Trade in agricultural products will make an increasingly key contribution to feeding the planet and responding to famines as climate change is set to significantly alter the ability of many world regions to produce food, according to a new report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Open, predictable and fair global food markets can help strengthen climate change response efforts and contribute to fighting hunger, argues The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets, 2018 report.
"International trade has the potential to stabilise markets and reallocate food from surplus to deficit regions, helping countries adapt to climate change and contribute to food security," FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva wrote in his introduction to the report.
Rules on international trade that were established under the auspices of the WTO and newer mechanisms created under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change can be mutually supportive, the report argues. But to achieve this, national agricultural and trade policies may need to be readjusted to help transform the global marketplace into a pillar of food security and a tool for climate change adaptation, it says.
This is because climate change will affect global agriculture unevenly, improving production conditions in some places while negatively affecting others - creating sets of "winners" and "losers" along the way, according to FAO.
Food production in countries in low latitudes - many already suffering from poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition - will be hardest hit, the report warns. Regions with temperate climates, on the other hand, could see positive impacts as warmer weather lifts agricultural output.
To prevent economic and food security gaps between developed and developing countries from widening even further "we must ensure that the evolution and expansion of agricultural trade is equitable and works for the elimination of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition," Graziano da Silva underlined.
"The uneven impact of climate change across the world and its implications for agricultural trade, especially for developing countries, underlines the need for a balanced approach to policies, which should enhance the adaptive role of trade, while supporting the most vulnerable," said Graziano da Silva.
To achieve this goal, "wide-ranging policy actions are necessary" he added. Trade policies are needed that promote well-functioning global markets, combined with climate-smart domestic measures, investments and social protection schemes.
Many countries already rely on international markets as a source of food to meet their deficit, either due to high costs of agricultural production (as for example in countries with limited land and water resources) or when climate or other natural disasters harm national food output.
FAO gave the example of Bangladesh, where in 2017, the government slashed custom duties on rice to increase imports and stabilise the domestic market after severe floods saw retail prices soar by over thirty percent.
Similarly, South Africa - a traditional producer and net exporter of maize - recently increased imports to dampen the effect of successive droughts, FAO said.
