Climate Change threatens food security
01 March 2022
The latest IPCC report portrays an alarming scenario for the future of our food systems. Global warming threatens food production and access to food.
According to researchers, the exposure to food insecurity will be unevenly distributed, hitting the poorest areas of the world more severely. Asia and Africa are already experiencing the impact of climate change, which is reducing the growth of their agricultural productivity.
Europe will not be excluded by global warming’s negative impact either. This winter’s droughts in Portugal and Spain or last year’s floods in Belgium and Germany give a clear idea of the future extreme weather events and the implications for agriculture. The European Commission recently published a communication on food security, aiming to tackle the existing vulnerabilities caused by climate change and import reliance.
The IPCC report also makes alarming projections on soil health. By 2050, large land areas might be degraded. Even pollination will be hindered if the temperature continues rising, with the consequent proliferation of pests and agricultural disease. Last November, the Commission presented the European Soil Strategy, with the commitment of establishing a soil health law by 2023 to concede soil the same protection status as air and water.
As UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Olivier de Schutter, remarks, without a consistent reduction of carbon emission and a change in the farming methods, the collapse of the food system is likely.
Regenerative Agriculture can be a useful ally in the transition of our food system. The support of this holistic cultural approach to agriculture would contribute to restoring climate stability, increasing biodiversity, rebuilding soil fertility, and producing healthy food. SAFE firmly believes in this alternative cultural approach to agriculture and in 2021 joined the RegAgri4Europe Project. RegAgri4Europe is a two-year project financed by the Erasmus+ Programme, whose objective is to accelerate and facilitate the global transition to regenerative food, farming, and land management.
The transition towards sustainable food systems requires a change in our cultural mindset, and the education of future generations is the most effective promoter of this change. Since 2019, SAFE is the project coordinator of the PermaModule Project, an undergraduate course on Permaculture. It is an Erasmus+ project whose objective is to create news synergies between higher education and professionals to promote sustainable systems. In a world in which modern industrial agriculture is largely responsible for environmental problems, Permaculture offers an alternative approach that integrates land, resources, people, and the environment through mutually beneficial synergies.
