From the report of , “Open data & Climate change – Agriculture trends for COP21” published in GODAN
We are living in an information age where data is increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives. Farming will be no exception to these trends. A new generation of precision agriculture generates masses of useful data — if only we can find ways to share it meaningfully.
For agriculture, the most valuable global dataset for farmers large and small is weather data. At COP20 in Lima, Peru in 2014, Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) President Theo de Jager stated: “No constituency is more vulnerable to climate change than the world’s farmers…”
Farming is currently part of the problem as well as a source for potential solutions; one Third of the world’s GHG emissions come from agriculture, the world, and especially rural areas and food production systems faces a huge challenge to adapt to climate change.
“Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrative approach to address these interlinked challenges of food security and climate change, that explicitly aims for three objectives:
- Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security and development;
- Adapting and building resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (including crops, livestock and fisheries).