A major international conference held at the end of March, Planet under Pressure, focused on solutions to the global sustainability challenge.

First, we need to recognise a shared vision of what a truly sustainable world will look like, and to do that, we need to cooperate across disciplines and with a wide variety of stakeholders.

After all, how can you develop a strategy for action without a vision?

So a diverse group of organisations – the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the British Council, CAFOD, Comic Relief, InsightShare, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Sainsbury’s – came together to present three sessions, with contributions from leading figures in science, politics, industry, civil society and the arts.

UKCDS works with UK government and funders to maximise the impact of UK research on international development. Planning for the three sessions that UKCDS helped run, we started from the premise that even the best science will not be sufficient to tackle the challenges, including food security, posed by climate change.

Science alone is not the answer

According to the State of the Planet Declaration (PDF), issued by the Planet under Pressure scientific organising committee, ‘interconnected issues require interconnected solutions’. This might seem like an uncontroversial point, but getting different disciplines to genuinely listen to one another is not easy.  Multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to addressing grand challenges such as climate change are essential. But institutional structures and nationalistic funding streams can create artificial divisions not only between disciplines and sectors, but also between countries.

Our role at UKCDS is to challenge funders to think and do differently by finding innovative ways to fund truly collaborative approaches that include stakeholders from around the world, especially from developing countries.

So ably chaired by BBC Radio 4’s Quentin Cooper, our sessions challenged convention and explored how science, the arts, the private sector, civil society and the world of politics could better work together towards a common vision of sustainability.

The debate around food security is a useful entry point to these kinds of questions. Speaking in last of our three sessions, our chair and Defra Chief Scientist, Sir Bob Watson said that we have “lost the connection between the food we consume and where it comes from; people need to not only think about their health in relation to diet, but also its impact on the environment.”

With the UK importing much of the food we find in our supermarkets (often from low and middle income countries) there are multiple environmental impacts that need to be visible, accounted for and understood. These range from the local, such as livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystem services, to the global, including greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change.

The Global Food Security (GFS) programme has already started to address some of these issues. GFS Champion and fellow GFS blog contributor Tim Benton is leading a comprehensive and integrated approach to understanding how climate change will influence food security both in the UK and in vulnerable developing countries in the future.

Tim and I met at Planet under Pressure with Simon Cook, the new Director of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research Programme 5 (CRP5) on Water, Land and Ecosystems. Simon is based at the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka and we have invited him to the UK in June to discuss potential linkages with UK research institutes. Their key challenge is intensifying agriculture to increase food security whilst using natural resources carefully and minimising harm to ecosystems.

Bringing it together

Planet under Pressure inspired us to convene a meeting last month of all the leaders and champions of the cross-research council and government research programmes: Global Food Security, Living with Environmental Change, Global Uncertainties, UK Water Research and Innovation Partnership and us at UKCDS. We agreed that all these initiatives should begin to work together, recognising that the connections between topics are critical, as is a comprehensive systems approach. The added value of sharing knowledge, methodologies, resources and stakeholder networks will only strengthen the value of scientific evidence, and this will then inform and improve policy and practice.

So we’ve been taking activities forward as the BRAVE collaboration – Big Radical Approaches towards a Vision for the Earth. Follow us on Twitter (@bravecollab) to keep in touch with our plans and watch the participatory films shown at the conference. We also worked with InsightShare to produce some fantastic short films. They were shot by participatory video hubs in Bangladesh, India, South Africa and Ethiopia to reflect visions of sustainability from the global south.

They are a great resource for sparking ideas and discussion around sustainability issues, and we’d love them to be used widely (as long as we’re credited), so please do take a look.

About Andrée Carter

A soil scientist by training, Andrée has been Director of the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS) since 2007. UKCDS works with UK government and funders to maximise the impact of UK research on international development by improving coordination, strengthening capacity and championing best practice. Follow UKCDS on Twitter (@ukcds) to keep up to date with the latest development sciences research opportunities, including funding, jobs, events and news.

I’ve just got back from a five month stay in Brazil as a UK scientist working as part of the Embrapa Labex programme. Labex entails two main activities:  a research project in collaboration with colleagues in the host organisation, and networking with potential research partners to identify joint research opportunities of strategic importance to both countries.

So, contrary to suggestions that I spent most of my time playing beach volleyball, cavorting with revellers at the Rio Carnaval, or communing with indigenous tribes in remote reaches of the Amazon, I was in fact either in a lab coat at Embrapa Biotechnology and Genetic Resources (Cenargen) in Brasilia, or touring other Embrapa centres, research institutes, or universities across Brazil.

If one includes an earlier pre-visit, I have in the past nine months been to 13 of the 47 Embrapa centres, four universities, and several state-funded institutes (see my previous blog post for more). It was a demanding but constantly fascinating experience, and one that I hope exemplifies the increasingly close links between UK and Brazilian scientists in research in agriculture, biotechnology and the related life sciences.

New frontiers in food security

Brazil is now seen as a country at the frontline of the global quest for food security, renewable energy, and solutions for climate change and other environmental challenges. This is not surprising given their vast reserves of land and other natural resources, and experience in improving the productivity of tropical agriculture. For these challenges to be met the game needs to be raised everywhere, but especially in the tropics.

And Brazil has another priceless resource – a new generation of young, well-trained scientists, many of whom see a career in agricultural research as a good option. The Brazilian government has rightly recognised that investment in science and technology is a key driver of economic growth, and is putting in place schemes to support education and training in STEM subjects. The recently launched Science without Borders programme is now placing large numbers of students in universities and partner organisations abroad; 10,000 of them in the UK alone.

One advantage of spending a significant period of time in a different institution abroad is that people stop treating you as a guest and start to engage you as a colleague. One begins to discover the real issues concerning individuals and also the organisation itself.  Embrapa has a high  profile in government and an enviable reputation based on its demonstrable contribution to the booming Brazilian agricultural economy.

The introduction of superior genotypes of crops and livestock, better soil management, no till rotations, improved inoculants for biological nitrogen fixation, and the integration of crop, forest and animal production systems are all examples where Embrapa science has had significant impact. Any UK research organisation would, I am sure, give their right arm to be able to showcase a comparable portfolio of practical achievement.

Food for the future

But like all organisations, Embrapa is evolving, and adapting to new pressures, both academic and commercial. How can one ensure that an increasingly large and diverse organisation still shares a common mission? How does one achieve the right mix of scientific innovation and practical delivery to the industry? Many of the new generation of Brazilian scientists are trained in elite universities where impact is measured in terms of journal citations and other metrics not directly related to practical application. Back home they now face the same pressures as elsewhere to win competitive funds to support their research and progress their careers. Predominantly academic criteria are used to assess their performance. Unsurprisingly, the status of both individuals and institutions is increasingly judged by the same yardstick.

Does this trend matter? Isn’t this simply a healthy sign that Brazilian science is now joining the world premier league? Perhaps. But for organisations like Embrapa there is an obvious tension.

One of the centre directors that I met was candid in his view that research programmes now risked becoming detached from the core business of farming and land management. It is a dilemma that will be familiar to agricultural scientists everywhere. The Royal Society 2009 report Reaping the Benefits itself concluded that agricultural extension services should be a key component of any strategy to ensure that science is appropriately developed and targeted. There is a perceived shortage of scientists with these skills, and maybe a lack of incentives to develop them.

Intelligent innovation

For me the two sides of the debate were neatly exemplified by research projects in progress on my doorstep in Brasilia. In one, at Cenargen, fundamental studies on plant transformation have recently lead to the development of virus-resistant beans that are now registered for commercial use. They will be of particular value to small family farmers.

And the other, just up the road at Embrapa Cerrados, they have shown that you can produce high quality coffee under savannah conditions simply by careful timing of irrigation. This not only helps the trees survive the dry season, but synchronises flowering so that berries mature at the same time. Prior to this demonstration, no one really believed you could produce good coffee on the Cerrado.

So you need both high-tech and low-tech solutions to different agricultural problems.  Meeting the challenge of food and energy security will require geneticists, biotechnologists and soil scientists to team up with agronomists,ecologists and engineers to boost sustainable production. Organisations like Embrapa embody this idea, and it is vital to stay connected.

I am grateful for being given the opportunity to experience this from the inside.  My UK Inverse Labex placement was sponsored by BBSRC and Rothamsted Research. I also thank the many Embrapa colleagues, too numerous to list, who helped me during my stay.

About John Lucas

Professor John Lucas is Head of the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at Rothamsted Research. He works on plant pathogenic fungi and infection processes on host plants. He is also interested in mechanisms of pathogen variation and evolution in response to changes in host populations and use of fungicides. He is currently working in Brazil as part of the Embrapa Labex programme with the UK, supported by BBSRC and Rothamsted.

Scotland’s main food-related policies, the national Food & Drink policy Recipe for Success and the Prevention of Obesity Route Map, both recognise the important role that scientific research plays in achieving the Scottish Government’s policy goals.

They are supported by evidence produced by the Scottish science base for rural and environment research, the main pillars of which are two, five-year Strategic Research Programmes (SRPs) commissioned by the Scottish Government, which started in April 2011. The two SRPs are almost entirely carried out by the group of research organisations known as the Main Research Providers (MRPs), the activities of which are discussed in more detail below.

Making connections

The objectives of the Scottish Government’s two SRPs are primarily focused on outputs and outcomes relevant to local policy makers and stakeholders in Scotland, such as evidence on food supply and demand in Scotland and improvements in the diet of the Scottish population.

However, there are many ways in which they link to national food security issues and then add to the wider, globally relevant evidence base.

The Food, Land & People programme forms an important part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to the UK’s Global Food Security (GFS) Programme and is relevant to all four of the GFS themes. It includes work on food production and supply, animal and plant health, diet and human health, and rural communities.

The second SRP, Environmental Change, is roughly aligned with the UK’s Living with Environmental Change, and covers important food security related areas such as ecosystem services, water and energy security, climate change, land use, and the rural economy.

Global relevance

The wider contribution of research in Scotland to global food security will become clearer as both the Scottish Government’s SRPs and the UK’s GFS Programme progress. However, there are already examples of how Scotland’s researchers will make a difference.

Analyses carried out by socio-economists at the Scottish Agricultural College as part of the Food, Land & People programme, for instance, aim to assess food supply chain resilience, efficiency and sustainability and will yield advice on measurement of these attributes which should be of interest to anyone around the world involved in food supply, from farmers, processors, retailers to consumers.

Meanwhile, the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health at the University of Aberdeen is investigating aspects of the relationship between human behaviour, such as food choice or exercise, and nutritional health, the impact of which will also go well beyond Scotland.

Long-term strategic funding from the Scottish Government also provides its MRPs with a platform for additional activities that are more directly related to food security in developing countries, such as work on diseases and parasites of livestock in India by the Moredun Research Institute, and on potato production in Kenya and Malawi by The James Hutton Institute (JHI).

Iain Gordon, JHI Director, described some of the challenges facing the relatively new institute in his blog post.

A wide embrace

The research centres described are all also very active in training students and scientists from around the world at their state-of-the-art facilities in Scotland.

Effective knowledge exchange, I believe, greatly defines the ultimate success of any research programme. Two-way communication with a wide range of end-user groups forms an integral part of the Scottish Government’s SRPs.

From my regular discussions with Scotland’s researchers, it is clear that they are keen for their outputs to have a wide impact and are working hard to make a useful contribution towards evidence-based solutions to the global food security challenge.

About Pieter van de Graaf

Dr Pieter van de Graaf is the Scientific Adviser for Food & Crops at the Scottish Government and his main role is to advise Scottish ministers and policy makers on relevant science matters and to coordinate food, nutrition and crop related research funded by the SG. He previously worked as plant pathologist at SCRI (now The James Hutton Institute) and SASA.

The fundamental reasons why people face food insecurity are not mainly the scientific and technical.

As a Food Ethics Council Food and Fairness inquiry concluded, the problems we face cannot simply be solved from within a food system perspective but are rooted in institutional features of how the world works today. Within existing frameworks, technological innovation alone will not deliver the kind of change needed to achieve a well-fed world, sustainably and equitably.

Which direction?

Food is at the heart of the four key challenges for humans this century:

• Climate change
• The continued marginalisation of the poorest
• Growing competition over resources
• Continuing high levels of militarization

Meeting these challenges is very much a question of creating a future. Assuming we avoid collapse, there are two main approaches.

One approach assumes we humans have the creative capacity to invent our way out of the problems we have created, through technological innovation under the dominant economic orthodoxy, largely run, managed and controlled by corporate enterprises and in which demand is somehow external to the system. This, essentially, is what the EC’s Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) 3rd Foresight report calls the ‘productivity narrative’.

The other approach they call the ‘sufficiency narrative’. This is a world which is built around agro-ecological principles and cyclical mechanisms across the food system, with respect for and building upon biodiversity. This gives the strength and resilience needed to maintain not just food and farming systems but long-term sustainable societies, in which equity and justice are fundamental. 

Unfortunately, as Paul Rogers from the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford argues, the direction we are heading in is a variation of the productivity narrative but one in which the richest 1.5-2Bn  people in the world extend their lives and lifestyles by every means possible. They assume that any unforeseen or adverse consequences will be suffered by the bottom billions and/or that those with power will be able to keep ‘the lid’ on the problems and discontent this generates. I think this approach, which Rogers dubs ‘Liddism’, is likely to lead to collapse of various kinds.

Innovative innovation

When thinking about where research and development (R&D) money should be put, we must think about innovation much more imaginatively, and more broadly, than it being primarily about science and technology. We require innovation across a wide range of legal, social, cultural, economic, as well as scientific and technological areas. It is the view elaborated in SCAR’s sufficiency narrative and elsewhere that should direct our efforts.

This future is built on a vision of sustainable development that understands Prosperity Without Growth, as Tim Jackson argues in his book and report for the Sustainable Development Commission.

And as Chandran Nair notes in his book Consumptionomics, in the end what the UK, Europe or the US decide to do is far less significant than what China and India do in creating their future. To follow the West’s production and consumption patterns will surely bring collapse and conflict.

Yet in some ways they are in a better position to change. They have considerable rural populations still. If their lives are made better and their productive capacity enhanced, then feeding 9Bn or so will, while not easy, be eminently possible. But it will require both the social and physical sciences to support changes in paradigms and practises.

New ecological transformation

One challenge is to rewrite the rules of technological and scientific innovation around a new economics that is based on ecological principles rather than neoclassical or neo-liberal ones. We also need innovation around business models that are not based on continuous growth and expansion of markets and products.

In Europe, we too need much research on ecological intensification within an ecological economy, rather than so-called sustainable intensification in a neo-liberal, market-based economy. This is the key issue in interpreting the meaning of ‘bioeconomy’, the current EU buzz word, as discussed in What Bio-Economy for Europe?.

 Within the EU there are huge challenges to achieve a common sustainable food policy. Internationally, there are competing interests and a need to support and build upon the recently reformed FAO Committee on Food Security, which now has full participation from civil society.

A real sustainable security agenda, of which food is a part, requires wide ranging R&D that will link sustainable production systems and equitable and sustainable consumption patterns, including:

• Developing farming systems that move away from the current intensive fossil fuel based farming models
• Examining the determinants of unsustainable and unhealthy eating patterns, including the use and power of the advertising industry, and restructuring the taxation system and the reward systems of people as consumers, producers and researchers themselves

We also need R&D on reframing the laws, rules, regulations and incentives that currently produce perverse outcomes, including:

• Rules on the monopoly/exclusionary privilege or ‘intellectual property’  system, as discussed in a book I co-authored, The Future Control of Food
• The rules and regulations on commodity trading, the financial system and corporations
• Finding better ways of managing food supplies than the commodity trading system

Yes, this is a daunting, wide-ranging and challenging agenda. But both the UK and the EU, through Horizon 2020, are well-placed placed to support it, if there is the vision and will to do so.

About Geoff Tansey

Geoff Tansey has worked on food, agriculture and development issues for over 35 years. He has degrees in soil science (University of Aberdeen) and the history and social studies of science (University of Sussex). He helped found and edit the journal Food Policy in the mid-1970s, has worked on various agricultural development projects in Turkey, Mongolia, Albania and Kazakhstan. Since the early 1980s, he has been an independent writer, consultant, and occasional broadcaster. In June 2005, he received one of six Joseph Rowntree ‘Visionaries for a Just and Peaceful World’ Awards. He is a member and a director of The Food Ethics Council.

In the midst of a perpetual population boom and conscious awareness of the limited and diminishing resources such as land, fertilizers and water availability, how will governments, organizations and people respond? And how should they respond? 

Significant effort has been dedicated at increasing agricultural productivity. But is it time to focus more on protetcing these gains from post-harvest losses?

The ‘green revolution‘ was a force of change in the 1960s and 1970s, and it highlighted the effect of the tremendous amount of effort exerted in breeding higher yielding, pest-resistant plant varieties. But too much of this food is spoiled or wasted in the journey from field to plate.

Down the drain

FAO statistics show world food production in 2010 (the latest figures available at time of writing) as 2432 million tonnes of cereals and 1574 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables combined. It is undisputable that world food production is sufficient to feed the entire world population. So where does all the food go?

Although statistics on food losses are generalized, it has been repeatedly estimated that almost one third (PDF) of the global food produced for human consumption is wasted. These figures includes pests and pathogens in the field, but I want to focus on losses in handling and storage that result from deterioration between harvest and distribution at market.

Developed and developing countries encounter similar losses, albeit for different reasons. In developing countries these losses are mainly attributed to technical and financial limitations that leave fruits and vegetable susceptible to physical damage and decay. Tropical fruits face numerous challenges during transportation and storage such as chilling injury, rapid maturation at ambient temperatures, fungal infection under moist environments and so forth. These are all results of inefficiencies in the food delivery system.

Postharvest technologies have been utilised by both growers and distributers to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Such technologies include modified atmosphere packaging or edible coatings which delay ripening through interplay of gaseous exchange and controlled product respiration.

One of my key research topics at the University of Nottingham has been the application of edible coatings on tropical and sub-tropical fruits. Gum arabic, chitosan and propolis (all natural chemicals) applied as composite coatings have been shown to be effective in extending the shelf life of produce and inhibiting microbial growth. Watch a video about my research here. 

Fruit cocktail

Malaysia, a typical tropical country, is endowed with a wealth of exotic fruits. These fruits, such as papaya and mangosteen, boast a range of beneficial nutritional and medicinal properties due to their high antioxidant content. The nutritional importance of diverse diets in combating degenerative diseases has been repeatedly highlighted, and such exotic fruits can play an important role in such diets.

However, plantations of such fruits in Malaysia are often poorly organised with minimal technologies available for pre-harvest and post-harvest treatments. Consequently, losses are substantial, and occur at the early stages of food production; within Southeast Asia (PDF) these postharvest losses are estimated at 20-50% (PDF).

There is an urgent need to quantify postharvest losses and to diagnose the causes. It may take little investment to minimise some of these losses, for example by managing cold chain or prompt delivery of harvested produce, but I believe  it will be money well spent.

Minimising postharvest losses of perishable produce will offset some of the need to expand areas of production and will increase food availability. Technologies that are currently available – and those that are in development – can provide solutions to existing problems in postharvest handling, if applied at the appropriate stage in the food supply chain.

About Asgar Ali

Dr Asgar Ali is an Associate Professor and Director of Centre of Excellence for Post-harvest Biotechnology (CEPB) at The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC). He is an expert in postharvest biology and technology and currently focusing on develop novel technologies which aimed at reducing food losses, improving overall quality and food safety of horticultural produce. He is involved in many government and industrial research projects to develop novel edible coatings based on natural products such as gum arabic, chitosan and propolis to control pre- and postharvest diseases and provide foods free from synthetic fungicides and pesticides residues. He is also working on Cerafusion technology to control postharvest anthracnose of tropical fruits and vegetables, and also to maintain postharvest quality, phytochemicals and antioxidants during storage.

In the UK there has been an intellectual battle to make the case for more food-related research. Though the increasing global population (9Bn by 2050) will need more food, the third of global food wasted, problems of western obesity and overeating, and well-stocked supermarkets – combined with stark imagery of European wine lakes and butter mountains from the 1980s – have made it an uphill task to persuade a sceptical western society we need more food, let alone more food research.

Sir John Beddington in 2009 found one way to get over this hurdle, the now well-rehearsed ‘perfect storm’ scenario.  By bringing in parallel uncertainties over future energy and water supplies, and the potential disruption they will cause, food is now placed up front as one of the everyday necessities that might be adversely affected by population growth, climate change and other factors.

Potentially, the perfect storm has become “more perfect”: extreme weather events, political instabilities, speculative commodities trading and food price inflation have all persuaded governments to push food higher up the agenda.

However, one key aspect of food research has changed. We no longer consider food yields in isolation from their wider social and environmental context. We now talk about ‘sustainable intensification’ and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture, or to capture the UK research funders’ modus operandi: we need more sustainable, healthier, affordable and safer food.

Defining the problem

We have accepted the bigger picture, and the need for a more joined-up approach to food, so what’s the issue? In a nutshell, the increasing complexity and breadth of the problem makes it increasingly difficult for funders to address. Research is generally focused on a single problem – a project proposal is made with a clearly-defined objective, and an outcome that is deliverable on a relatively short timescale.

The crux of the issue for science-funding organisations is researchers’ “habit” of submitting proposals in £450,000 chunks – the size of a typical grant awarded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) where I work. This provides a manageable scale of activity to review, avoids too many arguments with collaborators, and prevents peer reviewers arguing over the necessity for the odd extra post-doc.

However, this does present significant delivery challenges for funders trying to address food research in a more joined-up way. Not least, this unintended ‘salami-slicing’ approach requires the linking and coordination of all of the funded activities. But industry and policymakers struggle to engage with a large and diverse portfolio of research, and this pattern of funding does not lend itself to multidisciplinary and cross-funder collaboration.

The alternative? BBSRC, amongst other funders, has been encouraging a broader multidisciplinary approach to food security and other ‘grand challenges’, for example, through its strategic longer, larger grants scheme. BBSRC also supports major, integrated programmes of research through its strategic funding of research institutes.

But we are challenged that this does not go far enough. Though I suggest the alternatives may not be palatable either. In my past life as a researcher, I remember the long nights and constant battles of developing consortium grants, when one UK funder did, bravely, try to change the status quo by adopting a large-scale funding model – only to have to bring back a smaller scale responsive system by popular demand.

A way forward

The solution? We need to be cleverer without being revolutionary.  ‘The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture’ paper by Pretty et al, previously digested on this blog, identifies a number of major challenges that need to be addressed. Pragmatism tells us the answers will need to come from numerous projects involving many researchers across the world – the challenge for funders will be in joining up those activities.

I would suggest this requires two factors. First, funders need to work together and develop programmes in partnership, or in parallel. Second, funding mechanisms need to encourage multidisciplinary approaches to the problems.

The Global Food Security Programme is an example of where the UK is trying to achieve this, not necessarily by funding new research programmes, but by providing mechanisms to enhance and expand partnership working between funders. A good example is the joint call between BBSRC and DFID in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Indian Government – Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development (SCPRID).

Is this enough? I’ll let others comment, but suggest we want neither endless workshops to join up many small pieces, nor a food research environment in which all the money goes en masse to just a very small number of institutions.

Maybe we just need to be more creative in the middle space between the two extremes?

About Adam Staines

Adam is the Strategy Programme Manager for Agri-Food at BBSRC which includes responsibilities across the food-chain. In addition to working on BBSRC’s strategic delivery of food security and its contribution to the Global Food Security programme, Adam works with colleagues in Go-Science and across government to better coordinate the UK Government’s food research and innovation strategy. Prior to working at BBSRC, Adam was a researcher in a number of areas including drug and nutrient metabolism, structural-based drug design, and bacterial manipulation for industrial biotech applications; holding posts at The University of Edinburgh, The University of St-Andrews and the University of Dundee at Ninewells Hospital.

It was great to be invited to join in a fascinating discussion on ‘Navigating the ‘Perfect Storm’: the international challenge of food, water and energy security’ at the Royal Geographical Society supported by WWF last Thursday, 9 February.

Much of the discussion centred on the prospects of progress at the UN’s Rio +20 Summit on sustainable development that will be held in this summer. 

Opinions ranged from the highly optimistic through to the severely pessimistic, but what struck me most was the difference that this reflected in people’s expectations of what could be achieved. Given the complexity of the issues, I think it is unreasonable to expect a binding legal agreement and even if such an agreement could be reached I doubt whether it can be enforced.   

The importance of Rio +20 is that it keeps the conversation around ensuring a sustainable healthy safe food supply for the world’s population right at the top of the agenda. It also sets high level aspirational targets which help to assure that our collective efforts act in concert to address this societal challenge. 

The results of this are plain to see in the recognition that food, energy and water scarcity come together to present us with some enormous challenges. The agricultural sciences, which have been neglected for several decades, are now a high priority.

Positivism vs pessimism

This is not to suggest that we adopt a “let’s not expect much and we won’t be disappointed” approach. Summits of this sort cost huge amounts and we have a right to expect a return. What we should expect, however, is that the targets and aspirations that are set at this meeting lead to more focused efforts at tackling our societal challenges. 

For this reason I was particularly troubled to hear the suggestion from one member of the audience that, as a UN conference, we could only expect a disjointed and possibly distorted outcome. In support of this remark the example of WHO dietary guidelines were highlighted, and in particular the inconsistency of recommending that we should all consume two portions of fish per week and ensuring that our marine fisheries are sustainable.

Dietary guidelines are a good thing; they save people’s lives, but they are an aspiration. They are also a population guideline and not an individual recommendation. Nobody expects every individual to adhere rigidly to them, but if we are able to move population consumption in the direction of the guidelines lives will be saved.

Armed with reasonable expectations, I am a Rio +20 optimist therefore. I expect us to renew our collective recognition that we face some significant resource challenges as a result of a growing population. I expect us to ensure that these challenges remain at the focus of our science agendas and I am also optimistic that with this renewal we will be able to produce enough food sustainably for 9 billion people in 2050.

I would also like to see us recognising that producing sufficient food is only part of the challenge.  Dietary quality and the delivery of food are worthy of greater attention. The 9 billion will be wealthier and more urbanised than present populations. As people become wealthier and more urbanised, diet-related chronic disease tends to increase and there is some danger that in our concern to produce enough we risk overlooking this time bomb.

About Richard Tiffin

Richard is Director of the Centre for Food Security at the University of Reading. The centre capitalises on Reading’s existing reputation in the agri-food sector by fostering internal and external collaborations to meet the multidisciplinary food security agenda.  He has also held posts at the Universities of Newcastle and Durham. He is trained as an applied econometrician and his current research is focused on diet and health policy. Recent work has examined the impacts of alternative food policies on land use in the UK and the impacts of a ‘fat tax’ on health in the UK; current research includes modelling the distributional impacts of a such tax.

Agriculture plays a major role in Pakistan’s economy; it accounts for 21% of GDP and 45% of the workforce is employed in agriculture. But agriculture in Pakistan faces numerous difficulties and despite its importance to the country, food security is not guaranteed for significant portions of the country.

Pakistan’s population in 2011 was 177 million – the sixth largest in the world – and is predicted to reach 191.7 million by 2015. Yet the agriculture sector has been suffering from decline for the past three decades. Productivity remains low; yields per unit area are low, and critical investments in developing new plant varieties, farming technology and water infrastructure are not being made.

Without major new investments in agriculture, it is not clear how Pakistan would tackle emerging challenges such as declining water availability, regional climate change, water logging and increasing salinity.

Pakistan’s problems

Food price inflation in Pakistan has averaged 18% for the last four years while the purchasing power of the poor people has deteriorated significantly.

At the same time, since 2007 the average retail sale prices of Urea, NP and and DAP fertilizers have increased by 293%, 322%, and 289%, respectively. Hence, use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers has decreased by up to 19%, mainly due to international and local market forces. The main factors in the local market for price increase were a 20% gas curtailment to fertilizer industry, and levying of 17% GST (general sale tax) on fertilizer. The use of fertilizer by small and poor farmers is therefore patchy and further decreases food crop yields.

Pakistan’s problems are also exacerbated by natural disasters. In 2010-2011, 21% of the rice area was reduced due to flood damage and rice production was cut by almost a third. Floods in the Sindh province in 2011 then reduced the wheat crop area by 20%.

R&D, past and present

A strong national agricultural research system is necessary to increase and sustain food production. In Pakistan, national agricultural research system consists of the Federal Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), as well as provincial research institutes and agricultural universities.

PARC aims to conduct, support coordinate and promote agricultural research throughout Pakistan. PARC introduced National Coordinated Research Programmes (NCRP) in 1976 on various crops, such as wheat and sugar, to strengthen research capabilities. NCRPs were proven to be very effective at increasing productivity by releasing a significant number of high yielding crops and production technologies. Until the 1980s, PARC implemented 33 NCRPs on major commodities and disciplines in close collaboration with provincial institutions.

But in 2009, due to lack of funding, all NCRPs were terminated.

The human resource

PARC trained more than 450 scientists to MSc and PhD level until 2006. But the total number of research staff dropped by more than 20% in 2003 compared to 1990s. Many trained senior scientists are retired, and current researchers face limited promotion opportunities, low salary levels and few other incentives. This has led to brain drain of researchers from the government institutions to universities, non-research agencies, or to opportunities outside Pakistan.

As a result, both federal and provincial institutions are suffering from lack of qualified research personnel and programme leadership has weakened. Strengthening the agricultural research system is one of the most important development strategies in Pakistan, but due to lack of funding, staff and overall vision, the system has weakened over the past 35 years.  

Increasing yield

Due to urbanization, declining water resources, climate change, and soil degradation by erosion and salinisation, it is difficult to expand the area available for crop production. Hence, the only solution is crop intensification to increase yield per unit area.

But there exists a wide gap between potential yield level and yield level in the farmer’s field. For example, the average yield of basmati rice is 3.2 t/ha while the potential yield is 6.2 t/ha. Similarly the average yield of rice variety IRR6 is 6.0 t/ha and potential yield is 10 t/ha.

But improvement is possible with the correct approach and technology. We conducted rice agronomic trials such as fertilizer placement methods, fertilizer doses, planting date, plant population per unit area, pest and disease control, water management, weed control, etc. with the participation of farmers for three years in the Punjab and Sindh provinces. A technology package was developed and demonstrated on 10,000 acres in 12 villages in Punjab province.

We were able to increase yield/ha of basmati rice by 59% and IRR6 rice by 106%. This indicates that yield/ha can be increased by launching productivity enhancement programmes, such as the NCRPs. Salient feature of the programs were: production technology, supply of inputs, mass media campaign, credit, participation of farmers, extension and research departments, and effective local administration.

My research experience in Pakistan and at the International Rice Research Institute shows that saline soils can be brought under rice cultivation by developing salt-tolerant rice varieties because the necessary variability exists in the rice germplasm.

Tackling the problem

The food security situation in Pakistanis is facing a big challenge. Agricultural growth rates of 5-6% are required to reduce poverty in the country. But the agricultural sector’s performance for the last three decade has been declining; productivity and yields per hectare are low; and the rising price of fertilizers and other inputs may further reduce production.

Furthermore, coordination between local and international agencies is weak, and funding for research is inadequate. Institutions responsible for generating technologies and dissemination have weakened over the last 35 years.

The situation is alarming. The agricultural sector needs the immediate attention of the Pakistan Government. Heavy investments are needed to improve the sector productivity, and at present, I believe the best way is by launching major productivity programmes.

About Muhammad Akbar

Dr Muhammad Akbar obtained PhD in Plant Breeding and Genetics from Japan in 1973. He has 30 years experience in rice research and development. He has published 60 papers on rice research, production, yield constraints, packages of technology for rice production, post-harvest rice processing, and on linkages between researchers and farmers to increase rice production. He worked at IRRI, Philippines, as senior scientist for 9 years. He has served as a Principal scientist, Director General, and Chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Islamabad. He was member of the Pakistan Cabinet Committee, 1993; and also on the Academic Council of the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.

I am co-author of a new paper – What next for agriculture after Durban? – published in the journal Science. Here are some thoughts from the article and the conference itself.

The 17th conference of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended two days late on 11 December 2011. The extra time was used by governments to agree the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (PDF).

The ’Durban Platform’ is simply an agreement to reach a new agreement by 2015 that would reduce emissions and put the world on track to limit global warming by two degrees and come into effect in 2020.

While this is welcome, as was progress in the Green Climate Fund (see footnote 1) and REDD+ initiative to reduce deforestation, much remains to be done to agree who cuts by how much and when, and then for 190-plus countries to agree this including the two largest global emitters – the United States and China.

Unfortunately, decisions on the specifics for agriculture and global food security did not live up to expectations.

Why was progress on agriculture and food security limited?

An agreement was reached on agriculture (see footnote 2) but this used vague, non-committal terms like ’exchange of views‘, ’to consider‘, ’with a view to‘, and ’to look at‘. This means that while agriculture is on the UNFCCC agenda there is no commitment to do anything about it.

Why wasn’t there more progress on agriculture and food security? It wasn’t because there hadn’t been a focus on agriculture and climate change in 2011. There had in fact been numerous meetings and reports. For example the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, chaired by Professor Sir John Beddington, released a summary of its findings calling for urgent action. African agriculture ministers also issued a unified call for action (PDF) ahead of Durban. Scientists called for action at Wageningen conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture. UN agencies sent a common letter to UNFCCC asking the inclusion of agriculture.

In Durban, Kofi Anan (former UN Secretary-General), Mary Robertson (former President of Ireland), Jacob Zuma (President of South Africa), Meles Zenawi (Prime Minister of Ethiopia) and many other senior figures called for action on agriculture. Caroline Spelman, the Defra Secretary of State highlighted the importance of ‘climate smart agriculture‘ for all countries, including the UK, and again called for a work program on agriculture. (Robin Sanders also wrote about the need for climate smart agriculture in Africa on this blog.)

There’s a way – where’s the will?

Five hundred and ninety people attended the third Agriculture and Rural Development Day on 3 December. This looked at how to scale up successful examples of climate smart agriculture that:

• Delivers sufficient food, fibre, fuel and incomes
• Sustains the health of the land and increases productivity
• Does not degrade forests or biodiversity
• Sequesters carbon
• Reduces net agriculture and food greenhouse-gas emissions

So in Durban there was political support, compelling evidence on the need for action, and successful examples of investment in agriculture achieving multiple wins.

But progress was slow due to the political economy of UNFCCC negotiations. This is complex but in brief there are five issues:

• For some countries agriculture is more important in their economies than others, and it becomes a bargaining chip in the negotiations for those where it is less important or those that want a concession in another area
• Others are concerned that including agriculture may lead to trade barriers to agriculture exports, and/or trading in agriculture carbon which will only benefit rich farmers and not the millions of smallholder farmer
• Agriculture is seen as  too complex with limited awareness of  existing solutions that can be scaled up under UNFCCC  to achieve adaptation, mitigation, livelihood and economic benefits
• Forestry stakeholders worry that funding for forestry may be diverted to agriculture
• A bureaucratic hurdle – agriculture cuts across the two negotiating streams, one on adaptation and the other on mitigation, but it doesn’t work as it needs to do both causing.

I also believe there is sixth issue closer to home.

This is our failure as scientists that, while we have compelling evidence for urgent action on agriculture to achieve global food security, we need to do better at communicate this evidence to policy makers and the public.

We need a better understanding of the political economy surrounding policy decisions at the global, regional and national levels, and to do better at translating and communicating our research to influence policy.

If we don’t then many of the 1Bn people who will join us by 2025, 500M of them in Africa, will end up poor, hungry, and at greater risk from climate change.

Footnotes

1. Green Climate Fund – report of the Transitional Committee. FCCC/CP/2011/L.9. http://unfccc.int/2860.php
2. Paras 68 to 71 in Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session. FCCC/AWGLCA/2011/L.4 – http://unfccc.int/2860.php

About David Howlett

At the time of writing, David Howlett was the Executive Director of Africa College and a visiting senior research fellow in climate change and agriculture at the University of Leeds. He has now returned to the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) where he is working on climate change adaptation. At Leeds he worked with research scientists across different faculties and with African research partners to increase the impact of their research including using their results to produce evidence to inform agriculture and climate change policies.

It’s been more than two years now since the Global Food Security (GFS) website, and this blog, was launched.

This short post I hope will serve as a big ‘thank you’ to everyone involved, highlight some of the content we have published during this time, and most importantly flag some recent improvements, such as the new blog post ‘notification by email’ box to the right, and our Twitter feed: @FoodSecurityUK.

This website covers a broad range of views, opinions and information from across the GFS programme, its Strategic Plan, as well as from partners and wider, global agricultural and food security-related disciplines.

Resource central

We’re pleased that since December 2009 this blog has published exclusive and original articles every fortnight written by a broad and talented community of people with an interest or professional stake in the issues – my hearty thanks from a grateful editor. (I’ve highlighted the wide range of our blog posts below).

There are, of course, other blogs about food security besides this one. Can you help us by letting us know of any that we could link to?

We already have a Resource Centre on this site that has a Bibliography of links to international and UK organisations, reports, as well as magazine special issues and statistics databases. If you publish or encounter similar material, please do let us know.

We’re particularly interested in highlighting other blogs, so if you enjoy other food security and agriculture-related blogs, let us know at web@foodsecurity.ac.uk and we’ll add them to the list of more than 20 we already have. (And if you also manage a similar resource, don’t forget to add us too.)

Evolution, not revolution

A minor revamp of the homepage and new content streams are in the pipeline.

With a few modifications we’ll be able to better highlight some of the content we’re adding to the site. A good example is the videos that are tucked away in some of the features that go up in the Current Research section, which is the place to go for more in-depth features and is one of the most regularly updated parts of the site.

We’ve added a video archive so you can see videos on everything from new world-class laboratories for animal virus research to field work on pollinating insects to targeting the next virus to eradicate after the successful eradication of rinderpest. But the new front page will highlight our latest videos, as well as further highlight our newest blog posts.

Partnerships

As mentioned, the Current Research section is home to articles about ongoing food security-related research. In each case, the research is funded by one or more of the GFS partners.

Hence, this section highlights research funded by all partners, such as NERC supporting examination of the damage caused by fish farms; DFID have been involved with helping farmers in Africa use insurance to safeguard their food security; EPSRC have pioneered e-Science digital technologies for remote farming communities; and there is also the ESRC-sponsored Food Climate Research Network, which is a great resource for investigating all matters related to climate change and food security.

Blogtastic

GFS partners have also contributed to the blog and we’d love to hear from new bloggers, not only from among our partners, but from within the academic community, and far beyond to farmers, food specialists and consumers. And of course, if you’ve already written for the GFS blog then we’d love to hear from you again.

If you have an idea for a blog post please send ideas to arran.frood@bbsrc.ac.uk and I’ll be more than happy to assist you if you’re new to blog posts – just think of it as an article in which you can use your personal opinions and experience a little more. The best posts often weave the author’s personal expertise with thoughts and feelings on a given topic, and backed up by a killer statistic or two.

Many food security blogs repost all sorts of articles, from features to press releases and interviews. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we want to make this blog one of the go-to websites for original, incisive articles that have more editorial vigour than perhaps some would expect on a corporate or academic platform.

We’ve had great posts on subjects as diverse as the need for alternatives to nitrogen fertilisers, the prospects of enhancing photosynthesis, the aquaculture debate, the potential of organic food, and the effects of commodity trading on food prices.

We’ve run reportage-style posts too, such as on the food crisis in West Africa, the Durban Climate Change Conference, G20 meetings, working for BBC Countryfile on ‘megafarms’, and research collaboration in Brazil by John Lucas.

I’m sure there aren’t that many sites that carry posts with a such a diversity of views from advocating GM technology alongside promoting organic systems, followed by a post by GFS Champion Tim Benton that argue that there is much more to the conventional vs organic debate.

And do bear in mind that we love comments on our blog posts. Don’t be shy! Have your say and let’s make this blog a fine forum for mature debate.

About Arran Frood

Arran Frood manages content for the Global Food Security website and is commission editor this blog in his role as Web Content Writer for BBSRC. The External Relations Unit of BBSRC delivers communications and public engagement for the Global Food Security programme on behalf of all the programme partners.

Frood has been working in science media since 2000. Prior to joining BBSRC, he was a full-time freelance science journalist and editor and has written for a variety of specialist and popular websites, books and magazines, including New Scientist, Nature and BBC Online, as well as newspapers such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.

From 2005-2007 he worked for the science journal Nature, first as Web Editor and then as Web Projects Editor; during the later position he created the History of the Journal Nature website.

Before working for Nature, he worked at the Science Photo Library which was his first science media job after graduating from Imperial College in 1996 with a BSc in Biology and in 1997 an MSc in Pest Management (applied entomology) from where his interest in all things agricultural stems.

Follow him on Twitter: @arranfrood