Dear Sir,
I wonder whether the material presented in the document is meant to serve the interests of “IPCC” or to serve the people/nations to develop sustainable agriculture.
From this report it is clear that the report is not really made to serve the people/nations to build sustainable agriculture.
Emissions and global warming has insignificant influence on agriculture. IPCC goes on changing the sensitivity factor that relates anthropogenic greenhouse gases with global warming. Also, now they say in a qualitative manner that it is only more than half of global temperature constitutes global warming. From the balloon and satellite data so far the global warming is only 0.15 oC. This is insignificant to influence agriculture. The seasonal and annual and dry to wet periods temperature variation goes beyond 10 oC that the local crops experiencing for the centuries.
The main component of climate change that has direct impact is natural variability. This I worked for several countries and adapted agriculture to them. Sometimes these are modified by local/regional ecological changes – land use and land cover changes --. Based on this concept, forefathers developed agriculture systems that are sustainable under variable rainfall conditions. To improve the economy and nutrient security they adapted animal husbandry in to agriculture. This system was killed by chemical input mono crop agriculture. Here the yields increased with the level of irrigation and fertilizer supply and reached a plateau by 80s. So, the increase in production was due to chemical inputs. But, technology is not the primary cause for increasing the production but the primary component is irrigation. Agriculture under small holdings will be sustainable not with the technology but by providing supplemental water over rainfall.
The chemical input agricultural technology introduced the evil pollution [soil, water, air and food] that is affecting the health of life forms including the humans and crop production as well quality of potable water. To better utilize the scarce natural resources under small farm holdings is cooperative farming under organic inputs.
These are the issues that the report should have concentrated rather than emissions and global warming to serve IPCC.
I am more of a practical man than theoretical like IPCC which only creates panic and help collect billions of dollars to collect and share. Some of these are exposed very recently.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
S. Jeevananda Reddy