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.

The recent Durban Climate Change Conference is a follow on from Cancun which did not move a lot of things forward on key environmental issues ranging from CO₂ emissions, carbon sequestration and credits), to land and water resource management.

The important fact that the conference is taking place on the African continent for the first time should not just boil down to its mere presence in Durban. But just like key sub-Saharan African economies are emerging, Africa’s emerging voice on climate change policy is vital to a number of future developmental areas, not least of which is food security – including all of its pillars from food production to improving the continent’s ability to feed itself and using renewables to spur better agricultural energy use.

However, do Africa’s agriculture, environment and energy ministers talk to each other? And why aren’t more agricultural ministers included in the climate change discussion and vice versa? This needs to happen, but it is not – at least not regularly or in a comprehensive manner.

Smart solutions

Most experts recognize that both food security and climate change are affecting the continent more than any other region of the world. The food security-climate change linkage for Africa hopefully will be heavily on the table in Durban as these symbiotic impact indicators need to be addressed together.

Food security specialists from development organizations and civil society organisations (CSOs) to policy makers need to build climate change solutions into their programmes. Africa climate change leaders and activists need not forget that the lack of progress on key environmental issues will continue to affect Africa’s progress to resolve its food security challenges.

What are some of links between food and energy production and innovative ways to address these links? There are a number of positives noted below, which need to be more broadly implemented with country-specific adaptation on top of the need to create more new solutions. Some of the smart linkages connecting the symbiotic relationship between food security and climate change include:

• Renewable energy options for water use, such as wind or solar-powered drip irrigation, including storage of power gained through battery innovative techniques like those being used by companies like AES in West Virginia
• Hybrid seeds that help crops withstand climate stresses such as drought, which can also lead to new usages for traditional crops such as protein-enhanced cassava (I have visited donor-supported agribusinesses in Kano, Nigeria, that adds cow peas to enhance protein in cassava flour)
• Localize agribusiness supply chains by using small farm holders or cooperative crops, reducing transport energy, and manufacturing costs
• Climate change-smart agricultural production, such as bio-char – the process of burning plant-based remnants and making charcoal that is then used as renewable fertilizer in places like Congo, and Benin’s Songhai Integrative Farms. The Congo project also obtains carbon credits on CO₂ emissions which also further helps overall energy challenges – not just in the country but over the long term for our global community.

These global impact indicators – food security and climate change – should be addressed together to assist the people of Africa to have a better enabling environment for overall development, a subject I’ve highlighted on this blog before.  

It’s critically important because people are angry: African women smallholder farmers from 10 countries calling themselves the ‘Rural Women Assembly‘ demonstrated in Durban on December 3, 2011, on just this point – linking the affects of climate change on their ability to feed their families.

What to do?

The UN General Assembly this year called for improvement in sustainable energy by making 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy, with the goal of providing access to modern forms of energy, particularly for emerging markets and the developing world by 2030. But, if we do not improve our current efforts not only will this sustainability goal not be meet for Africa, but the food security-climate change symbiotic link will continue to be exacerbated as Africa’s population is estimated to reach 1.5Bn by 2030, and 2Bn by 2050.

Thus, we need to be more food security-climate change smart through innovation. We need more Africa-focused research and development like Ghana’s new bio tech facility, and by expanding the discussion circle so that both agriculture and environment policy makers, CSOs and development entities begin to come together and share in the same international, regional, community, and village fora to address these two global impact indicators.

This blog post is adapted and edited from an article that also featured in the Huffington Post.

About Robin Sanders

Dr Robin Renée Sanders, a career member of the senior US Foreign Service, is currently serving as the International Affairs Advisor for a non-governmental organization. She previously served as the US Ambassador to Nigeria from 2007-2010. Prior to that she served as International Advisor and Deputy Commandant at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, DC. Prior to this position, she served as the US Ambassador to the Republic of Congo (2002-2005) and as Director for Public Diplomacy for Africa for the State Department (2000-2002). She served twice as the Director for Africa at the National Security Council at the White House; and was the Special Assistant for Latin America, Africa, and International Crime for the Undersecretary for Political Affairs at the State Department (1996-1997). Ms Sanders holds a Doctor of Science Degree in Information Systems and Communication from Robert Morris University, Master of Art degree in International Relations and Africa Studies, and a Master of Science degree in Communications and Journalism from Ohio University. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Hampton University.

Meeting the growing demands for both food and sustainability is a huge interdisciplinary challenge; the answer will not be found in a single discipline. As an interdisciplinary problem, global food security solutions must combine agricultural science (including crop improvement), farming management, understanding trade-offs in land uses (between ecosystem services and agricultural production for example) and a wide range of social issues concerning behaviour, consumption, economics and global trade.

The Champion for the Global Food Security (GFS) programme therefore needs to be someone with a breadth of interest, and understanding, across a wide range of disciplines and able to forge partnerships between people with very different interests and viewpoints.

So why me?

Food security and me

My first, and principal, interest in this role arises because I consider the challenge of ensuring global food security perhaps the most important environmental, biological and societal issue the world has encountered. For many, the impact of anthropogenic climate change will be most noticeable through food and water impacts.

As a result of this realisation, much of my research concerns the relationship between farming and the natural environment and the way we can conserve ecosystem function whilst maintaining or increasing productivity. (See the foot of this post for some of my recent publications.)

Second, I feel I can see outside my own disciplinary perspective for this important interdisciplinary problem. I have taken on a number of strategic roles – I have been Research Dean, responsible for research strategy, and am a member of strategy boards for two UK Research Councils – and am comfortable with taking a broad overview of areas and help set the required direction to achieve goals.  

That food security is a problem that requires solutions from a number of fields, and not just the scientific, cannot be overstated. Hence, my third reason for taking on the role is because as I have developed my academic career, I have seen it increasingly essential to interact across many disciplines and also to engage with external partners and stakeholders.  I have considerable experience in stakeholder engagement. For example, in the last few months I have spoken at the European Parliament, the EU Environment Directorate General, from a panel event on farming and biodiversity in Brussels, to the European Crop Protection Association, to Oxfam in Leeds, and to a local secondary school – all concerning sustainable food security.  

My fourth reason for taking on the champion role is that I am an interdisciplinary researcher and research-leader.  For example, I have helped lead The Africa College Partnership, a 100-strong academic partnership based in Leeds, which spans nutrition, crop science, ecosystem services, climate change and social sciences with two major global agricultural organisations (the CGIAR institute partners IITA and ICIPE). 

It is important that GFS is firmly evidence-based in terms of setting the research agenda, or influencing strategy and policy. So, my fifth reason is that I am experienced at synthesising data and assessing science quality, as evidenced by my experience as a journal editor-in-chief, grant panel member, external examiner at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and long-term teacher of statistics and analysis. I therefore have the skill to assess the evidence base (and evidence gaps) in food security-related topics.

So, in conclusion to the “why me?” question, let me just say that I have always been committed to engagement with non-academic audiences and that even as a research leader in agriculture-environment interactions, I’m confident that I’m able to take a broad view, think strategically, and build lasting productive partnerships.

I will never be an expert in all the core disciplines that contribute to GFS, but my interests are very broad, and my willingness to learn is unbounded. The joy of being a ‘systems’ person is that the system of interest can always be expanded: my initial interest in ecology expanded to agri-environmental systems, then global land use patterns…  I bring a real enthusiasm for thinking about the whole, not just a small part.

Why global?

I am often asked “we’re OK in the UK, so why worry about global issues?”  The answer is that we depend on the rest of the world for much of our food, and that local choices have important implications elsewhere in the world.

Global food security necessarily involves consideration of global issues of supply and demand.  Many people interested, like me, in the natural world suggest that reducing the intensity of farming, even at the expense of yield, is the route to a sustainable farming future – because they believe that the shortfall in yield can always be made up through imports or changes in our consumption patterns. Reducing the production of food in Europe will almost certainly mean that production elsewhere needs to increase to supply our demands, leading to the potential of exporting environmental impacts. Furthermore, whilst increasing imports of food may be available at the present time, they may not always be as other countries’ production systems adapt to the challenge of increasing their own food supply. Therefore, choices made in the developed, global north clearly influence the global south, and we need to understand this linkage more in developing both national and EU approaches.

There is often a tension between farming and environmental sustainability, exemplified by the ‘intensive or sustainable’ viewpoints (or the “organic vs conventional” farming). My own view is that sustainable intensification is possible: i.e. maintaining or increasing production whilst increasing sustainability.  One route to removing the tension is with the concept of sustainable farming landscapes, instead of sustainable fields or farms. Some of my own work has shown that you potentially get more production and more ecosystem services out of a landscape with a mix of intensive farms and land managed for ecology, rather than from a landscape entirely managed extensively. I wrote a previous post for this website outlining my thoughts on this.

Finding ways to remove the ‘intensive or sustainable’ tension will help the debate, as well as moving policy and strategy forwards. We need agriculture to be both high yielding and sustainable; the good news is that routes to this destination do exist.

About Tim Benton

Tim Benton is Research Dean in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, and is Chair of the Africa College Partnership, an interdisciplinary virtual research institute concerned with sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. He has worked on the links between farming and biodiversity (and ecosystem services) for many years.

Selected Tim Benton publications

• TG Benton, DM Bryant, L Cole and HPQ Crick (2002)  Linking agricultural practice to insect and bird populations: a historical study over 3 decades. Journal of Applied Ecology. 39(4), 673-687
• Benton, TG, Vickery, JA, Wilson, JD (2003) Farmland biodiversity: is habitat heterogeneity the key? Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18: 182-188
• Gabriel, D., S J. Carver, H Durham, W E. Kunin, R C. Palmer, S M. Sait, S Stagl, T G. Benton (2009). The spatial aggregation of organic farming in England and its underlying environmental correlates.  Journal of applied Ecology 46: 323-333
• D. Gabriel, S.M. Sait, J.A. Hodgson, U. Schmutz, W.E. Kunin, T.G. Benton (2010) Scale matters: the impact of organic farming on biodiversity at different spatial scales.  Ecology letters. 13: 858-869
• Hodgson, J; Kunin, W E.; Thomas, CD; Benton, TG; Gabriel, D (2010) Comparing organic farming and land sparing: optimising yield and butterfly populations at a landscape scale. Ecology letters13: 1358-1367
• Elisabeth Simelton, et al (2010) Climate Change and the Socioeconomics of Global Food Production: A Quantitative Analysis of how Socio-Economic Factors Influence the Vulnerability of Grain Crops to Drought CCEP Working Paper 29 (PDF)
• TG Benton, AJ Dougill, EDG Fraser & DJB Howlett (2011) How to use the global land bank to both produce food and conserve nature: examining extensive vs intensive agriculture.  World Agriculture 2:14-21
• Lee-Ann Sutherland, Doreen Gabriel, Laura Hathaway-Jenkins, Unai Pascual, Ulrich Schmutz, Dan Rigby, Richard Godwin, Steven M. Sait, Ruben Sakrabani, Bill Kunin, Tim G. Benton and Sigrid Stagl.  (in press) The ‘Neighbourhood Effect’:A multidisciplinary assessment of the case for farmer co-ordination in agri-environmental programmes. Land Use Policy

In the 21st century, one of the potential consequences of climate change and free global trade is that animal and plant disease may pose increasing threats to our food supplies.

It’s important to understand the biology of the pathogens and pests involved, but it’s equally important to fully consider the human dimension, and the part that people and their behaviour play. That has been the basis of the Rural Economy and Land Use (Relu) Programme’s research on animal and plant disease, culminating in their latest briefing paper “Growing concerns: animal and plant disease policy for the 21st century (PDF)” .

Past policies

Even a cursory examination of government policy on disease reveals how unsystematic our present approach seems to be. Its origins are rooted in a different historical landscape and policy has grown up in a way that often seems illogical today.

One obvious example is the way in which animal disease is categorised as ‘exotic’ or ‘endemic’ and how this determines the political response. Public money and effort go into addressing -exotic- diseases such foot-and-mouth disease, while persistent infections such as Johne’s disease and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis are regarded as industry problems, attracting no compensation for farmers and no particular efforts to eliminate them.

Yet these endemic diseases are impacting significantly on food production, farmers’ profits and animal welfare. Research carried out by a Relu team at Warwick (PDF) has concluded that making more information on disease status and history available to livestock buyers could help to address this. For example, knowledge of the disease risks within the herd would have an effect on prices, giving the low-risk animal a higher value, and providing more incentive for farmers to eliminate disease.

The new Animal and Health Welfare Board for England needs to apply a systematic framework for risk and cost sharing that has the backing of stakeholders. At the moment, anomalies persist not only within the categorisation of animal disease, but between animal and plant disease.  These two factors still seem to be addressed within self-contained silos and carry very different consequences for farmers. There are surely many lessons, not only on cost and responsibility, but on other aspects such as disease risk management, that could be applied more widely between the animal and plant sciences.

All the right friends

One of the major findings of the Relu programme is how involvement of stakeholders can strengthen research and it can also make implementation of policy more effective.

The UK Government’s approach to the appearance of bluetongue in Britain in 2007 provides a good example of this. By working closely with the farming community they developed a control strategy, and a communications campaign implemented with help from veterinary and industry bodies raised awareness of the disease and the actions that needed to be taken.

But we really need an even wider engagement with society on these issues, even if it may sometimes make us feel uneasy. The 38 Degrees organisation for example, has an approach that some might regard as provocative on arguments such as bovine TB and the culling of badgers, but it does encourage involvement beyond the obvious groups.

There are new disease threats to our food all the time and the Relu report calls for a fresh approach from Government. Food is a concern for everyone and we should all be taking an interest in UK and world food security as price rise and supply become less secure.

About Wyn Grant

Wyn Grant is a graduate of the universities of Leicester, Strathclyde and Exeter. He joined Warwick University in 1971 and was chair of the Department of Politics and International Studies from 1990 to 1997.  In recent years he has been actively involved in research projects with members of the Department of Life Sciences at Warwick where he also teaches.  He is vice-president for Europe and Africa of the International Political Science Association.

Governments, including the UK’s, have signed up to the Kyoto Protocol and brought in domestic legislation with ambitious carbon reduction targets. But before we sit back and congratulate ourselves, shouldn’t we be thinking about exactly how we are to achieve real carbon reduction?

At the moment we are not only in danger of simply exporting our responsibilities by trading our emissions with less industrialised countries, but also failing to address the overall contribution that agriculture makes to climate change – at present the industry is responsible for 38 per cent of UK methane emissions – the vast majority from livestock management.

Climate change is a truly wicked problem on which we have to act not only globally, but on all fronts, if any real progress is to be made. And that means making real changes to our consuming and purchasing behaviour at the local level too.

Otherwise we risk falling for the rhetoric and missing the real point: are the ambitious targets we have set ourselves achievable, and are they compatible with our current approach to that other wicked problem of food security? Neither of these challenges can be approached as simply a technical problem for natural science to solve and they cannot be tackled in isolation.

Think global act local

If we are to have any real prospect of matching aspirations to actions – that is growing more food but with less energy and fewer emissions – social science has to be brought into the armoury and critical choices have to be made.

Until now, agriculture has seldom been challenged as a net producer of greenhouse gases. The industry, involving so many small producers, has seemed beyond government control, but in a changing climate it will have to play a more positive role.

The importance of peat bogs as a carbon sink, for example, is now clear and it is vital that these soils are maintained in good condition. Land use will also play a part in mitigation. As flooding events become more frequent, a more flexible approach to agricultural land management and payments to farmers for upstream flood storage might provide one means of helping to protect towns and cities.

New technologies might help us to carry on without major adjustments to our lifestyles, but will consumers accept them?  We have already seen negative public reactions to issues such as GM crops where technology has moved faster than public awareness or understanding, and now intensification of production systems is provoking new debates about animal welfare.

Much more likely to be effective is socio-technological change, where lifestyles and technology change together in a complementary fashion, and this could be driven by consumers themselves.

Social science can help us to understand the decisions people make and how to influence them, and this includes decisions about food. For example, an interdisciplinary project investigating the implications of a nutrition-driven policy for the countryside as part of the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme, showed how taxing foods with high fat content and subsidising fruit and vegetables could improve diet in line with healthy eating guidelines.

Researchers also looked at the most effective ways of using advertising (PDF) to target the eating habits of specific social groups. If people who buy the food decide to eat more healthily, which could include less meat and move to more plant-based meals, that would itself cause the market to supply their needs, and achieve real change in the way land is managed, rather than driving production and emissions abroad.

Social science is the tool that can help us to understand how people make these kinds of small, everyday choices that have the potential to drive major change, and it could be the key to helping us achieve our ambitious targets.

About Philip Lowe

Philip Lowe is Director of the Rural Economy and Land Use (Relu) Programme of the UK Research Councils.

He has been a leading figure in the development of interdisciplinary rural studies in the UK. In 1992, he founded the Centre for Rural Economy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he holds the Duke of Northumberland Chair of Rural Economy.

He is a former Scientific Chair of the European Society for Rural Sociology and a former member of the Science Advisory Council of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

He has played an active role in rural policy development at the national and European levels and in the North of England. For his contribution to the rural economy he was appointed OBE in 2003.

The nature of the food security debate is evolving, looking more broadly at the range of solutions required across different rural landscapes rather than only on farms. Instead of a ‘pick and choose’ approach, policymakers, scientists, farmers and the private sector are looking at how food security, environmental stewardship and economic development are interconnected.

Within these new debates on food security, agricultural productivity must be recognized not only for its role in increasing yields but as part of the solution to meeting biodiversity and climate change goals.

Just in the last month, the Economist ran a debate on biotechnology, Channel 4 broadcast a programme on What the Green Movement Got Wrong, and previously Seed Magazine held its Food Fight debate: just a few examples of the many special editions in mainstream media that are debating agriculture. 

I believe we are in the midst of shaping a new perspective on sustainable agriculture, one that has been morphing to mirror the complexities of the challenges we face in the coming generation and beyond.

Over the centuries, farmers have learned how to balance the preservation of the natural environment and the need to feed the world. Yet today, growing populations, climate change and dwindling natural resources impact farmers’ ability to grow crops. In turn,  food security challenges put pressure on the environment and climate.

We need agricultural solutions that link biodiversity conservation with efforts to combat climate change, whilst sustainably producing sufficient quantities of nutritious, affordable and varied foods.

Hence, at Agriculture and Rural Development Day in Cancun last week, experts from various fields in the agriculture sector were brought together to identify practical solutions to reduce agriculture-related greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen food security. 

Safeguarding biodiversity

At the Biodiversity World Tour 2010 held in October that was organised by CropLife International, the EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik warned that we have to act urgently to reverse the rate of biodiversity loss, saying “we lost the luxury of choice a long time ago”.

High-yield agriculture has an important role to play in protecting biodiversity. Food production needs to increase on the land already under cultivation. Rather than converting natural habitats such as forests and wetlands into farmland, improving yields on existing land can help preserve vital ecosystems.

Two months ago at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Nagoya Protocol was adopted (PDF) through which world leaders committed to increase the area of protected land in the world form 12.5 per cent to 17 per cent. Increasing agricultural productivity can contribute to meeting these biodiversity targets. Additionally, incorporating integrated pest management (IPM) practices into mainstream farming can improve both pollination and crop protection.

Climate-smart agriculture

Moving on from biodiversity discussions to climate negotiations, the UN’s call to protect conservation areas should be reiterated both as a force for carbon sequestration and also for future strategies involving agricultural development. Whilst one solution for increasing global food production comes from an increase in farmed land, the deforestation necessary for clearing land emits large amounts of greenhouse gases. Plant biotechnology (GM crops) can help farmers to increase current acreage of arable lands, preventing the need for deforestation and eliminating the resultant emissions.

A study published in 2010 concluded that investment in high-yield agriculture since the 1960s has saved the planet from an extra dose of global warming, sparing the equivalent of 590 Gigatons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere. Furthermore, by enabling farmers to produce more on existing farmland, the ‘green revolution’ spared 1.5 billion hectares from being turned over to agriculture. 

Biotech crops have already improved the yield and increased the disease and pest resistance for 14 million farmers globally, 90 per cent of whom are small farmers in developing countries. In 2008, the total yield gains of the four principal biotech crops (soybean, maize, cotton and canola) was 29.6 million metric tons. Another 10.5 million hectares would have been needed to produce that same amount of food, had biotech crops not been deployed. In addition, the use of herbicides and herbicide-tolerant crops enables the practice of conservation tillage (no ploughing), which leads to a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

With continued investment in agricultural research, new technologies will provide a means of increasing agricultural productivity further, or enabling plants to grow in conditions that they wouldn’t grow in before. Progress in developing varieties that perform well under drought, heat, flood and salinity will be essential for making food security a reality for all, despite future climate scenarios.

A new discussion

As David Howlett states in his post ‘Combining tactics for triple wins in agriculture’, to achieve food security goals we must enter into a more mature debate that considers all possible solutions.

Although the challenges of the future seem daunting, much of the knowledge and technology that is needed to feed the world sustainably, enhance biodiversity and adapt to and mitigate climate change already exists.

At this stage, it is essential to commit to and develop the policy and infrastructures needed to support the acceptance of agricultural technologies. Science-based regulations must be the cornerstone to a credible and transparent policy framework, and are essential to establishing public confidence and acceptance of any technology.

If left unaddressed, climate change will seriously impact farmers’ ability to grow sufficient crops, potentially leading to a world where food security is a luxury enjoyed by a minority. Improved agricultural productivity is key to helping farmers meet growing global food demand and benefit from improved livelihoods, while minimizing their carbon emissions and safeguarding natural resources. 

About Howard Minigh

Howard Minigh is the President and CEO of CropLife International, the global federation representing the plant science industry.

Climate change could, it seems, be the trigger that makes us overcome our squeamishness about genetically modified crops, according to debates in the popular press. The recent Royal Society report “Reaping the benefits: science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture”, urges universities to work with funding bodies to reverse the decline in subjects relevant to the sustainable intensification of food crop production.

But is technology really going to provide everything that we need or are we simply hoping once again for a quick fix to an extremely complex problem?

Since the Neolithic, the development and increasing sophistication of farming has enabled human populations to grow, but not all developments along that long journey have been entirely positive.

An emphasis on improving and promoting mainstream grain crops at the expense of traditional diets has often had an adverse effect on nutrition in developing countries. Too often we have assumed that anything new must necessarily be better, and have done little to assess the trade-offs between traditional and modern food production systems and how these relate to “a good diet”.

Enough calories does not necessarily equal the right food. This is also true for many developed countries, where too many calories in the form of fat and sugar are consumed, particularly in the poorer sectors of society, posing a major threat to health. We may, in theory, have access to a wide variety of healthy foods, but economic and social factors may mean that we don’t necessarily make the wisest choices.

Even when enough food is produced, it does not always reach the people who need it. And as climate change exerts greater effects and social patterns shift in developing countries, further global demographic change and migration, both across national boundaries and from countryside to town, may put added pressure on food supply systems. We need to understand more about the likely effects of such changes, to look ahead and plan for future problems rather than for those of today.

Certainly, we certainly couldn’t feed our growing world population without the dramatic improvements seen in food production systems, but they have never provided all the answers. Throughout history we have seen poor people starve amid plenty and rich people buy their way out of famine.

While new developments will be necessary for improved food security, they will not be sufficient on their own. Issues of price, access, nutrition and distribution are also highly relevant. This calls for more research into the governance of international food production and distribution, as well as the global and sub-global networks that both promote and hinder a more equitable response to the food security challenge. We need to understand the human dimension as well as the technological. In order to achieve this we need interdisciplinary research that investigates all the facets of food security, not merely the technological.

About Professor Philip Lowe OBE AcSS

Philip Lowe is Director of the Rural Economy and Land Use (Relu) Programme of the UK Research Councils. 

He has been a leading figure in the development of interdisciplinary rural studies in the UK.  In 1992, he founded the Centre for Rural Economy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he holds the Duke of Northumberland Chair of Rural Economy. 

He is the Scientific Chair of the European Society for Rural Sociology and a member of the Science Advisory Council of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). 

He has played an active role in rural policy development at the national and European levels and in the North of England.  For his contribution to the rural economy he was appointed OBE in 2003. 

Contact details:

Professor Philip Lowe OBE AcSS
Director, Relu
Centre for Rural Economy
School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development
University of Newcastle
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
NE1 7RU

Tel: 0191 222 6887
Fax: 0191 222 5411
Email: philip.lowe@ncl.ac.uk