Microsoft founder Bill Gates warned Monday that “hundreds of millions of farmers” are feeling the effects of climate change and advocated innovation in the sector at a United Nations Food Organization (FAO) conference.
“The longer we take to reduce emissions to net zero, the worse the consequences will be,” Bill Gates warned at the 42nd FAO conference, based in Rome, in the traditional speech in memory of Frank McDougall, one of the founders of this specialized UN agency.
Bill Gates emphasized that “climate change has cost seven years of agricultural productivity growth” and that “in the coming decades global warming is expected to increase droughts and floods, reduce productivity, and increase prices.”
“It is unfair that the nations that have contributed the least to climate change are now the ones waiting the longest for vaccines and the ones most affected by these challenges,” Gates said.
In that regard, he recalled that the impact of covid-19 could have left up to “132 million people in poverty” in a crisis that climate change is helping to “complicate” further, due to the dependence on the primary sector of the least developed countries.
The businessman claimed the work of the African Union in collaboration with the FAO, with projects to help farmers in Kenya, or an early warning system against wheat rust in Ethiopia, as examples of innovation against the effects of climate change.
“Small farmers must overcome incredible adversity and innovate, but they cannot do it alone, they need international solutions,” he said, calling on the FAO and other UN agencies to “provide technical assistance” to farmers.
