Climate change and agriculture

Climate change is a global process, of recent origin in its current form, and largely manmade. In the near future, the dynamic of which it is a part is set to cause long lasting changes in global agriculture. At the same time, agriculture is recognized to be one of the main manmade causes of the process. The expected exhaustion of fossil fuel resources, population growth, and the rapid development of certain countries in which demand for energy is high (China, Brazil, India, etc) have triggered behaviour that has only made matters worse. The emergence of bioenergies as a major new agricultural outlet and the land grabbing phenomenon are both signs of and exacerbating factors in the shortages affecting food security and the environment. Above and beyond this, the major global equilibria and the very stability of societies are under threat.

The main challenge is ensuring the food security of the world’s poorest people. However, it is important not to restrict the debate to the issues traditionally addressed by research for development, or to be content with merely proposing more efficient production technologies, such as those of the green revolution, or the doubly green one, in order to ensure ecological intensification. Technology transfers and economic support from “North” to “South” will be not only inadequate, but simply largely irrelevant. In effect, the expected changes will be truly global, radical and structural, and will force a fundamental rethink of the paradigms that guide research for development.

CIRAD, with its global network of partners in more than 90 countries, is taking up this challenge. The fourteen fact sheets in this document present its operations and expertise in relation to climate change and the main projects in which it is involved:

Update date: 22/02/2012