The new World Food Center at the University of California, Davis, is sponsoring a free public seminar this Friday, April 11, on climate change and food production.

“Technologies and Priorities for Adaptation to Climate Change: From California to Global Food Security” is scheduled from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s King Lounge (second floor), on the Davis campus.

Coordinators said the speakers will discuss two recently completed reports from their respective organizations — reports that have vital implications for agricultural productivity during the coming decades.

* Mark Rosegrant, director of the Environment and Production Technologies Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute, will present findings of the institute’s new report that measures the impacts of agricultural innovation on farm productivity, prices, hunger and trade flows as the world approaches the year 2050.  The report also identifies practices that could significantly benefit developing nations.

* Amrith Gunasekara, science adviser to Secretary Karen Ross of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, will present the state-commissioned Climate Change Consortium for Specialty Crops report, intended to identify known challenges and unpredictable changes that specialty-crop growers will increasingly confront due to climate change.

The specialty crops consortium found that agriculture’s preparedness for and adaptation to climate-change events will ultimately depend on farmers’ access to agricultural support services and scientific answers to fundamental climate-change impact questions, as well as access to resources and technological innovations. The consortium also has identified how state agencies, including the Department of Food and Agriculture, can help the agricultural sector shore up its capacity for adaption to climate change.