Posted on November, 9, 2021 at 09:54 am
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has pledged fresh assistance for climate-smart agriculture research and innovation to help promote food security worldwide.
Such commitment is aligned with the climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation bid of Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C), the global initiative United Arab Emirates (UAE) and United States (US) launched at the ongoing 26th UN climate conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow.
"In support of AIM4C, USAID will undertake a number of efforts to dramatically increase research and innovation to develop cutting-edge climate-smart agriculture that is effective and sustainable so that families and communities, particularly those on the front lines of the climate crisis, are better equipped to face a rapidly changing climate," USAID Administrator Samantha Power said during a virtual session of the conference.
She said USAID committed to investing at least USD215 million in Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world’s largest public sector agricultural research partnership.
"USAID’s investment will support scientists and researchers at CGIAR - 19 of whom have been awarded the World Food Prize since its founding - to make it possible for people in the developing world to feed themselves and their families in ever more harsh conditions by creating new resilient crop varieties and seeds like drought-tolerant maize that can weather extreme conditions," she said.
CGIAR's entire network of 8,000 scientists and 15 world-class research centers worldwide will - for the first time in its 50-year history - focus on the sole core mission of transforming food, land and water systems to help address the climate crisis, she noted.
University partners
Aside from its pledge for CGIAR, she said USAID will further partner with universities in the US and research institutions in low- and middle-income countries so these can tackle some of climate change's most pressing challenges to agriculture and food security.
The partnerships will be through Feed the Future's Innovation Labs, she noted.
She said every USD1 invested in climate-smart agricultural technologies developed through such labs enabled smallholder farmers to gain USD4 in benefits.
Feed the Future is the US government’s global hunger and food security initiative.
"I am pleased to announce that the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Current and Emerging Threats to Crops is being awarded to Pennsylvania State University," Power further said at the session.
The Penn State lab "will lead efforts to prevent and forecast pests, diseases and weeds that harm crops like peanuts, cassava, and cowpea which are vital to food security," she said.
Earlier, USAID announced awarding USD36 million to the University of California-Davis to lead the Innovation Lab on Horticulture.
Work in such lab aims to help increase the productivity of small-scale horticulture producers through sustainability, storage and commercial innovations while promoting climate-smart farms, noted USAID.
Power said two-thirds of the world’s rural poor depend on agriculture for food and livelihood.
"All around the world, we've already seen climate change posing a dire threat to food security, causing more heat, more droughts, more flooding - these extreme weather conditions make it harder to perform the basic activities that have sustained human life for millennia: grow food, fish, raise livestock," she said.
Countries with the least carbon emissions are suffering the harshest consequences of climate change which these discharges are causing, she noted.
"Wealthy nations like the US, responsible for much of the carbon pollution currently in our atmosphere, bear a special responsibility to these communities that are being most directly harmed," she said.
She noted AIM4C is an opportunity to help ensure the availability of food despite the changing climate.
"What we are trying to achieve with AIM4C is straightforward: We want to prevent people from going hungry," she said.
AIM4C urges increasing and accelerating investments in and partnerships on climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation worldwide, during this initiative's 2021-2025 run, to help promote food security, climate health, and farmers' well-being.
Last week, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said AIM4C already garnered from its participants an "early harvest" of USD4 billion in increased investments for helping accelerate climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation around the world.
"If you really have to summarize AIM4C in one word, innovation would be one but I think acceleration is the key," USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack said at another session during the conference.
Global population growth amidst climate change is raising the urgency for increasing and accelerating investments in smart agriculture and food systems innovation, he noted.
"We don't have time," he said. "We've got to move this process up. For far too long, we have been under-funding investments and innovation in agriculture."
During the session, Hungary's agriculture minister Dr. Istvan Nagy announced his country is eyeing a USD28 million increase in its climate-smart agriculture and innovation activities by 2025.
Several officials of countries participating in AIM4C also expressed optimism about this initiative's outcome.
"We in the agriculture sector believe that science and innovation is our hope for survival and progress in a changing climate," the Philippines' Department of Agriculture Sec. Dr. William Dar said in a message aired during the session.
Singapore's Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said investing in sustainable urban food production technologies today "can help overcome food security challenges of tomorrow."
"Innovation in agriculture and food systems are pillars of sustainable development," Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs Ambassador for Climate Change Jan Wahlberg also said.
Source: GOV.PH