FAO proposes actions to adapt agriculture to new climate challenges

Through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala it crosses “The Central American Dry Corridor”, an area vulnerable to climate change and victim of successive food crises.

Of the 10 million people who live there, 80% of small producers live in poverty. To solve this crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) suggested a series of actions to adapt agriculture to the new climate challenges.

The first step is the preparation of regional maps that make it possible to locate the risks of climate change. This is a wise decision for the biologist Isaías Ramos González, from the Center for Environmental Advocacy of Panama since “after the coronavirus pandemic, one of the notorious things in Latin America was that agricultural production had to be encouraged because that guaranteed , that at least the quality of life of the indigenous peasant population, which is found in those sectors, would not be so affected by external increases”.

According to data from the Environmental Advocacy Center of Panama, 17% of the economically active population of that country works in that area, “meaning that what would be implemented is to increase the agricultural production that already exists there, where biodiversity is low , but the livestock and agricultural activity is already taking place, which is what sustains the ways of life in most of the provinces of what here in Panama is called the interior of the Republic, the primary sector,” explains González.

The shades of Panama, seen from space, vary and divide the country: a jungle green towards the Caribbean and a crop green stands out towards the Pacific, the region where agriculture should be encouraged.