What is needed to transform agriculture and food systems in the face of climate change?

Sustainability Science Centre is proud to present a sustainability lecture on 22 September 2017, with Bruce Campbell, Director of the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and a staff member of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

Something is wrong with the global food system when nearly one billion people go hungry and more than one billion over-consume; and agriculture is the major driver of global environmental change. And then there is climate change – which will have far-reaching impacts on agriculture and population movement. We need nothing short of a transformation in our agriculture and food system. But what this will look like is difficult to imagine; and the steps needed to make it happen will differ vastly across the globe.

In developing country contexts, new and improved technologies are one part of the solution, but as important if not more so, will be financial, market, information and governance solutions. Digital solutions, peer-to-peer learning using social networks, and the private sector will likely become increasingly important in driving change. Additional attention will need to be given to seasonal and other climate forecasts, and the forecasting of extreme events; with close linkages between farmer actions (for less extreme events) and those of national food security agencies and emergency services (more extreme events).

Examples of good practices are emerging throughout the world, but these will need to be significantly scaled up. Research will need significant re-orientating if it is to be a positive force in the change process.

Dr Bruce Campbell has degrees in Ecology from Cape Town (B.Sc.  Hons.), Minnesota (M.Sc.) and Utrecht (Ph.D.), but has increasingly moved into inter-disciplinary work, championing new approaches to doing applied research on natural resource management. He is Director of the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and a staff member of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). He operates out of the CCAFS office at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

CCAFS taps into the complementary strengths of the international agricultural system (CGIAR) and the Earth Systems Science Partnership (ESSP), and their respective partners, to address the most pressing and complex challenge to food security in the 21st century. The collaboration brings together some of the world’s best researchers in agricultural science, development research, climate science and Earth System science.

Katherine Richardson, Professor in Biological Oceanography, Leader of Sustainability Science Centre, will moderate the talk.

Admission is free.