, Food Security and Nutrition, organized jointly by the Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture Programme of FAO and the FSN Forum. You are welcome to join the webinar on Tuesday 31 March 2015 or watch the recordings of the session afterwards (for more information see the web sites: www.fao.org/fsnforum/news/climate-change-FSN and www.fao.org/climatechange/micca/88950/en/).
We look forward to a lively and interesting exchange!
Florence Egal
Topics
- Read 79 contributions
Climate change and its impact in Food security is one of the broad topic discussed over worldwide recently. The impact of this on cultivation of crops is to be ascertained in region wise. The variation of impact is to be calculated tropical, subtropical and temperate regions separately.
The sub-tropical region like India the climate change and impact in cultivation of different crops are widely noticed. In Southern India esp. setting of North east monsoon differ year to year and this intern affect the crop selection and cultivation.
Various field observation noticed that the delay in monsoon affect the crop performance in terms of yield also. Even fifteen delays delay in monsoon setting and in turn delay in time of sowing affect yield in Pulses, watermelon and other veg. drastically.
Conclusion: Region wise study is needed in each and every cultivable crop for their performance based on climate change.
@Jonica Otarra.
Jonica, what a lively exchange! However, let us be brief lest we absorb much of the forum space.
If you really meant that the output of maize, rice and wheat has declined, then you are factually wrong. Of course, world cereal output fluctuates a bit from year to year, but on the whole the output of all three products you mentioned, as well as the output of cereals as a whole, have been increasing, not decreasing, over recent years and decades. I have already pointed you to the source (the only one with world coverage), i.e. FAOSTAT. Between 2000 and 2013, wheat output passed from 585.6 to 715.9 million tonnnes (Mt); rice (paddy) from 598.9 to 740.9 Mt; maize from 592.5 to 1018.1 Mt. For milled rice, deduct 35% from the amount of paddy. Cereals as a whole: 2060.2 to 2779.9 if rice is counted in its paddy state; if rice is counted in milled terms, all cereals output grew from 1860.7 to 2318.6 million tonnes in that recent period (2000-2013). In fact cereal output is at an all time high in 2013-14, continuing a steady rising trend since 1961 when the series starts.
If you meant that it was the rate of growth what "declined", i.e. that the growth of production decelerated, then you are also not quite right for cereals (the rate actually accelerated lately), and you are also wrong for total agricultural production (i.e. value of production at constant prices), because its growth did also accelerate in recent years compared with previous decades. Production increased, and growth rate accelerated, both for total production and for per capita production, at world level, for cereals and for total food and agricultural output. Moreover, all grew much more, and faster, in developing countries than in developed ones.
Concerning climate change, I agree (as the IPCC also agrees) that it may have both beneficial and deleterious effects, on agriculture and on other aspects. Regarding agriculture, projections of climate change lead to projections of future agricultural production in various parts of the globe, yielding different results in the various zones, some negative and some positive. On the whole, available projections suggest the net global effect would be negative, in this precise sense: the agricultural output of 2050 or 2080, with projected climate change, would be slightly lower than the same output would be in the absence of climate change. But the output in those future yeasrs would however be (with or without climate change) much higher than today, in both total and per capita terms, because of general factors determining agricultural growth, chiefly improvements in technology and productivity, and (to a lesser extent) a small increase in the use of land for crops.
Technology is advancing quite fast, and shows no sign of relenting. At the same time, the worldwide area of land suitable for crops would expand due to climate change (though it will shrink in some areas, and expand in others, with the net result of an expansion). This would be especially due to the vast expanses of land in the Northern Hemisphere that are constrained by cold, not by heat, and are expected to have a milder climate, enabling new lands for cultivation and giving a longer growing period to lands already cultivated, resulting consequently in more hectares and more potential production per hectare, if such hectares end up being cultivated (only some of them would). Elevated CO2 in the atmosphere would also help improve photosynthesis and plant growth, and (for C4 crops) reduce plant water needs. Also, global precipitation would increase, although not uniformly (some areas would become drier), and more rainfall is generally good for agriculture except perhaps in low floodable areas which may become unusable for crops if permanently flooded. On the whole those low floodable areas are smaller than dryland suitable for crops, so on the whole suitable land is expected to expand.
I have already cited studies documenting these claims. You have not cited any studies documenting your claim that wheat, maize and rice production have declined (or they growth rates decelerate, if that is what you meant). Do cite them, please.
Other aspects of your message are very interesting, but I'm only touching here on some aspects related to my previous comments.
2. "What are the key institutional and governance challenges to the delivery of cross-sectoral and comprehensive policies that protect and promote nutrition of the most vulnerable, and contribute to sustainable and resilient food systems?"
The "key institutional and governance challenge to the delivery of cross-sectoral and comprehensive policies" is transcending all government's intransigent, irrational social prejudice against the most nutritious, essential agricultural resource on Earth. Restrictions, regulation, taxation and otherwise burdening the global renaissance of Cannabis agriculture (especially in the United States), works against the time-sensitive opportunity we may still have, closing faster than climate scientists are anticipating.
A realistic, responsible time-assessment of climate changes, that are threatening the systemic balance of the entire world, demand an immediate, proportionate, effective global response. Mankind must evolve with timely intention, or we will likely achieve extinction before the end of the 21st century.
Increasing UV-B radiation, increasing atmospheric CO2 and the temperature increase in Earth's oceans, melting sub-Arctic methane hydrates, are components of global eco-systemic interrelation that are beyond mankind's ken or control. We are approaching irreversible tipping-points, without sufficient understanding to comprehend the degree of urgency.
Since the problems we face result from humankind working against Nature, it seems beyond obvious to recognize the importance of working with natural systems to heal the imbalances imposed by man's industrial assault against Nature.
Organic agriculture is mankind's functional interface with the natural Order. For our species to be symbiotic with the planet upon which we depend, rather than continuing to be parasitic, the values and priorities of governance must prioritize the Laws of Nature over the laws of man. If there is an activity or policy that wounds the planet, it must be discontinued immediately. Not "phased out" not diluted or reduced, but stopped. Alternative methods, resources and practices must be objectively considered.
Currently, that is not the case. Inertial economics, persist in favoring disparity, toxicity and inefficiency, plaguing our species with social unrest, while continuing to poison our Mother Earth, even as we acknowledge that She is dying of man's unrelenting avarice.
In a perfect world, mankind would coordinate our ability to communicate electronically, globally, instantaneously, to implement "essential civilian demand" for the "strategic resource" identified (in seven U.S. Presidential Executive Orders) as "hemp." The most time-efficient protocol for achieving needed changes in human values must be initiated in order to overcome the inertia of past influences over cross-sectoral policies.
Military aggression must itself be recognized as obsolete in the face of a larger threat of systemic collapse, the ultimate "weapon of mass destruction." Failure of governance in prioritizing cooperation over conquest is an evolutionarily regressive, global threat to all life on Earth.
Military personnel must be re-directed to organic farming, using a non-invasive "pioneer crop" that is capable of adapting to virtually every soil and climate condition, including increasing UV radiation. Hemp is uniquely qualified for expansion of the world's arable base. Agricultural production and global distribution of the only crop that provides complete nutrition and sustainable biofuels from the same harvest is key to food security, nutrition.
Organic cultivation of hemp sequesters twelve (12) tons of carbon from the atmosphere per acre, each growing season; while emitting atmospheric aerosol monoterpenes essential to replenishing what has been lost with the death of 50% of the boreal forests and an estimated 40% of marine phytoplankton.
Historically, forests and phytoplankton were the primary source of the aerosols which have shielded the Earth from the deadly UV-B and UV-C rays of the Sun. Those species will not regenerate under current conditions. A massive campaign of organic hemp agriculture is mankind's only option, and time is the limiting factor that will determine survival or extinction in the 21st century.
The climate change is the main challenge for the Government and Population to mitigate in the coming year. Self Help Africa as an International NGO recognize that the most affected by the climate change are the women and children in the rural area in Africa. Also, the Government's data show that the women are more impacted by the poverty in the rural Africa. So considerating the question as an organisation:
1) The means issues for the policy makers are to undertstand what technologies and actions could address clearly the climate change issues. So they need to promote proven practices rathers than moving on theoricals actions which will not meet the beneficiaries demand. So they need to consider research and demonstrate before to scale up. It's a approach of Self Help Africa, to learn and understand better before to expand in a specific area and population.
2) The key institutionnal and governance challenge for the policy makers is to consider the women and the children as the key and strategiques beneficiraires of the programmes and actions to address climate extremes (drought and flood). Investing in women will help the families to keep the harvest at home, to control the sales of the grains and others products and diversify the food consumption within the household. Investing in women means involving men to have their support in the project and to take the household as of the beneficiary. In this case, women will easily aaccess to land and inputs for crop production. For example, Self Help Africa have implemented a soya value chain project in Savanah Region in Togo since 2011, the women are around 80% of the benficiaries and the activities include gender mainstraining with women and men in the same cooperatives and after 3 years, women increased their access to land from 0.125 ha to 0.25 ha (100% of increase) with the support of their husband and their soya production contributed to increase to 28.41% of the household income and the consumption of the soya dishes in the households and through the Local Heath Center agaisnt the under five children undernutrition increase by 85%. The soya have been produced with drought tolerant seeds.
3) As best practice sfrom our experiance are to promote affordable drip irrigation for crop production. A action research conducted from 2012 to 2015 showed than drip irrigation could reduce the water consumption by at least 30%, reduce the labour by 74% comparing with using water can and increase the yield of tomato by 48%, cabbage by 253% and maize by 118%. The drip irrigation have been promoted with compost use and a plantation of 1100 utilitarian local trees around the gardens.
Replies to the April 8 post of Dr. Hector Malleta
A.“Now the growth rate is not equivalent to the potential production growth allowed by technology and natural resources, but to the amount dictated by demand. As incomes grow, consumption of staple food (like cereals) tends to stagnate while demand increases for other foods (fruit, vegetables, vegetable oils, meat, dairy products and so on)”
My Reply : The data that I posted is not potential growth rate, because they are growth rates that are already determined. Also, If growth rate is equivalent to the amount dictated by demand, isn't it that demand also dictates production? I believe that there needs to be an improvement and flexibility especially with regards to the use of agricultural indicators . These indicators are lacking somehow especially when it does not reflect other conditions happening in the agricultural sector.
B.food consumption of cereals is actually declining-whist overall food consumption improves in terms of calories, protein and micronutrients-”
My Reply: If there is an improvement in the overall food consumption, then the first beneficiaries of this improvement in the over all food consumption supposedly would be the farmers, indigenous farmers all over the world since they are the agricultural producers of food. However, sadly, this is not the case for all. They are still one of the most marginalized today. Also, if there is an improvement in the over all food consumption, it may not be true for all countries worldwide. Though there is a continual reduction of hunger ,there are still 805 Million people in the world who live in hunger according to WFP’s Website.(https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats) “Asia is the continent with the most hungry people - two thirds of the total. The percentage in southern Asia has fallen in recent years but in western Asia it has increased slightly.”-WFP Website.
We have also to take into account the fact that while we consume the healthy nutrients from agricultural foods, we also have to take note of the chemicals that were used to produce these foods because we also take in these chemicals into our body. We have to reminded of its health impact on us.
C.“So basing the analysis on cereals alone is bound to be misleading.”
My Reply: I also cited in the paragraph that the data also coincides with FAO’s webinar last March 31, 2015. The data on cereals is an additional one.
D. “In fact, it does not have to be beneficial, on the whole. Most projections show a global (small)negative effect. But that small effect on total agricultural production (which in turn results from rather pessimistic and precautionary assumptions about the future) applies to the output that would be achieved in the future in the absence of climate change, not to the output achieved today. However, beneficial effects arise from several sources; one is the improved agricultural conditions in temperate zones: new lands become cultivable in North America and Eurasia due, and some lands in those regions improve their productivity due to lengthening of growing period; secondly, more CO2 in the atmosphere increases photosynthesis (especially for C3 crops like wheat) and reduces water needs for C4 crops (like maize). Global warming means also more global rainfall, albeit some regions would get drier (e.g. Northern Mexico or Southern Africa), and increased rainfall is in general beneficial for agriculture by increasing the flow of irrigation water and improving conditions for rainfed cultivation especially in semi arid zones.”
My reply: quite confusing statements when at first that “ Climate change has both beneficial and deleterious implications for agriculture.”and the new statement above that climate change does not have to be beneficial.We also have to c0nsider the fact that one of the key drivers of Climate change is C02 emissions. More warming of the planet contributes to the already irreversible decline of west antartic glaciers( http://science.nasa.gov/ science-news/ science -at-nasa/ 2014/12may_noturningback). In addition, when glaciers melt, these would mean a sea level rise . According to the IPCC Climate Change 2014 synthesis report Summary for Policy Makers (https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ assessment- report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf), it is projected that there will be a sea level rise as the warming of the planet continues.
In particular, The glaciers have a role to play in reflecting the sun’s heat back into space . Whenever I see the attached picture , it reminds me of the impact of climate change . The photo below is the sunken cemetery in Camiguin, Philippines. The cross is a land mark wherein below the sea,there is an original spanish cemetery wherein after the eruption of a volcano in 1871, there was a sea level rise.
I doubt it when humans can survive in a very hot planet.
E. “Jonica also writes that "it is predicted that we will be 10 billion by 2050".
“Not quite. The latest UN figure (medium variant) for 2050 is 9.55 billion, a bit above previous projections of 9.2-9.3 bn.”
My Reply: My basis for this is the presentation of Johan Rockstrom , an internationally recognized scientist on global sustainability and Executive Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre. Here is a link to his presentation at CIGI :https://www.cigionline.org/blogs/front- row/time-stop-pushing-boundaries
Dear FSN Forum members,
Please find attached a summary of our latest webinar ‘Climate change impacts on food security and nutrition now and in the future’.
The webinar covered a wide range of topics and revealed how climate change, food insecurity and malnutrition are interlinked. It emphasized that action to alleviate the problems must face all three factors together.
Thanks to all for your participation and for sharing this summary and the links to the webinar on our web page: www.fao.org/fsnforum/news/climate-change-FSN
On behalf of the organizers,
Renata, Maria & Max
FAO
Mr. Nkwelle Nkede Flabert
There is one thing I will like this forum to look into properly because I greatly believe that it is the most impacting aspect of food insecurity.
- Smallholder, policies, climate change, food security and nutrition.
- Smallholders and small family scale farmers play an important role in the availability and affordability of food.
- They are the most affected in food crisis problems arising from climate change and other influences not related to climate change.
- In the case of malnutrition, 80% of their children suffer more.
- The efforts put in place by the state and other international organizations hardly have a direct positive impact on their livelihood and activities.
Live example of food security threat due to climate change: In the Bangem, Kupe-Muanenguba Division of the South West Region of Cameroon, and in about 9 of 10 regions of Cameroon, Cocoyams belonging to the genus Colocasia (locally known as “Ibo coacoa”) suffered a serious blight in 2008. This disease emergence was favoured by rainy overcast weather with low night temperatures; disease spread primarily by splashing rain water.
This specie of cocoyam which was main source of most of Cameroonian delicacies got extinct and has recently been discovered in a village at the foot of the Muanenguba twin lakes (Poala) in a very small quantity. All efforts to make it grow in other areas again have been abortive as a result of climate change.
The local population are facing serious food crisis, change in the consumption pattern and most individuals who depended on this product are now left with the option of buying food and trying to cope with other means.
Thus there is still more to be done in this aspect, probably by involving local based organizations that can identify and work with these communities. The approach this time should begin from the grassroots and I believe it will yield more fruits.
Mr. Nkwelle Nkede Flabert
Dynamic interactions between and within the bio-geophysical and human environments lead to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, resulting in food systems that underpin food security. Food systems encompass food availability (production, distribution and exchange), food access (affordability, allocation and preference) and food utilization (nutritional and societal values and safety), so that food security is, therefore, diminished when food systems are stressed. Such stresses may be induced by a range of factors in addition to climate change and may be particularly severe when these factors act in combination.
Kowack Alphonse is a large scale farmer in Johanesbul, an outskirt of the Yaounde city of Cameroon and tells a story of the changes he has experience in his profession during a working visit by the CECOSDA. For the past 18 years of his profession, he has been practicing the mixed farming system and he produces crops like maize, beans, groundnuts, cocoyam, cassava, plantains, and vegetables like spiny pigweed, a specie called Amaranth spinosus (locally known as “Fullong”). As a result of climatic variations, Kowack explains that he has experience a remarkable reduction in yield with an estimated decrease from about 25 bags/harvest (in the early 2000s) to less than 10 bags/harvest (from the last harvest of March 2015) bags of maize, and other products suffer the same problem; his farms have experienced a drastic increase in infections from food and waterborne bacteria, viruses, parasites and bio toxins. Also, direct effect of climatic changes on crops like changes in rainfall patterns leading to drought, warmer temperatures has led to changes in the length of growing season and the loss of certain plant species that can no longer yield well with the present climatic conditions in the Centre region of Cameroon like cucumber.
Despite the decrease in productivity, the demand for food increases constantly. The consequence of this is an increase in the prices of food which influences the availability and affordability of food; a great threat to food security. Food prices are a key indicator of the effects of climate change on agriculture and, even more importantly, on food affordability and security. Food prices increase for all staple crops because climate change acts as an additional stressor on the already tightening price outlook. Under climate change, maize, rice, and wheat prices in 2050 are projected to be 4, 7, and 15 percent higher than under the historic climate scenario (a geometric progression).
Climate change thus will increase the number of malnourished children in both 2030 and 2050. Without climate change, child malnutrition levels in Cameroon and the Central Africa in general are projected to decline from 28 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2030 and 19 percent in 2050. Under climate change, child malnutrition which increased by an additional 0.5 million children in 2010, would be higher by 1 million children in 2030, and would still be higher by 0.6 million children by 2050. Changes in agricultural trade flows as a result of climate change are driven by changes in the local biophysical and socio-economic environment, as well as a wide-ranging set of local, regional, national, and international trade policies.
Dear Florence,
I am responding to your request for inputs on nutrition.
Shanthu Shantaram’s article at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/LeNI9i16mbNcd5L8J8sU1L/Is-the-organic-mantra-for-real.html?utm_source=copy
and the scientist community (almost all specialists) have got away with their push for high cost high risk laboratory developments of conventional mono crop agriculture systems during the last around 100 years. In the long term, this has for many decades and continues to be the cause of the agrarian crisis, hunger, malnutrition, poverty and effects of climate change worldwide, especially among the rural poor smallholder producer communities (about 60% of the world's population) have lost the knowledge and know how to produce nutritious food through agriculture.
In contrast, those following the low cost low risk climate friendly Agro ecological organic systems of their area, setting up producer org/ company (PC) but managed by professionals, to take over all risks and responsibilities, other than on farm activities, now have have access to own requirements of nutritious food and cash with increased net income/ purchasing power improved livelihoods, mitigation of climate change and reversing migration back from urban areas, contributing to economic development and growth, case study at www.navajyoti.org, alsoattached is a 20 March, 2015, Food Systems Report from Africa.
ecology by and for the small-scale producers who grow 70% of the world’s food.
The conference, organised by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) and hosted by the Confédération Nationale des Organisations Paysannes (CNOP), was a powerful opportunity to show how agroecology can help realise the six pillars of food sovereignty outlined by the IPC in the same village of Nyeleni, back in 2007.
A representative of ROPPA (Network of Farmers’ and Agricultural Producers’ Organisations of West Africa) set the tone for the conference in his opening speech: “People are struggling every day, all over the world, but we must not struggle alone, we must work together.” One farmer’s voice is inconsequential in the face of the interests of financial profit, but together we can be heard.
The declaration drafted One delegate spoke about how our feelings are as important as the techniques we use in agroecology: “Without feeling,” he said, “I cannot be a farmer.” We feel connected to the natural environment in a spiritual way – not one quantifiable by financial returns. Agroecology is not just a technique or a system, it’s a way of living that gives people a strong cultural connection to the land.
The FAO was a key supporter of the February conference, and this new declaration defining agroecology more clearly has the power to influence FAO recommendations for the future of food production. With the UN following suit, we hope that nation states will, in turn, begin to look to agroecology to achieve genuine food security.
However, co-optation is a continuing threat, diluting the power of agro ecology’s ethos. The French government, for instance, has created a central role for agroecology through the 2014Loi d’Avenir (law for the future of agriculture, food and the forest). This is ostensibly driven by agroecological rinciples, but in its essence, it does not uphold the expanded definition of agro ecology. Reducing the use of pesticides and antibiotics, and encouraging organic farming and the use of agro forestry, are steps in the right direction but they do not, on their own, represent the holistic approach mapped out in the new declaration.
Peter Crosskey has commented in the Sustainable Food Trust’s coverage of the Loi d’Avenir, that:
“The members of the small-scale farmer’s union, Confédération paysanne (Conf’), constantly accused Stéphane Le Foll of using new catchphrases to embellish an old system – for example, exhorting farmers to ‘Produisons autrement’ (produce differently) but allowing the same industrial production alongside.”
The declaration was borne out of sentiments such as these, showing the will of people across the planet to work in ways that are healthy for us and the ecosystems on which we depend. The document weaves together many strands. It emphasises the importance of women as primary food producers, and the rights of indigenous peoples to access their traditional territories. The declaration also recognises our dependence on the health of ecosystems so that species extinction can be slowed and climate change halted.
In order to maintain and develop agroecological production, practical face-to-face exchanges and training between producers is essential. Engagement between producers and consumers, also, needs to be prioritised and traditional markets have a key role in this. The market is, again, the ‘agora’ – a place to come and buy staples from the producers we know and trust, but also the place we come for community exchange and cultural sustenance.
Out of these strong local networks, grassroots producers and consumers can make sure they are also represented in local policy-making decisions. Once these local networks work together they can link into national and international networks to ensure they are represented at higher levels of policy making too. This is well demonstrated through the West African networks of CNOP, which are members of ROPPA, which in turn works with Via Campesina, which is represented on the IPC.
Perhaps most significantly, the declaration, “recognise[s] that as humans we are but a part of nature and the cosmos. We share a spiritual connection with our lands and with the web of life. We love our lands and our peoples, and without that, we cannot defend our agroecology, fight for our rights, or feed the world. We reject the commodification of all forms of life.”
This declaration can lead us into a happier, more harmonious future, and towards viable food sovereignty. People deserve to be able to live with dignity, pursuing time-honoured practices that nurture the planet as well as their own lives.
To read the full declaration please click here.
On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Nemani Chandrasekhar <[email protected]> wrote:
Is the organic mantra for real?
Shanthu Shantharam, Livemint | April 8, 2015
With India’s population set to grow in the coming decades, it will be foolhardy to go gung-ho on organic agriculture
Read on: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/LeNI9i16mbNcd5L8J8sU1L/Is-the-organic-mantra-for-real.html
This activity is now closed. Please contact [email protected] for any further information.