www.asianfarmers.org

Farming is dependent on the weather. Too little rain can ruin a crop and flooding can destroy fields. Some plants thrive in hot climates and cannot cope with frost, while others are the opposite. Climate is not the same as weather, which is notoriously unpredictable. However the overall weather trends that make climate are changing. Agriculture needs to adapt in order to cope with these changes, and quickly.

Global warming does not just mean everywhere getting gradually hotter, climate is much more complex. Climate change is leading to more rain is some places, less rain in others, storms where previously they were a rarity, hotter summers, and counter-intuitively colder winters.

Agriculture the world over is being affected. While individual countries are experiencing different changes there are some basic changes that need to be made to farming methods worldwide.

Read the full article at Helium

Reuters) – Global wheat markets reeling from Russian droughts, thousands of cattle killed by heat in Kansas, and countless crop acres wiped out by floods in Pakistan are glimpses of what can be expected as the world struggles to battle climate change.

But as concerns mount over extreme weather hitting global food systems this year, governments are no closer to forging a pact to fight climate change.

Read the full story at Reuters

In the Philippines, farmers are already feeling the heat. While climate change is already hitting millions of vulnerable people in the country, farmers, too, are being affected—where drought, flooding, hunger and disease are becoming more common than ever. Our correspondent Imelda V. Abaño embarked on a mission to look into the plight of the farmers in the country and witness firsthand what they are facing in times of the changing climate

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—From upland vegetable and rice farms in the Cordillera to coconut and tobacco plantations in Albay and Ilocos Sur, signs that all is not well with the weather are telling.

Benguet vegetable growers have to confront disrupted planting cycles that result in crop failures.

Farmers tending the Ifugao rice terraces have started witnessing the crumbling of earth paddies that have withstood inclement weather for centuries.

In Albay low yield from their coconut and abaca plantations has been forcing Agta farmers to leave their farms for odd jobs in cities and other urban areas.

Up north in Ilocos Sur, farmers have been hurting from the low quality of tobacco leaves that their farms produce due to the erratic weather.

Read the full story at Business Mirror

Organic farming is an agricultural production system that is best suited in succeeding in the battle against climate change.

Prof. Oscar B. Zamora of the University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB), a convenor of Go Organic! Philippines, said promoting organic farming is a sound option for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

He said organic agriculture production systems are less prone to extreme weather condition, such as drought, flood and waterlogging.

Zamora, who is also dean of the UPLB Graduate School, explained that organic farming addresses the major effects of climate change, namely, increased occurrence of extreme weather events, increased water stress, and problems related to soil quality.

“It reduces the vulnerability of the farmers to climate change and variability,” he explained.

Read the full story at Manila Bulletin

WASHINGTON — Even modest rises in global temperatures will drive down rice production in Asia, the world’s biggest grower of the cereal grain that millions of poor people depend on as a staple food, a study published Monday warned.

Researchers from the United States, the Philippines and the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) looked at the impact of rising daily minimum and maximum temperatures on irrigated rice production between 1994-1999 in 227 fields in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

They found that the main culprit in cutting rice yields was higher daily minimum temperatures.

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(Like the System of Rice Intensification or SRI, the Rice-Ducks Integrated Farming System or IRDFS being promoted by an NGO in the Philippines, is another organic farming technology that small scale farmers can adopt and benefit from. And with the unprecedented problems related to climate change and global food sufficiency, governments and development agencies should ensure that these environment and farmer-friendly technologies are fully supported. — Admin)

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—While the world’s leaders are scratching their heads and expensive think tanks wrack their brains trying to find answers to global warming and food security, a nongovernment organization here is propagating a solution that hit these two problems at one go, but has not talked much about its successes.

Instead, the Philippine Agrarian Reform Foundation for National Development (Parfund) Inc. is letting its ducks do all the “quacking.”

Through its Rice-Ducks Integrated Farming System (IRDFS), Parfund is slowly spreading the gospel that rural Filipino rice farmers can feed the nation with its staple diet and help save the planet from the effects of global warming.

“The Integrated Rice-Duck Farming System is a proven organic-farming technology that is being propagated by Parfund to improve rice-production performance and ensure rice self-sufficiency in the country,” said Jose Noel “Butch” Olano, Parfund executive director.

Read the full story at Business Mirror

International Climate Change Negotiations: Ensuring Support for Adaptation and Mitigation Measures in Smallholder Agriculture, Vol. 2 No. 4, December 2009.

In December 2009, women in Sayphusi, a village in the province of Attapeu in Laos, were busy washing dried mud from their paddy grains. They had very little to eat, and the muddied paddy – the only remnant from their rice crops which were damaged by the storm that struck their village in October – was the only food available. The storm caught them unaware and swept away their homes, crops and livestock.

Laos is a landlocked country and is very rarely visited by typhoons. But lately, farmers have noticed a lot of changes in the season. Like many countries in Southeast Asia, they can no longer rely on the natural flow of the seasons to guide their planting. It rains when it is not supposed to rain, and many times, the dry period stays longer and is much warmer than expected.

These have resulted in damaged crops, and hunger for their families. Meanwhile, in another part of the globe, world leaders have gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark to hold the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The conference was envisioned to be a crucial juncture in the drive to address climate change and its impact on the world, especially on developing countries.

This issue paper discusses international instruments and processes in climate change negotiations, analyzes the place of agriculture in the negotiations, and proposes actions by farmers at the community, national, regional and international levels to ensuring support for adaptation and mitigation measures in smallholder agriculture.

The issue paper has been translated into the languages of AFA members in Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Click here to download the issue paper

BANGKOK — The world’s largest rice exporter, Thailand, is facing major losses to its next crop of rice and a worsening water crisis because of the worst drought in nearly two decades.

Chanchai Rakthananon, president of the Thai Rice Mills Association, said Tuesday that rice output for the next crop cycle, ending in August, could fall to as little as two million tons from a previously forecast five million tons.

“It didn’t rain when it needed to rain,” said Angsumal Sunalai, director general of the Thai Meteorological Department. He blamed global climate change for the problem.

Chalit Damroengsak, director general of the Royal Irrigation Department, said there would normally be three to four monsoon storms a year during the annual rainy season, “but farmers will be lucky if there is one this year.”

Thailand produces about 20 million tons of rice annually in two to four crop cycles, exporting about 9 million metric tons and consuming the same amount.

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RECENT developments in curbing high levels of forest loss around the world are promising. They are significant because deforestation, including the clearing of trees from peat swamps in South-east Asia, is the biggest source of global warming emissions from human activity, after fossil fuel burning.

Indonesia has the eighth largest forest area on the planet and half the global total of tropical peatland. It is the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from deforestation.

So Indonesia’s announcement last month that, starting next January, it will place a two-year moratorium on new permits to clear forests and peatlands is a potentially important advance in a programme to help developing countries protect forests. In fact, advocates of the United Nations-backed forest preservation scheme, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (Redd), argue that it is the fastest and cheapest way to cut greenhouse emissions.

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