TITLE:
Agriculture, Climate Change and Food Security
AUTHORS:
Nehemia Kiprutto, Laban K. Rotich, Geoffrey K. Riungu
KEYWORDS:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Extreme Events, Food Security
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.2 No.5,
May
22,
2015
ABSTRACT: Agriculture is one
of the main economic activities in the world, with its significance magnified especially
among the world’s poor. This paper seeks to explore how climate change would
impact on the agricultural sector and consequently food security. Agricultural
activities in most developing countries entirely depend on rainfall patterns, on
the contrary, climate change has emerging as an environmental challenge with
adverse impacts expected on food security. This is mainly through incidences of
changes in water availability, floods and drought. For example, changes in
temperature and precipitation including drought affects crop and livestock
yield, hydrologic balances, input supplies and other components of agricultural
systems. Equally important, environmental degradation is one of the drivers of
climate change that further undermines sustainability of agriculture. Climate
change is real and already taking place. According to the inter-governmental panel
on climate change (IPCC), warming temperatures are projected to cause more
frequent and more intense extreme weather events such as heavy rain storms,
flooding and tropical storms and in some cases drought in many parts of the
country. Agriculture is one of the most climate sensitive sectors, with
projections that 800 million people are currently food insecure. Additionally,
it has the potential to undermine advances in poverty reduction and sustainable
development. Thus, fundamental changes in agricultural systems are needed because
climate change poses new and serious challenges for farmers hence food
insecurity. Most important, agricultural adaptation and mitigation pathways
need to be developed so as to avoid further threat on food security.