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Sustainable food security in times of climate change: the FACCE-JPI EU Initiative
According to current projections the temperatures in Germany will rise by up to four degrees in the next 50 years. The consequences of this steep increase will be extreme weather conditions and marked fluctuations in local climates, which will bring agricultural production increasingly under pressure. The European Joint Programming Initiative with the themes of Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) is designed to make a contribution to this major challenge.
The Joint Programming Initiative, "Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change -JPI-FACCE" to which the Federal Ministries for Education and Research and for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection are both committed, is to develop a joint programme among the Member States and to strengthen networking. The Initiative supports the implementation of aims, firmly established by the Federal Government in the "BioEconomy National Research Strategy 2030”, for global food security and for the creation of sustainable agricultural production having regard to climate change.
The first agenda for the Initiative, drawn up by an Advisory Council, was submitted in December 2010. The members of the Advisory Council include, among others, both Deputy Chairmen of the BioEconomyCouncil, Bernd Müller-Röber, Professor of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Physiology and the University of Potsdam and Joachim von Braun, Director at the Centre for Development Research. The agenda approved by the Member States lists five primary spheres of activity for the JPI. As a pilot measure in the first sphere of activity, "sustainable food security in times of climate change" is to be an inter-disciplinary Europe-wide network of top-rate groups of researchers (the Knowledge Hub). This FACCE Knowledge Hub is intended to be able better to evaluate the effects of climate change on agricultural production, trade in agricultural produce and the consequences for society. Moreover, the interpretation of the resulting and already existing models and their networking is to be optimised, in order to reduce the uncertainty which exists at present in the forecasting of the effects of climate change on agricultural production and trade.