FAO - Climate Breakdown Could Threaten Food Security - Voice Of America

[hatrack]

No shit!

:silly:

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says climate change could become a “major threat to world food security.” It calls climate change one of the “main challenges humankind will have to face for many years to come.”

About 140 international experts are meeting in Rome this week to discuss the issue. One of them is Jeff Tschirley, chief of the FAO’s Environment, Climate Change and Bio-Energy Division. From Rome, he told VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua that a fourth assessment report on climate change is about to be released.

“It’s the fourth time that scientific experts have come together to assess the data related to climate change. What we have now between this fourth report and the third report is …a validation that the climate change impacts we’re now starting to see already. And we know quite surely that the countries that are at risk from climate change, at more risk, are the developing countries rather than the developed countries. And when you look at that in the context of food security and institutional capacity it really does face, at least the agricultural sector, with a significant new set of challenges over the short and long term,” he says.

EDIT

When it comes to climate change, the FAO says agriculture is “both a culprit and victim.” Tschirley says, “It’s very much true because for almost the last decade there’s been a very strong focus on in the climate change community on emissions, on mitigation on emissions.” The FAO estimates the livestock sector alone “accounts for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while deforestation is responsible for 18 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

EDIT/END

http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2007-09-11-voa12.cfm

[kestrel91316]

1. OMG, really? No one could have forseen THAT.

[kestrel91316]

2. On a more serious note: EAT LOCALLY. Buy your produce at the local

farmer's market, or better yet, grow as much of your own food as possible. Avoid processed convenience foods, which use WAY too much fossil fuel in their production, transportation, and storage. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. It's fall, so rediscover the joys of home-baked goodies and seasonal soups and stews.

I am reading Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma right now. He really GETS it.

[The2ndWheel]

3. Tschirley they can't be serious

I love Airplane.

But seriously...

"says agriculture is “both a culprit and victim.”"

I know those words, but all I see when I read them are F, U, C, K, E, and D. I need to go get my eyes checked.