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According to two reports published on Wednesday by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), food production and agriculture are not only drivers but also victims of climate change: Food systems contribute up to 29% of global greenhouse gas emissions, releasing 17,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide per year, while agricultural production is responsible for 80% of total food system emissions. These figures account for the entire food chain, including transport and refrigeration of food, as well as the production of fertilisers. At the same time, agriculture is forced to adapt to altered conditions. “The food-related emissions and, conversely, the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the food system will profoundly alter the way we grow and produce food. This will affect different parts of the world in radically different ways, but all regions will have to change their current approach to what they grow and eat,” said Sonja Vermeulen, Head of Research at CCAFS and lead author of the study ‘Climate Change and Food Security’. According to the second study, ‘Recalibrating Food Production in the Developing World’, which analyses the impact of climate change on 22 of the world’s main crops, yields of the most important crops will decrease in many developing countries due to higher temperatures and unpredictable rainfall. By 2050, wheat production could decrease by 13%, rice yields by 15%, and African maize farmers could lose up to 20% of their yields. While potatoes will suffer with the higher temperatures, they might provide an opening for the cultivation of bananas in these areas. The drought-resistant cowpea plant could be an alternative to soybeans as a source of protein. Furthermore, warmer weather might increase the spread of pests and diseases. “The good news is that if farmers and food producers start to adapt now, they can stave off some of the dour food production and distribution scenarios laid out in this research”, said Philip Thornton, author of the study and a theme leader at CCAFS.

On Friday, the European Parliament adopted its report on the reform of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), a draft legislation intended to regulate EU financial markets by restricting food price speculation and high-frequency trading. The Parliament voted by 495 to 15 in favour of the draft law, which introduces mandatory limits for traders speculating in commodity derivatives, a practice blamed for food price volatility. NGOs criticised the text for containing various loopholes. “Some Members of the European Parliament voted to curb food speculation, but it was not enough, and it remains a threat”, said Anne van Schaik, sustainable finance campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe. NGOs had been advocating for a limit to the number of contracts individual traders and trader groups are allowed in order to prevent traders from “cornering” markets and influencing prices. However, the adopted proposal only limits the maximum net position that traders may hold rather than the number of contracts. Furthermore, the new rules do not include over-the-counter trading, so-called shadow transactions. European finance ministers are expected to agree on their position at the ECOFIN Council on November 13th. The Commission, Parliament and the Council of Ministers will then negotiate the final version of the text. According to Marc Olivier Herman, Oxfam’s EU Policy Adviser, “cracks in the text adopted today still need to be filled during talks with Member States to make sure it effectively staves off excessive speculation. This is crucial for the millions in poor countries who are hit by high and unpredictable food prices.”

According to the World Bank, African countries could feed their populations if regional food trade was increased. Lifting trade barriers across the continent would reduce prices and enhance food security for the population, while concurrently raising income for small-scale farmers. For example, only 5% of Africa’s current imports of cereal come from other African nations. More food is being imported from Europe and Southeast Asia, thereby worsening trade balances. “Africa does have the means and opportunities to deal with and deliver improved food security for its citizens,” Makhtar Diop, World Bank vice-president for Africa, noted in the foreword to a new report published on Wednesday. “However, this potential is not being realised because farmers face more trade barriers in getting their food to market than anywhere else in the world.” Among the obstacles cited in the report are high transport costs, gaps in infrastructure, roadblocks and bribes at border posts, and outdated regulations, as well as a lack of agricultural knowledge-sharing among African countries, the bank said. Danielle Nierenberg, director of the US-based ‘Nourishing the Planet’ project, agrees with the need for more regional food trade within the African continent. However, she warned against approaches centered on expensive input such as hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers. “I haven’t seen, from the World Bank or any other big funders, any significant new focus on agro-ecological solutions, even though all of the data is available,” Nierenberg told Inter Press Service.

A new study published in the November edition of the peer-reviewed journal 'Science of the Total Environment' found that reducing food waste and increasing efficiency within the food production chain could cut food losses by half, thereby potentially feeding an additional billion people. For the first time, global food waste was estimated in terms of kilocalories per capita. A research team, led by Aalto University in Finland, calculated that 614 kilocalories per person are lost due to waste in the food production chain each day. By avoiding these losses, global production would provide 2,609 kilocalories of food daily. If the lowest loss percentage achieved in any region could be replicated at the global level, eight billion people could be fed with the resources currently used. The study also assessed the impact of food losses in relation to the use of resources: Every year, food losses waste 27 cubic metres of clean water, 0.031 hectares of agricultural land and 4.3 kilogrammes of fertiliser per person. “Agriculture uses over 90 per cent of the fresh water consumed by humans and most of the raw materials used in fertilisers. More efficient food production and the reduction of food losses are very important matters for the environment as well as future food security,” said Matti Kummu, lead author of the study and post-doctoral researcher at Aalto University. Researchers from VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the University of Bonn in Germany also contributed to this study.

On Wednesday, the European Commission formally published a proposal to limit the amount of biofuels made from food crops in its renewable energy targets for 2020. The proposal introduces a 5% cap on food crop-based biofuels. However, the Commission has watered down plans to reduce the indirect climate impact of biofuels: Indirect land use changes (ILUC) occur if forests are cleared or peatland is dried to meet the growing demand for biofuels, which in turn leads to a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The proposed ILUC factors are now only for reporting purposes and carry no legal weight when determining whether biofuels meet minimum greenhouse gas saving thresholds. In a press conference on Wednesday, Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said the proposal was “not perfect” but would send out the right signal to the biofuel industry to move on to second generation fuels made from waste, algae or straw. Many NGOs and environmentalists welcomed the proposal as a first step but felt the reform did not go far enough. “The proposed cap is higher than the current level of consumption of first generation biofuels in Europe. With close to 900 million people suffering hunger in the world what is needed is a rapid phase out of these biofuels”, said Oxfam’s EU biofuels expert Marc Olivier Herman. Friends of the Earth Europe stressed that “after two years of dithering the European Commission has virtually ignored the significant deforestation and climate emissions from biofuels.” The proposal will need to be agreed by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. According to ActionAid’s Head of Campaigns Belinda Calaguas, “the EU Member States and Parliament should walk away from this proposal and wait until the European Commission comes back with something that will actually tackle climate, land grabs and hunger.”

At a press conference held yesterday in Rome, one day ahead of World Food Day, international peasants’ movement Via Campesina warned of the major risks that the wrong type of agricultural investment pose to land and water resources and, as a consequence, the livelihoods of small-scale farmers. According to Via Campesina, intelligent agricultural investment can serve to support peasant agriculture but, when investments do not recognise the interests of small scale farming families, violations of rights by private sector investments are common. Ibrahima Coulibaly, West African member of the International Coordinating Committee of Via Campesina, said “the multinationals investing in Africa do anything but benefit the most vulnerable.” This position was supported by Canadian small-scale farmer Kalissa Regier, who said “rather than using large-scale private investments or public-private partnerships, the States should mobilise public funding to support small-scale family farmers and peasants who grow most of the world’s food, and who play a central role in combating hunger.” The Via Campesina press conference took place during the 39th session of the World Committee for Food Security (CFS), an intergovernmental body open to civil society, the private sector, international organisations and research institutions. At the opening session yesterday, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva called on the CFS community “to work together to develop principles for responsible agricultural investment that respect rights, livelihoods and resources.” The CFS has initiated a two-year process to elaborate principles for responsible agricultural investment.

On Tuesday, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), a broad international network of churches and Christian organisations, published a paper which calls for increased investment in sustainable agricultural practices in order to support small-scale farmers and protect the environment. The paper, entitled “Nourishing the World: Scaling up Agroecology” comprises numerous success stories which demonstrate how agroecological methods have increased yields for farmers by using locally-available natural resources. At the same time, these methods have reduced farmers’ dependency on expensive and polluting chemical fertilisers and pesticides. The release of the paper coincided with the publication of the FAO’s new figures on global hunger which show that 870 million people are still suffering from hunger. EAA underlines that hunger is not caused by a lack of food: Worldwide, enough food is produced to feed 10 billion people. “Tackling hunger is not in the first instance about producing more food. It is about investing responsibly in sustainable agricultural practices and changing wasteful consumer habits”, said EAA’s Food Campaign Coordinator, Christine Campeau. The paper provides alternatives to the current industrial model of agriculture. “In the context of climate change, business as usual in the field of food production is not an option. Agroecology offers the prospect of sustainable food production to meet the needs of a still growing global population, while at the same time reducing the global greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, building resilience to already unavoidable climate change, protecting biodiversity and sustaining communities and rural livelihoods”, the paper concludes.

According to a new UN report published today, almost 870 million people are chronically undernourished worldwide. This means that in the period 2010-2012 one in every eight was suffering from hunger. The majority of the hungry live in developing countries. “In today’s world of unprecedented technical and economic opportunities, we find it entirely unacceptable that more than 100 million children under five are underweight, and therefore unable to realize their full human and socio-economic potential,” said the heads of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme in the foreword to the report. Compared to the figures collected for the period 1990-92, the number of undernourished people has declined by 132 million. This is more than previously expected. The report is optimistic that the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the share of the world’s hungry could be within reach if this rate of decline continues until 2015, and adequate measures are taken. In reality however, progress in reducing hunger has slowed since 2007-08, and now levelled off. Looking at different regions, the situation has improved in Asia and the Pacific, where undernourishment has decreased to 13.9%. Latin America and the Caribbean have also seen an improvement, with ‘only’ 8.3% of the population suffering from hunger. In Africa, the number of hungry people has risen from 175 to 239 million - with more than one in four going hungry. In sub-Saharan Africa, hunger has been rising by 2% per year since 2007. According to the authors, the report ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012’ used updated information on population, food supply and distribution, as well as food losses. The methodology does not however fully capture the effects of the food price crisis of 2007-2008 or the short-term effects of recent food price surges.

Development agency Oxfam International has urged the World Bank to stop investing in large-scale land acquisitions to prevent land grabbing in developing countries. According to a new Oxfam report published on Thursday, the area of land which has been sold off worldwide in the last decade is eight times the size of the United Kingdom. This land could have produced sufficient food for a billion people – the current number of people suffering from hunger. The report “Our Land, Our Lives” shows that between 2000 and 2010 more than 60% of investments in agricultural land made by foreign investors occurred in developing countries with serious hunger problems. The crops produced on this land were either exported or used for biofuel production. “The world is facing an unbridled land rush that is exposing poor people to hunger, violence and the threat of a lifetime in poverty”, commented Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam International. The organisation has demanded a temporary freeze of the World Bank’s agricultural investments in land so as to send a clear signal to investors. The moratorium would give the World Bank time to improve standards for transparency in land deals, to ensure the prior consultation of affected communities and to strengthen people’s land rights. Senior bank officials however consider it a mistake to stop the World Bank's involvement at a time of rising food prices and growing interest by foreign investors in farmland.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) today announced an international initiative to enhance understanding of the role that fish farming plays for food security in developing countries. The alliance AFSPAN (Aquaculture for Food Security, Poverty Alleviation and Nutrition) will bring together development agencies, governments and universities. The EU has provided one million Euros for the three-year project, which is intended to help countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop sustainable policies to improve the livelihoods of millions of people. “The project will work closely with fish farming communities and will focus on field research in many major aquaculture countries in the developing world”, said FAO’s senior expert on aquaculture, Rohana Subasinghe. Fish is the main source of protein for 17 percent of the world's population – nearly 25 percent in low-income, food-insecure countries. However, overfishing and climate change are now posing a threat to fish stocks. A new study by the University of British Columbia found that global warming is likely to shrink the size of fish by as much as a quarter by 2050 due to the difficulties presented by warmer, oxygen-poor waters. The scientists have also warned of a reduction of overall fish stocks.