From Food Production to Food Security - Global Environmental ...

The discussion above identifies a number of research challenges facing the agronomicresearch community. The final point relates to the overall viewpoints from whichresearchers, resource managers and policy makers operate. These viewpoints need to bereconsidered for the innovative agronomic research approaches to address food securityconcerns in the face of climate change to have maximum effectiveness (Table 1). Suchreconsiderations will both heighten the relevance of agronomic research to the broader foodsecurity issues and help deliver more policy-relevant outputs. They are, of course, needed notjust on the part of agronomists, but on the part of all the other sciences and disciplines that arerelevant to agricultural research for development.ConclusionsWhile agronomic research alone cannot solve all food security/climate change issues (andhence the balance of investment in research and development for crop production vis a visother aspects of food security needs to be assessed), it will nevertheless continue to have animportant role to play: it both improves understanding of the impacts of climate change oncrop production and helps to develop adaptation options; and also – and crucially – itimproves understanding of the consequences of different adaptation options on further climateforcing. This role can further be strengthened if agronomists work alongside other agriculturalscientists to develop adaptation options that are not only effective in terms of cropproduction, but are also environmentally and economically robust, at landscape and regionalscales. Agronomists also need to work with a wide range of other disciplines, and acrosssectors of the food industry, to develop the necessary new research approaches and paradigmsto better link research on food production to food security issues. Such novel approaches morelikely to deliver scientific outputs better suited to the information needs of policy makers.34