Photo: Bart de Gouw
The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research programme run jointly by 15 international agriculture institutes is moving from Copenhagen to Wageningen. This is not a major operation because the CCAFS bureau only has a small staff. What is more important is the WUR hereby gains a network of international climate and agricultural research. In the coming years WUR wants to collaborate more with the 15 international institutes involved in CCAFS in the field of climate and food security. This was announced by WUR president Louise Fresco at the opening conference on 31 March. It will help that the Dutch government has decided from now on to allocate its contribution to the 15 institutes specifically to the development of climate-neutral agriculture.
There are major challenges in this area, says Fresco. Agriculture contributes a lot to global warming, and CO2 and methane emissions in agriculture are going to have to go down to ensure that the earth does not warm up by more than two degrees Celsius. So the use of resources in agriculture has got to become much more efficient.