Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Food Security and Climate Change


Food security has become a serious issue in this century. Recently, the United Nations annual report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World shows that malnutrition affected more than 151 million children with stunted growth under the age of five. And 821 million people living under the acute poverty level. Moreover, the number of food insecure people have raised to about 60% and more than 80% of babes lacked nutritious food. So, it has left 44% of children with stunted growth. Although, there are various reasons for such deportable situation of food insecurity but one of the most important is climate change.

Climate is the major environmental factor which has the greatest impact on the pattern of agricultural production and its nutrition. A smaller disturbance in climate may cause the total loss of crops. Today, this is the climate change which affected all over the world and agricultural production patterns. Changing in rainfall patterns and increasing environmental temperature, and, resultantly, floods have given a serious setback to the production of different crops in the world. Nowadays, the United States is facing Hurricane Florence. Pakistan came across with the destructive flood in 2010 and "Thar" region of Pakistan has been facing a severe drought condition and malnutrition consistently from the previous few years. These all are the results of Climate change. If this situation goes unchecked, this world would be unable to feed more than 9.6 billion population in 2050. So, policymakers will have to think and give a sustainable solution to these two problems which are interlinked with each other.

United Nations' body of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) floated the idea of " Climate Smart Agriculture" in 2010 which, now, has become the main strategy to counter these two issues. This is an integrated agricultural management approach in which  all available resources are used and engaged in such a way that, on the one hand, the production efficiency of crops through environmental stress-resistant varieties development and by using new technologies to improve the nutrition and shelf life of food are increased and, on the other hand, government policies are made environment friendly. In this way, government, researchers, technologists, and farmers are engaged to increase food security and reduce climate change. So, if this system is adopted fully, this world can be saved from malnutrition and food insecurity.

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