A Critique on Achieving Food Security in the Face of Climate Change

One of the most serious problems that affect the human world today is climate change. This is a problem that has serious implications, not only in terms of a changing environment that is affecting health in ways unseen decades ago, but more so in terms of agriculture and food production. As emphasized by the Commission on Agriculture and Climate Change, policy makers throughout the world could not remain content with the same programs and plans enforced before the significant changes in climate brought by global warming have surfaced. Today, the challenge for us to come up with feasible programs that would not only increase food production but also help reduce global warming and inefficiencies in agricultural practices have multiplied a thousand fold. In this sense, this critique should point out the positive points suggested and brought to our attention by experts in the Commission on Agriculture and Climate Change, and then point out whatever seems to be lacking in the article only as it would help in achieving the goals of food security in the next years. We can only agree that now more than ever, what is needed are concrete ideas and steps that would help us produce food that could survive the impact both of El Nino, e.g. extremely hot weather, and La Nina or extremely wet weather. For example, here in the Philippines, we do need to get hold of plant strains that would thrive with limited water and extreme heat. In areas that are prone to floods and long wet seasons, we should also find ways to produce crops that would thrive in such weather and wet environments.

In my view, this is where the article seems lacking: a list of actual crops or plant varieties that could be planted in these two extreme types of weather, as well as a list of funding or agricultural agencies that could be approached for help regarding financial support and technological training for production of such crops. While the article has included concrete and comprehensive examples of what various countries are doing in terms of achieving food security, the examples do not include tropical countries like the Philippines and what could be done in terms of practical ways to increase agricultural production to a large extent to overcome the lack of food and poverty affecting millions of Filipinos today. One example that seems out of place in the midst of all other articles focused on agricultural projects is the one about France, clearly one country that has an abundance of food which threatens children with excessive consumption of the wrong types of food. At first, we wonder why such a report has been included, and then, we realize that focusing on nutrition and food values are part of the problem of food insecurity. Right at the start, it is mentioned that, out of 7 billion people, 1 billion people are eating too much, while 1 billion do not have enough food to eat. We cannot deny that the same thing is happening in our country today, with so many children suffering from obesity and wrong nutritional practices on the one hand, and thousands suffering from hunger in displaced areas. In the end, we can only say that achieving food security for all should become easier if the barriers that prevent those who have plenty from giving their excess food to those who do not have are broken down. We can only hope that leaders of developing countries will truly help by giving the financial and technical transfers as promised in cited protocols and

agreements, a comprehensive list of which should have been included in the article. We need the help of international and government agencies that could be tapped and approached for aid in terms of loans, financial assistance and technological transfers if we are to attain food security in the next few years.