Dear Abul,

perhaps that attached work may give you some ideas.

Warm regards, Kees 

Hi Mr. Abul:

I suggest you read some approaches made by some speakers and participants of the International Congress on integrated crop-livestock systems, especially by some researchers from China and the UK. Address follows: http://wcclf2015.com.br/news/

Dr.Faisal,you have rightly mentioned PRA as starting point. Farmers participatory survey will give the current picture of the practices being followed by farmers.Any planning to be made should depend on farmers resources. Recommendations need to generated based on the farmers resources especially the money available to purchase inputs, organic manure resources(depending on animals on farm),irrigation facilities etc.When food security is concern  crops and varieties need to be appropriately selected. Crop varieties should be climate resilient. Life saving irrigation is important. Organic manures use may help to tide over drought situation. Depending on farmers resources balanced nutrition crop/ crops need to be planned.Integrated pest management practices need to followed. Drainage is important in coastal areas. Harvesting crop at right time is important to avoid crop loss due to cyclones.Integrated farming approach help in better utilization of resources and provide alternate source of income.

Number of farmers to be studied depends upon resource you are having. It will be better to see how much diversification in selection of crops is done. More diverse will be agricultural practices, least will be the impact of climate change on farmers.

Dear Faisal vi,

To estimate present and future capability of farmers in the costal region you can do like-

1. Find out the most common farming systems and how the farming systems contributed their in the food production-what was the trend (last 10/20 years)-what was the climatic factors (temperature, precipitation, salinity etc) and find out the relationship/ correlation with food production. You can collect data from DAE or IRRI, CIMMYT; BARC; BARI etc

2. To estimate future capability to combat with climate change-- probably you can go for GIS for future projection or u can also use modeling as well.

Actually survey is a nice tool to do some specific research or to find out the applied research issues. In this case you can do to validate your secondary data  using local survey. without secondary data probably it is difficult make an future projection. You can get details methodology from FAO (http://www.fao.org) food production projection report.

Dear Amir Faisal 

One way to connect climate change to food security and the rural economy is to assess the impact of climate change on crop yields and production. Another way would be to assess the farmers' survival strategies for these climate change.

Dr Boukary Ouedraogo

Dear Sir

One way to connect climate change to food security and the peasant economy is to assess the impact of climate change on crop yields and production. Another way would be to assess the farmers' coping strategies for these climate change.

Dr Boukary Ouedraogo

Dear Abul,

Farming system is about crops and livestock. First taking cross sectional and longitudinal data for details of these enterprises you will find out whether your interviewed individuals are food secured or not at least at household level. 

There are indicators or measures of food security and then you can link the farming system of those secured and insecure persons with climate change variables. However, based on your title and specific objectives you may need GIS data too 

Dear Wuletaw,

Which indicators or measures i have to select for food security measurement in the developing world like Bangladesh.

Dear Amir

Good issue to be discuss and to be investigated. 

Number of indicators has to be considered for assessing the food security. To be name - Food sufficiency; Profession, Nature (Permanent, Intermittent, Irregular), assets, livestock and natural resources. I feel you may look all/some the capital required for sustainable livelihood. 

Assessing capability requires modelling.

Best of luck.

Regards

Rajiv

Availability, Access, Utilization and Stability are the four pillars of food security identified by Wisconsin University.Selecting parameters keeping these facts in mind will serve your purpose.

Maybe if you are able to go back in time a few decades, so you can have some trend data to be able to do some trend analysis?  For example, if there are plots that have been abandoned over time for some environmental reason, start with a large sized sample area, date the abandoned areas, and see if you can predict trends?  

When you say that it is a saline area, I assume you mean that the irrigation water is saline, which by itself over time, will build up salts in the soil, to the point that those fields will be abandoned, so it will be difficult to tease that factor out from any other external global warming issues.  

Perhaps knowing the PPM of chlorides in the irrigation water over the last few decades, you can see if that is increasing, perhaps due to global warming.  But then that could also be caused by over pumping of the groundwater, drawing more sea water into the aquifer. 

You might move your study further inland, where you have a more limited set of variables, because even if the saline area is going to be the first place in Bangladesh to be impacted by global warming (I hate the term "Climate change" because it sounds so benign) that area holds too many variables to be able to sort out global warming as the active influence.

Food science has a role to play to achieve food security, but its importance is often seen too high. The assumption that too little food is produced to feed everybody on the planet is incorrect. Actually enough food statistically is around, but not everybody has access to what is available. Food science can cause increase in the cost of food making it unaffordable for poor people. The Green Revolution is an example for this. High Yielding Varieties cost money, fertilizers, pesticides and other high costs for external inputs make agriculture costly. Still plant science can help to better adapt agriculture for example to a changing climate.

One aspect that brings issues around food security together is the sustainable livelihood approach. The e external aspects of these approaches include seasonality of all sorts that can threaten people's livelihood security. Of course livelihood security is a concept much broader than food security, but there are a lot of overlaps, especially in times of climate change.....

Crucial is to keep the basis of food production is good shape. Environmental degradation is very dangerous from such perspective. Second is the distribution / access to food, which is to remove poverty. To better understand what is needed one needs to be aware of the different facets of food security.

Food security is a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life

This is how the FAO defines food security. It combines food production, distribution and consumption, looks into cultural and individual food preferences and also at quality aspects of food both from a nutrition perspective as well as from the perspective of food safety. Climate / environmental changes can have impacts on all these aspects, on food production, food distribution / access and food consumption.

Food production and climate change

all food crops have their optimum what climatetic conditons such as temperature, rainfall, etc are concerned. Especially extremes (too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry) can have devasting impacts. Some plants can tolerate a wide range of conditions, while other plants are rather little flexible to adapt to changing climatic conditons. In addition natural hazards (floods, cyclones, droughts) can have devasting impacts destroying crops in the fields. This all does not mean that only negative impacts are from climate change to agriculture. E.G. the temperate zones towards the poles will have warmer climates allowing longer vegetation periods, longer for crops like wheat. The impacts thus have to be established in regional or even sub-regional dimensions.

Access to food and climate change

this addresses in particular the changes of food prices as a result of climate change. Here in particular countries are effected that already now import big parts of their food requirements, like Kiribati, Tuvalu and other atoll states. Already today food imports make much of their imports and have very negative impacts on their BoP situation. On the micro-level afford rising food prices. They have to change to cheaper foods, often of lesser quality.

McCarthy, J. F., & Obidzinski, K. (2017). Framing the food poverty question: Policy choices and livelihood consequences in Indonesia. Journal of Rural Studies, 54, 344-354.

Cramer, L., Huyer, S., Lavado, A., Loboguerrero, A. M., Martínez Barón, D., Nyasimi, M., ... & van Wijk, M. (2017). Methods Proposed to Evaluate the Potential Impact of Climate Change on Food and Nutrition Security in Central America and the Dominican Republic.

Moragues-Faus, A., Sonnino, R., & Marsden, T. (2017). Exploring European food system vulnerabilities: Towards integrated food security governance. Environmental Science & Policy, 75, 184-215.

Chandra, A., McNamara, K. E., Dargusch, P., Caspe, A. M., & Dalabajan, D. (2017). Gendered vulnerabilities of smallholder farmers to climate change in conflict-prone areas: A case study from Mindanao, Philippines. Journal of Rural Studies, 50, 45-59.