Climate change requires attitude change.

The official call is actually for Climate-Change Adaptation and Mitigation.

And since the impact of climate change would be most felt in terms of agricultural output and food production, farmers need to be equipped with adaptation and mitigation skills and techniques to ensure maximum yield despite extreme or erratic climatic conditions.

Asia-Pacific is generally viewed as a food basket for the world, and farmers in the region, including the country, need to be not only environment friendly but also “climate smart.”         

Members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation should work to transform their agricultural systems to enable farmers to use new technologies and techniques to maximize yields that will address the twin challenges of food security and climate change, an expert from the Food and Agriculture Organization said.

Hideki Kanamaru of the Climate, Energy, and Tenure Division of FAO said transforming agricultural systems means intensifying production systems to achieve productivity that will support national food security and development goals.

Speaking at the recent APEC Symposium on Climate Change dubbed “Adaptation Strategies with Mitigation Potential for

Food and Water Security,” Kanamaru said food security and climate change remain as the two major challenges faced by mankind.

Kanamaru said FAO was promoting “climate-smart agriculture,” a concept to transform agriculture 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, such as 1) sustainably intensify production systems to achieve productivity increases, 2) climate-change adaptation, and 3) climate-change mitigation.

Adoption of new technologies such as adaptation/mitigation practices, however, is faced with several limitations such as lack of tenure security and limited property rights which may hinder adoption of practices.

“Limited information and limited local experiences available about new practices due to low levels of support for agriculture research and extension, for example, may prevent adoption,” Kanamaru added. “Up-front investment costs on the ground can be high while on-farm benefits may not be realized until medium to long term in the future.”

Adequate policy and institution support is needed to enable the transition to climate-smart agriculture, he said.

The transformation of agricultural systems, Kanamaru stressed, should increase the resilience of production systems and rural livelihoods as a major climate-change adaptation component.

More importantly, the APEC official said the transformation should also consider reducing agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions through increased production efficiency and carbon sequestration.

Hosted by the government through the Department of Agriculture, the symposium was attended by policy makers and implementers, researchers/scientists, and practitioners from APEC economies and  selected organizations.