By the Caribbean Journal staff

Countries need to modify their food production to more sustainable systems to adapt to the potential impact of climate change, according to Jose Graziano da Silva, the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

That should be particularly true in the Caribbean, among the regions of the world most vulnerable to the potential impact of climate change.

“Everything we do needs to take climate change into consideration,” da Silva said. “The time is now. We cannot afford to wait.”

Da Silva was speaking at the seventh Forum on Agriculture, which was hosted in Menkes, Morocco.

After decades in which hunger was largely the result of the inability to purchase or produce food, climate change could shift the paradigm, he said, with the world’s poorest particularly vulnerable.

“Climate change has the potential to reconfigure the planet’s food production scenario,” he said. ““It cuts across a broad range of development priorities, including ending hunger, supporting sustainable production, reducing rural poverty, improving food markets and building resilience.”