Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-5 (section)

==== 5.7.1.1 Agriculture and trade policy ====

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'''Agriculture.''' The thrust of agricultural policies over the last 50 years has been to increase productivity, even if at the expense of environmental sustainability (Benton and Bailey 2019 <sup>[[#fn:r1230|1230]]</sup> ). For example, in 2007–2009, 46% of OECD support for agriculture was based on measures of output (price support or payments based on yields), 37% of support was based on the current or historical area planted, herd size (or correlated measures of the notional costs of farming), and 13% was payments linked to input prices. In a similar vein, non-OECD countries have promoted productivity growth for their agricultural sectors.

'''Trade.''' Along with agricultural policy to grow productivity, the development of frameworks to liberalise trade (such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – GATT – Uruguay Round, now incorporated into the World Trade Organization) have been essential in stimulating the growth of a globalised food system. Almost every country has a reliance on trade to fulfil some or all of its local food needs, and trade networks have grown to be highly complex (Puma et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1231|1231]]</sup> ; MacDonald et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1232|1232]]</sup> ; Fader et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1233|1233]]</sup> and Ercsey-Ravasz et al. 2012 <sup>[[#fn:r1467|1467]]</sup> ). This is because many countries lack the capacity to produce sufficient food due to climatic conditions, soil quality, water constraints, and availability of farmland (FAO 2015b <sup>[[#fn:r1234|1234]]</sup> ). In a world of liberalised trade, using comparative advantage to maximise production in high-yielding commodities, exporting excess production, and importing supplies of other goods supports economic growth.

City states as well as many small island states, do not have adequate farmland to feed their populations, while Sub-Saharan African countries are projected to experience high population growth as well as to be negatively impacted by climate change, and thus will likely find it difficult to produce all of their own food supplies (Agarwal et al. 2002 <sup>[[#fn:r1235|1235]]</sup> ). One study estimates that some 66 countries are currently incapable of being self-sufficient in food (Pradhan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1236|1236]]</sup> ). Estimates of the proportion of people relying on trade for basic food security vary from about 16% to about 22% (Fader et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1237|1237]]</sup> ; Pradhan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1238|1238]]</sup> ), with this figure rising to between 1.5 and 6 billion people by 2050, depending on dietary shifts, agricultural gains, and climate impacts (Pradhan et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1239|1239]]</sup> ).

Global trade is therefore essential for achieving food and nutrition security under climate change because it provides a mechanism for enhancing the efficiency of supply chains, reducing the vulnerability of food availability to changes in local weather, and moving production from areas of surplus to areas of deficit (FAO 2018d <sup>[[#fn:r1240|1240]]</sup> ). However, the benefits of trade will only be realised if trade is managed in ways that maximise broadened access to new markets while minimising the risks of increased exposure to international competition and market volatility (Challinor et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1241|1241]]</sup> ; Brown et al. 2017b <sup>[[#fn:r1242|1242]]</sup> ).

As described in Section 5.8.1, trade acts to buffer exposure to climate risks when the market works well. Under certain conditions – such as shocks, or the perception of a shock, coupled with a lack of food stocks or lack of transparency about stocks (Challinor et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r1243|1243]]</sup> ; Marchand et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r1244|1244]]</sup> ) – the market can fail and trade can expose countries to food price shocks.

Furthermore, Clapp (2016) showed that trade, often supported by high levels of subsidy support to agriculture in some countries, can depress world prices and reduce incomes for other agricultural exporters. Lower food prices that result from subsidy support may benefit urban consumers in importing countries, but at the same time they may hurt farmers’ incomes in those same countries. The outmigration of smallholder farmers from the agriculture sector across the Global South is significantly attributed to these trade patterns of cheap food imports (Wittman 2011 <sup>[[#fn:r1245|1245]]</sup> ; McMichael 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r1246|1246]]</sup> ; Akram-Lodhi et al. 2013 <sup>[[#fn:r1247|1247]]</sup> ). Food production and trade cartels, as well as financial speculation on food futures markets, affect low-income market-dependent populations.

Food sovereignty is a framing developed to conceptualise these issues (Reuter 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r1248|1248]]</sup> ). They directly relate to the ability of local communities and nations to build their food systems, based, among other aspects, on diversified crops and ILK. If a country enters international markets by growing more commodity crops and reducing local crop varieties, it may get economic benefits, but may also expose itself to climate risks and food insecurity by increasing reliance on trade, which may be increasingly disrupted by climate risks. These include a local lack of resilience from reduced diversity of products, but also exposure to food price spikes, which can become amplified by market mechanisms such as speculation.

In summary, countries must determine the balance between locally produced versus imported food (and feed) such that it both minimises climate risks and ensures sustainable food security. There is ''medium evidence'' that trade has positive benefits but also creates exposure to risks (Section 5.3).

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