AN expert from the Food and Agriculture Office (FAO) is pitching calls for the adoption of “climate-smart agriculture” to address the twin challenges of achieving food security and climate change.
Hideki Kanamaru of the Climate, Energy and Tenure Division (NRC) of the FAO told participants of the APEC Symposium on Climate Change held at the Shangri-la Hotel in Manila last week that there is a need to transform agricultural systems to achieve productivity that will support national food security and development goals of APEC member economies.
Transforming agricultural systems means intensifying production systems that will empower farmers to avail themselves of and effectively apply technologies and techniques that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, particularly in irrigated rice production.
Hosted by the Philippines through the Department of Agriculture, the symposium dubbed “Adaptation Strategies with Mitigation Potential for Food and Water Security was attended by policy makers and implementers, researchers, scientists and practitioners from APEC economies and selected organizations.
Alicia Ilaga, focal person of the Department of Agriculture – APEC and Climate Change office said the symposium intended to initiate and sustain information exchange among resource speakers and participating APEC economies on adaptation strategies in agriculture with mitigation potentials.
Kanamaru said FAO is promoting “climate-smart agriculture,” a concept to transform agricultural to enhance the achievement of national food security and development goals in the face of climate change.
Climate-smart agriculture consists of three major pillars: sustainably intensified production systems to achieve productivity increases, climate- change adaptation, and climate-change mitigation.
Adoption of new technologies such as adaptation and mitigation practices, however, is faced with several limitations such as lack of tenure, security and limited property rights which may hinder adoption of practices, he said. More
