Global Food Security and Climate Change Mitigation: The Potential Role of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

Key Points

• Population growth, shifting diets, and increases in the use of food crops for industrial purposes such as biofuels and animal feed are colliding with the reality that the agricultural sector needs to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and make efficient use of land and water resources to mitigate future food and climate crises.
• While many investments and initiatives have limited impact, investments in agricultural research and development by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have yielded benefits worth 10 times their costs.
• The CGIAR should focus on achieving genetic gains for higher crop yields and productivity, designing resilient farm systems, and modifying policies that incentivize inefficient agricultural practices while improving climate and nutrition outcomes, considering localized agroclimatic conditions, and ensuring programs are available to small farmers.

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Introduction

The world is not on track to achieve the United Nations’s Sustainable Development “Goal 2.1” of ending hunger by 2030 or the Paris agreement target of stabilizing global warming at below 2°C above preindustrial levels.¹ To improve global food security and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions today, over the next decade, and beyond 2030, agricultural systems need to be transformed and agricultural productivity increased.

Transformation will not be easy. Several factors are creating serious challenges for global food security. In many high- and middle-income countries, diets continue to shift toward increased consumption of fats, oils, sugars, and meat products. Further, substantial increases in the use of food crops for industrial uses—biofuels and animal feed—are diverting resources from the food supply chain, and higher agricultural input costs, especially for fertilizers and fuel, are likely to significantly reduce food crop production among smallholder households. Climate change is also hurting agricultural production in many parts of the world. Thus, in many low-income countries, food insecurity and severe hunger persist for too many people and, in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, are on the rise.

Agriculture also substantially contributes to climate change; therefore, mitigating GHG emissions from the sector is key to climate mitigation. Agriculture needs to use less land and water if the world is to reverse deforestation, halt the decline in biodiversity, and provide nonagricultural water supplies.

A transformation this large and rapid will require investments in creative innovations for sustainable agricultural intensification—innovations that seek to meet changing human needs while ensuring the long-term productive potential of natural resources, such as water and land resources and the associated ecosystems and their functions.

Agricultural research is widely viewed as the most effective instrument in responding to the medium- and long-term challenges of sustaining and increasing food security while mitigating climate change. Public investments in agricultural research and development (R&D) continue to consistently generate high economic rates of return through agricultural productivity growth.²

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Notes

1. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “Goal 2: End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition and Promote Sustainable Agriculture,” 2022, https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal2.
2. See, for example, Julian M. Alston et al., A Meta-Analysis of Rates of Return to Agricultural R&D: Ex Pede Herculem?, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2000, https://www.ifpri.org/publication/meta-analysis-rates-return-agricultural-r-d; Robert E. Evenson and Douglas Gollin, “Assessing the Impact of the Green Revolution, 1960 to 2000,” Science 300, no. 5620 (2003): 758–62, https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1078710?cookieSet=1; Philip G. Pardey et al., “Returns to Food and Agricultural R&D Investments in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1975–2014,” Food Policy 65 (December 2016): 1–8, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2016.09.009; and Philip G. Pardey and Vincent H. Smith, Waste Not, Want Not: Transactional Politics, Research and Development Funding, and the US Farm Bill, American Enterprise Institute, December 11, 2017, https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/waste-not-want-not-transactional-politics-research-and-development-funding-and-the-us-farm-bill/.