World Food Day will
be celebrated at the UN Headquarters in New York on 17 October 2016.
One
of the biggest issues related to climate change is food security. The world’s
poorest - many of whom are farmers, fishers and pastoralists - are being hit
hardest by higher temperatures and an increasing frequency in weather-related
disasters.
At
the same time, the global population is growing steadily and is expected to
reach 9.6 billion by 2050. To meet such a heavy demand, agriculture and food
systems will need to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and become
more resilient, productive and sustainable. This is the only way that we can
ensure the wellbeing of ecosystems and rural populations and reduce emissions.
Growing
food in a sustainable way means adopting practices that produce more with less
in the same area of land and use natural resources wisely. It also means
reducing food losses before the final product or retail stage through a number
of initiatives including better harvesting, storage, packing, transport,
infrastructure, market mechanisms, as well as institutional and legal
frameworks.
This
is why the global message for World Food Day 2016 is “Climate is changing. Food
and agriculture must too.”
It
resonates with the crucial time in which the day will be observed, just before
the next UN Climate Change Conference, COP 22, from 7-18 November 2016 in
Marrakech, Morocco.
FAO
is calling on countries to address food and agriculture in their climate action
plans and invest more in rural development.
By strengthening the resilience of smallholder farmers, we can guarantee food security for the planet’s increasingly hungry global population also reduce emissions.
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