One of the scariest aspects of climate change is the risk it presents to global food supply and millions of farmers’ and workers’ livelihoods. In some parts of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural productivity for certain crops is forecast to decline by more than one-third.
The 450 million people around the world who rely on small-scale farming for their primary income — and who supply developing countries with most of their food — are the most vulnerable to changes in growing conditions and resulting declines in productivity.
To protect their livelihoods and the world’s food supply in the face of climate change, these farmers must be able to access and utilize the new information, capital and tools necessary to make their farms more resilient. But this represents an enormous cost; in an era of austerity, in which official development assistance and host government budgets are unlikely to dramatically increase, how can these services be provided?
About the author
Simon Winter
Simon Winter is the senior vice president of development at TechnoServe, where he leads and manages strategy and strategic planning, knowledge management, thought leadership and program development. He is currently a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, where he is researching how we can change the global food system so that it feeds a growing population and benefits farmers in the face of climate change.
