Climate change continues to be a major focus area for researchers and policy makers. Its impacts could threaten national food security by potentially reducing crop yield in both commodity and non-commodity subsectors. Within the non-commodity agrofood industry in Malaysia, which includes rice production, the impacts of climate variability through events like droughts and floods will have long-term implications for its productivity. Additionally, these effects can be observed in other agrofood subsectors including fruits, vegetables, and livestock. Therefore, several adaptation and mitigation strategies using Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices have been developed to effectively manage the potential climate risks while simultaneously aiming to optimize crop production. These strategies mainly focus on overcoming the impacts of the potentially higher local temperatures and prolonged dry spells associated with more extreme conditions. Research specializing in the rice subsector was previously and is still undertaken and it prioritizes approaches such as improving water management practices, identifying local accessions tolerant to drought, and the development of new varieties through marker-assisted breeding. Meanwhile, new strategies aimed at overcoming climatic issues in the fruits, vegetables, and livestock subsectors have included studies on potential alternative pollinators, overcoming pest and disease migration in highland vegetable production, developing new approaches to address fruit-setting failures related to elevated temperatures, and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The next five years are crucial because more outputs from these studies might successfully address important domestic issues. The recently launched National Agriculture Policy 2.0 will spearhead the implementation of climate-resilient strategies, with the aim of creating a paradigm shift in the agricultural sector to ensure better adaptation to climate change and better performance to achieve sustainable agricultural production.
Keywords: Climate change, adaptation, mitigation, food security
Climate change continues to be a major focus area for researchers and policy makers. Its impacts could threaten national food security by potentially reducing crop yield in both commodity and non-commodity subsectors. Within the non-commodity agrofood industry in Malaysia, which includes rice production, the impacts of climate variability through events like droughts and floods will have long-term implications for its productivity. Additionally, these effects can be observed in other agrofood subsectors including fruits, vegetables, and livestock. Therefore, several adaptation and mitigation strategies using Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices have been developed to effectively manage the potential climate risks while simultaneously aiming to optimize crop production. These strategies mainly focus on overcoming the impacts of the potentially higher local temperatures and prolonged dry spells associated with more extreme conditions. Research specializing in the rice subsector was previously and is still undertaken and it prioritizes approaches such as improving water management practices, identifying local accessions tolerant to drought, and the development of new varieties through marker-assisted breeding. Meanwhile, new strategies aimed at overcoming climatic issues in the fruits, vegetables, and livestock subsectors have included studies on potential alternative pollinators, overcoming pest and disease migration in highland vegetable production, developing new approaches to address fruit-setting failures related to elevated temperatures, and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The next five years are crucial because more outputs from these studies might successfully address important domestic issues. The recently launched National Agriculture Policy 2.0 will spearhead the implementation of climate-resilient strategies, with the aim of creating a paradigm shift in the agricultural sector to ensure better adaptation to climate change and better performance to achieve sustainable agricultural production.
Keywords: Climate change, adaptation, mitigation, food security