Balancing climate change and global nutrition
- Category
Environment
- Published
21st Oct, 2022
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Context
It is high time for India to develop technologies that not only fulfill food and nutritional needs but also addresses climate change.
About
How climate change impacts nutrition?
- Climate change, agriculture and nutrition are intrinsically linked. Climate change impacts under-nutrition via following major pathways:
- Degraded quality of foods consumed
- Affected household food security
- Food availability, costs, and overall calorie consumption
- Affected agricultural yields, nutritional quality of crops
- Environmental health and access to health services
How has the situation changed?
- The global population in 1945 was a little less than 2.5 billion and was increasing at an annual rate of about 1.9 percent per annum.
- Today, there are almost 8 billion people on this planet, and there is ample food to feed them.
- Access to food at affordable prices, however, remains a challenge for a substantial segment of humanity.
Role of Science and Technology:
- The world is able to produce so much food that the entire global population can be fed.
- This speaks of the success of science and innovations in the agri-food space.
- Countries that are guided by scientific knowledge and the spirit of innovation, instead of ideologies and dogmas, have produced ample food, even in deserts. For example, Israel.
Challenge/Problem
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Examples of science, technology, and innovation
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Biotic stresses
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- Disease- or pest-resistant crops
- Pest-resistant eggplant
- Rust-resistant wheat varieties
- Pesticides, Herbicides
- Tilling machines
- Spatial repellent for on-farm pests
- Improved agronomic practices (for example, push-pull mechanisms)
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Abiotic stresses
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- Salt-tolerant crops (for example, quinoa, potato)
- Climate-resistant crops
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Improving crop productivity
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- Conventional breeding
- Tissue culture and micropropagation
- Marker-assisted breeding
- Advanced genetic engineering
- Low-cost diagnostic toolkit for extension workers
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Improving livestock agriculture
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- High-nutrient, low-cost animal fodder
- Liquid nitrogen and low-cost alternatives for animal semen preservation
- Low-cost diagnostic toolkits for livestock veterinarians
- Tissue engineering for laboratory-grown animal products
- Low-cost veterinary pharmaceuticals
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Lack of water availability
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- Water storage technologies (subsurface water technologies, aquifers, ponds, tanks, low-cost plastic water tanks, natural wetlands, reservoirs)
- Canal irrigation
- Micro-irrigation technologies, drip irrigation, bubbler irrigation, microsprinkler irrigation
- Water lifting (hand-powered mechanical pumps, treadle pumps, solarpower irrigation pumps, hydrogen-powered pumps, electric and fossil fuel pumps)
- Planting technology for increased water efficiency
- Rainwater harvesting mechanisms
- Conservation agriculture, Portable sensors for groundwater detection
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Soil
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- Synthetic and organic fertilizers
- Zero or conservation tillage
- Soil microorganisms
- Natural nitrogen fixation
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Food security and Indian past:
- Two successive droughts in the mid-1960s brought the country literally to its knees for meeting the basic food requirement of its people.
- India was forced to rely on PL 480 food aid from the USA and had to live from “ship to mouth”.
- India soon realized such high dependence on others for food could lead to political compromises.
High-yielding varieties (HYV) of wheat:
- High-yielding varieties (HYV) of wheat by Normal Borlaug and his team in CIMMYT, and Henry Beachell and GurdevKhush in rice at IRRI.
- Normal Borlaug received the Nobel Prize for peace in 1970.
- Borlaug envisioned setting up the World Food Prize, somewhat equivalent to the Noble Prize for Agriculture.
World Food Prize:
- The World Food Prize is given every year on October 16 in a special ceremony in Des Moines, Iowa.
- Indians including M S Swaminathan, VergheseKurien, GurdevKhush, and Rattan Lal have been recipients of the prize.
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The path towards self-reliant in food:
- There seems to be a lack of sync between policies and technologies.
- India needs to double or even triple its expenditure on agri-research.
- This needs to go up preferably between 1.5 to 2 percent of the agri-GDP.
- Climate smart food systems that engage producer and consumer decision making, which
- improves production of food
- minimizes losses
- reduces green-house gas emissions from agriculture
- implements adaptation strategies for the most vulnerable