Climate Change and Food Security

If we talk about the sustainable food security in the country, it involves physical, economic and social access to the balanced diet to all the men, women and children. But is it really possible? To achieve the sustainable food security, the productivity and adequate purchasing power needs to be increased.

Agriculture sector is the first one to feel the impact of the climate change. According to the agriculture meteorologists climate change that leads to the rise in temperature, further give rise to the frequents and heavy floods and un-seasonal rainfall posing a threat to the crops nearing maturity. Impacts of the climate change are really complicated. Such changes in climate can endanger the physical access to the food and the economic access will be further fretted due to change to livelihood security caused by the contrary changes in the climate.

Agriculture and climate are interdependent. Since the industrial revolution human induced greenhouse gases into the atmosphere have adversely affected the the quality and the quantity of the crops. And the result is the rise in prises of staple food at the national and international level that further enhances the poverty related endemic hunger.

No doubt in the near future climate change will have larger effects on the food supply. Despite the technological advances, agriculture is mainly dependent on climate. The question is – What quantity of food is produced? How much food is available to the people and so on. According to the latest reports from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agriculture contributes to 13.5% of global green house emissions, largely a result of the methane emissions from the livestock and flooded rice cultivation and nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer application.

If management of climate change becomes everybody's business, we can easily safeguard the food security to the maximum extent possible.

Aparana Chauhan