Agricultural Technologies for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in Developing Countries: Policy Options for Innovation and Technology Diffusion

This report highlights the technological and institutional innovations required to meet the challenges of food security, agricultural development and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Whilst new traits and varieties of crops are noted as important innovations, the paper puts equal emphasis on the need for relevant practice and technologies such as water management, post-harvest technologies, information services and forecasting, and farmer insurance.

The paper also explores the constraints to the development of innovations and their transfer and dissemination to farmers, and suggests ways to overcome such constraints. Those most significant barriers are named as poorly functioning input or output markets, weak local institutions and infrastructure, inadequate extension systems, and absent credit and insurance markets.

The authors propose six policy principles to aid farmers’ access to new technologies, which prioritise a globally-connected yet locally-relevant approach to climate change mitigation strategies.

Climate Change and China’s Agricultural Sector: An Overview of Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation

This paper examines the challenges facing China: economic development, eliminating poverty, ensuring long-term food security, adapting to climate change and mitigating the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The report notes that Chinese farmers have been making progress in implementing adaptation strategies, which include changing cropping patterns, increasing investment in irrigation infrastructure, using water saving technologies and planting new crop varieties that are resistant to the effects of climate change.

The Chinese government have also been investing in important mitigation activities. The paper reports on a new technology that the government is promoting, that regulates fertilizer dosage according to soil type, to combat an overuse of fertilizer by many farmers. Additionally, the government is urging farmers to practice conservation tillage as a means to create carbon sinks.

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This is an uplifting piece of research that identifies how changing the way that land is used and conserving vegetation can help to stabilise climate change, reduce poverty and support sustainable agriculture. 

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The two sides will promote the development of new-type agriculture, encourage cooperation in agricultural biotechnology industry, and work to set up a long-standing consultative mechanism on agricultural cooperation, said the common initiative produced by the symposium, held first in Shanghai and then Zhejiang.

Both sides are pushing for this to be a shared venture, where information on agriculture passes freely between the mainland and Taiwan. Sharing knowledge is one of the key principles which Farming First supports and this initiative exemplifies how this can be done on a grand scale:

The two sides will also establish a reporting mechanism to share information on the quality and safety of agricultural products, said the initiative.

According to Xinhua, the symposium was co-sponsored by 10 NGOs from both the mainland and Taiwan.

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According to a recent article on scidev.net by its director David Dickson, global trends indicate that emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil are accelerating their domestic research capacities.  China alone has increased the number of its researchers by more than three-fourths and has more than doubled its R&D spending.

These countries’ growth has helped pull the developing world as a whole to growth levels which are three times those of the developed world.  But areas like Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced more moderate growth, with the number of researchers increasing only 18% vis-a-vis total population growth, and Arab states’ R&D contributions are actually falling. The least developed countries, which host 12% of the population, have less than one percent of the world’s researchers.

If these research trends continue, countries such as India and China will become global leaders by the year 2025, at which point they are expected to account for more than one-fifth of total R&D expenditures.

And the technology gaps are still quite profound.  The developed world has only one-fifth of the population, yet accounts for three-quarters of total spending.  While part of this discrepancy might be the result of incomplete or non-existent data reporting on the part of certain developing countries, it also indicates the need for continued efforts to bridge the technology gaps which still exist globally.

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Pressure is mounting to ensure food safety worldwide, especially effective food supply for developing countries, as global population has been snowballing and more agricultural products are being turned into energy.

Calling this effort “the world’s common task”, Hui discussed how China’s agricultural production has evolved since Deng Xiaoping opened up China’s economy to market forces in 1978.  He also outlined some of the next steps that China intends to take to further promote its farmers:

In the new situation [sic], China will further strengthen rural system construction, develop modern agriculture, promote rural public causes ad push forward new countryside construction.

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Agriculture-related activity is responsible for around 70% of freshwater use.  Here are some other interesting facts from the report:

• Less than 3% of the world’s water is freshwater.  Of this freshwater supply, about five-sixths is frozen and thus inaccessible.

• Almost 97% of the available freshwater is stored in underground aquifers, with the remainder coming from rainfall, natural lakes, rivers, and other man-made facilities.

• Fewer than 10 countries possess 60% of the world’s available freshwater supply: Brazil, Russia, China, Canada, Indonesia, U.S., India, Columbia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

• Globally, roughly 15-35% of irrigation withdrawals for agriculture are estimated to be unsustainable.  Susceptible regins include the western U.S., northern India and Pakistan, northern China, eastern South Africa, southeastern Australia, and parts of the Mediterranean.

• India, China, and Egypt all use more than 80% of their freshwater for irrigation, compared to about 1% in the UK.

• 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases (including cholera)– the equivalent of 15 killer tsunamis each year or 12 Boeing 747 crashes every day.

• U.S. average annual domestic consumption of water (per capita) is 215 cubic metres per year, 6.7 times the average in China and more than double the average in France.

• Important trends impacting water use in the future include population growth, increasing global affluence, and climate change.

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There is a need for a radical shift in thinking which places the farmer at the centre of a new approach. New investments, incentives and innovations are needed to achieve greater sustainability while delivering increased agricultural production. This needs to be backed-up by a stable policy framework and investment strategy which assists farmers – and particularly smallholder farmers – to sustain both themselves and the world’s growing population. The kind of change proposed in Farming First’s call to action which puts farmers at the heart of the solution.

As the G8 declaration has rightly recognised, “agriculture and food security are at the heart of the international agenda”. Commenting before the meeting, United States Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, said:

This is not just about food security, this is about national security, it is about environmental security…

I can figure out there are only three things that could happen if people do not have food: people could riot, that they have done; people migrate to places where there is food, which creates additional challenges; or people die.

Much of what was said in the G8 ministers’ final declaration echoes the call made by the coalition supporting Farming First. The Farming First plan is based on six principles: safeguarding natural resources; sharing knowledge; building local access; protecting harvests; enabling access to markets; and prioritising research imperatives.

The final declaration called for “enhanced support including investments in agricultural science, research, technology, education and innovation” as well as supporting “efforts against wastage along the food chain in developing countries” and identifiying “the necessity to provide smallholder farming access to land, credit, technical assistance, education and crop insurance, as well as allowing family farmers to have access to local and international markets was underlined.”

Host minister, Italy’s Luca Zaia, told the post-meeting press conference:

Food security requires targeted policies to guarantee effective management and sustainable utilization of natural resources involving local communities in accordance with their identities… We commit ourselves to increasingly share technology, processes and ideas with other countries.

China’s vice minister of agriculture, Niu Dun, told the G8 meeting that the international community:

should build up capacity in monitoring and conducting early-warning on global food security. Developing countries should intensify cooperation in food security, making it a critical platform for common response to food insecurity and financial crisis.

Further more detailed discussions will take place at the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in May and the full G8 summit in Italy in July. Hopefully, these meetings will culminate in what the world requires: real, financed commitments.

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It is estimated that conservation agriculture can reduce soil erosion by 50 to 98 percent while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent through reduced oxidation of soil organic matter. No till is now being utilized on more than 95 million hectares, mostly in the USA, Brazil, Argentina, China, Canada and Paraguay.

No till farming in the USA doubled in the five year period following the introduction of herbicide-tolerant soybeans. It is estimated that this led to the preservation of 247 million tons of topsoil and 243 million gallons of fuel in 2002 alone.

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