The 2011 Global Food Policy report was launched today by the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI), one of the centers participating in the CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture , and Food Security (CCAFS) program. The report highlights the good news and the bad, related to food security in the last year including more political attention and better thinking on agriculture as part of a wider food system (good), and rising food prices and severe droughts (bad).
The report takes a special look at climate change & agriculture in a chapter co-authored by Gerald C. Nelson (a CCAFS Theme leader) and Tolulope Olofinbiyi, IFPRI . A number of positive developments are outlined, including agriculture finally getting onto the international climate change agenda at Durban in December 2011, and national-level adaptation programs for agriculture being implemented by countries such India, China and Kenya.
The piece also looks at the number of climate threats to agriculture. The authors note that there is "growing evidence that climate change has already affected agricultural productivity and will put increasing pressure on agriculture in the coming decades."
The chapter includes a contribution from CCAFS director Bruce Campbell, who highlights a number of tools and efforts developed under the CCAFS program. These 'tools for tackling climate change' include work on Crop Adaptation to Climate Change , our study on Mapping Hotspots of Climate Change and Food Insecurity in the Global Tropics; papers looking at climate change mitigation and livelihoods at the forest-farm frontier, and our work studying the links among gender, climate change, agriculture, and food security.
Watch Gerald Nelson speak about policies and programs for enhancing food security while dealing with a changing climate
Read more:
Climate Change and Agriculture: Modest Advances, Stark New Evidence by Gerald C. Nelson and Tolulope Olofinbiyi, in IFPRI 2011 Global Food Policy Report