'Food Security, Major Casualty During Climate Change'
Food security is likely to be a major casualty in an era of climate change, renowned Agriculture Scientist Dr M S Swaminathan said on wednesday. Adverse changes in precipitation, temperature and sea level would harm present and potential food production.This would be a disaster particularly in countries like ours where population was still growing and per capital land and water resources were shrinking, Swaminathan said.
Delivering his address to the 20th Convocation of Avinashilingam University for Women here,Swaminathan said the most urgent task therefore was to strengthen our agricultural production system under conditions of uncertain weather patterns. India's food security must be based on home grown food, so that it is both reliable and affordable, he said. Food and fuel would be the most expensive commodities in coming years and home grown food based food security would help strengthen rural livelihood and help achieve the goal of food for all surely and speedily, Swaminathan said.
Stating that short and medium term weather forecasting techniques were improving with reference to reliability, he said that the India Meteorological Department predicted a normal South West monsoon this year. 'We should immediately launch a bridging the yield gap movement, using clean technologies associated with conservation farming and green agriculture,' he said, adding the idea was to bridge the prevailing gap between potential and actual yields.
