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

Evidence of the impact of agricultural interventions on nutrition security is urgently needed. This was an issue raised at the launch of a Montpellier Panel briefing paper, Scaling Up Nutrition, in the UK Parliament on 17 May, authored by Tom Arnold, CEO Concern Worldwide and myself.

As we have learned from the Green Revolution, it is often the poorest and most in need that are neglected as agriculture develops. India is the second fastest growing economy in the world (with real growth rate of GDP equalling 8.3 per cent in 2010) but the prevalence of underweight children is still high at around 40 per cent.

It’s intolerable that 3.5 million maternal and child deaths each year globally are attributable to inadequate nutrition. The briefing paper highlighted the importance of agricultural development to tackle this. But does the evidence base support this recommendation?

The known unknown

We know that direct nutrition interventions can reduce child undernutrition and are cost-effective. Indeed, a study in a special edition of The Lancet in 2008 detailed that 13 interventions, when implemented in the 36 worst affected countries, could save one million lives per year.

What we don’t have is evidence that agricultural development activities can also be a (cost-effective) pathway to nutrition security.

This is important given that financing interventions such as nutrient supplementation and fortification of foods cannot be sustained over the long-term and development investments are guided by potential impact.

The evidence base needs strengthening if policy makers are to be persuaded to invest in agricultural development as a means of addressing child undernutrition. In a systematic review of agricultural interventions, conducted between 1990 and 2010, aimed at improving the nutritional status of children, DFID found a lack of impact. This was mainly because studies were not rigorous enough and, as a consequence, the ability of studies to detect an impact was low. This gap needs to be addressed urgently.

An analysis of the impact and cost-effectiveness of biofortification projects conducted by HarvestPlus is a step in the right direction. Results showed that costs saved per DALY (disability-adjusted life years, a metric for welfare) for many projects, such as vitamin A cassava in Nigeria and iron rice in Bangladesh, are highly cost-effective. For example, the cost per DALY saved was estimated at between $4.20 and $9.70 for vitamin A sweet potato in Uganda.

Given the scale of child undernutrition, in some African countries the proportion of children stunted is as high as 50%, we must invest in proven interventions now while also gathering evidence on agricultural activities that have co-benefits for nutrition.

The momentum to link agriculture, research and nutrition across programmes is greater than ever before, providing a real chance to achieve nutrition security. The evidence base will be key to sustaining this momentum and proving that our intuition, that agricultural development can reduce child undernutrition, is correct.

About Katy Wilson

Katy Wilson joined Agriculture for Impact at Imperial College London in August 2010 and is working with Gordon Conway on the new edition of his book The Doubly Green Revolution. She has previously worked as an event coordinator and editorial assistant, interned in New York and volunteered at Harnas Wildlife Foundation in Namibia. She recently completed an MSc Environmental Technology at Imperial College London and Ag4Impact’s work can be followed on Twitter @Ag4impact.

Better data on how and where aid is spent is needed to make real progress on tackling hunger, argue Gordon Conway and Laura Kelly.

Holding global leaders to account has never been easy. But when they come together in the Muskoka region of Canada 25-26 June, G8 leaders claim they will report on their own progress on tackling global hunger.

During the Italian G8 Presidency in 2009 the G8 announced the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative, pledging more than $20B of aid over three years to agriculture and food security. Leaders agreed core principles to tackle global hunger and said they were “determined to translate these principles into action and take all the necessary measures to achieve global food security”.

Now, and as then, we welcome these commitments and like many others we are keen to see what progress has been made. Nevertheless, while we look forward to G8 leaders’ own assessments on progress, we think it important that we, and other independent researchers, are given access to timely and detailed information to allow us to do our own analysis.

We believe that access to better aid data is vital on this issue. After 30 years of underinvestment in agricultural development, we now have the political and financial momentum to make real progress on tackling hunger. But if governments do not deliver these new investments in a strategic and coordinated way, we risk dissipating efforts and missing a unique opportunity to deliver impacts on the ground for the one billion undernourished people that governments are seeking to help.

When engaging in the complex, interdisciplinary world of agricultural development, we need a better detailed understanding of what works. By investing time and money in better aid data now, governments will be able to work with their advisers, researchers and recipient country partners to understand how their investments correlate with real progress for those that need it most. This will enable more effective and coherent partnerships in the future.

Our own work with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) DAC database (OECD-DAC), which provides comprehensive data on the volume, origin and types of aid and other resource flows, has shown that at present the measurement and analysis of agricultural development assistance is fraught with challenges. Different governments classify and measure their agricultural assistance in different ways. For instance, some bilateral assistance is given through budget support, making it difficult to measure what if any support goes to agriculture.

Support to multilateral agencies is also hard to attribute to specific sector activity. And OECD-DAC is very slow to release data – detailed data for 2008 was released in March 2010 – so timely independent analysis is very difficult.

The OECD-DAC database is an important resource, and we believe that it should remain the primary channel for governments to report their development assistance spending. But it needs to be further improved: non-OECD government actions should be included, as should several additional multilateral organisations. Furthermore, we are not always able to measure what we want – amounts of assistance to smallholders, or large versus small irrigation investments for example.

We look forward to hearing how global leaders meeting in Muskoka have performed on tackling hunger over the last year. But if they want their agriculture investments to have a lasting impact, they should also commit to urgent action to get the data systems in place to measure and monitor how and where their agricultural development assistance has been spent so we can all see if it is successful.

This blog post is based on an article originally published on the Global Food for Thought blog, the official blog of the Global Agricultural Development Initiative.

About Sir Gordon Conway

Sir Gordon Conway is Professor of International Development at Imperial College London. For more information about his work please go to: www.imperial.ac.uk/africanagriculturaldevelopment

About Laura Kelly

Laura Kelly is Director, Policy of ONE Europe: http://one.org/international

On 10th May 2010, Imperial College and ONE hosted a joint workshop to discuss the challenges of measuring agricultural development assistance. For more information about this work please go to: www.imperial.ac.uk/africanagriculturaldevelopment/resources/monitoring

The needs of food security require that food production be increased on a relatively fixed amount of land but in a sustainable way. How can this objective be achieved?

In particular how can we protect plants against pests and diseases in a sustainable way? Many consumer and environmentalists would like to see less use of chemical pesticides in the production of our food, but until recently the producers of more environmentally friendly alternatives, sometimes called ‘green pesticides’ or ‘biopesticides’, have faced regulatory barriers.

More opportunities need to be made available for biocontrol products, such as wasps that kill pest caterpillars for example, and for microbiological pesticides such as naturally occurring fungi, bacteria and viruses that were studied in a Rural Economy and Land Use project, Biological Alternatives to Chemical Pesticides in the Food Chain. Such products offer several advantages such as low impact on non-target organisms, compatibility with other natural insect enemies, and limited toxic residues.

Up to the recent past, however, not enough products have reached the market. Typically, these products are developed by small firms and the costs and complexity of the registration process can pose a formidable barrier given that the regulatory system was developed to suit chemical pesticides.

Progress was made in the UK with the introduction of a biopesticides scheme in 2006 by what is now the Chemicals Regulation Directorate. However, accessing wider markets which would make products viable proved difficult. The internal market did not really exist in the EU for these products but was split into twenty-seven distinct regulatory jurisdictions. This bureaucracy contrasts with the US where a large internal market, support from government, and a clear mission by the US Environmental Protection Agency is smoothing the path for biopesticides.

However, a new way forward is offered by a package of measures adopted by the European Union in 2009. These include revisions to the regulation (91/414) which had previously controlled the use of pesticides, and to a thematic strategy on pesticides and a new Sustainable Use Directive (SUD). Preparation of the thematic strategy highlighted the need for a SUD as several of the envisaged measures could not be integrated into existing legislation or policies.

This directive was passed in 2009 and will be implemented by 2011. It was centred around the creation of National Action Plans in each member state to identify areas of risk, reduce risk and use, minimise the impacts on human health and the environment, and encourage responsible perstcide use and integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. IPM involves the use of complementary control strategies in such a way as to minimise environmental impact.

It must be emphasised that IPM does not rule out the use of synthetic pesticides.  Many products that form part of the new generation of synthetics are more environmentally friendly than earlier products, many of which are no longer permitted to be used. However, even these new products should be treated as a precious resource to be used sparingly.

The new legislative framework in the EU offers a promising way forward. Eco-zones have been adopted in the EU so that a product registered in one country can also be sold in others with similar climatic conditions.

But as always, the devil is in detail and much work has to be done before these plans are put into practice, such as devising co-ordinated National Action Plans and regulations. Furthermore, the backdrop of under-sourced agencies in many EU member states may hinder progress but the hope of an economically and environmentally sustainable future is there to be grasped.

Finally, I think that supermarkets may yet play a useful role. Supermarket chains in the UK say they are under pressure from consumers to minimise pesticide residues. If retailers were to better support biopesticides at the food production level it would provide economic impetus to their manufacture and development.

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. He is currently a member of the Population and Diseases Research Group in the Department of Biological Sciences at Warwick Horticultural Research International, Wellesbourne, and is Vice President of the International Political Science Association.

Contact details

Wyn Grant

W.P.Grant@warwick.ac.uk

The second decade of the last century was an important decade for food research with the setting up of six research institutes focusing on specific sectors such as dairying (National Institute for Research in Dairying) plant breeding (Welsh Plant Breeding Institute) and human nutrition (Rowett Research Institute). 

The second decade of this century is witnessing a resurgence of interest in food research, but this time with a difference. Today, the research objectives are not so much about maximising production of food, but producing nutritious food while minimising negative impacts on the environment, including limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. 

Addressing these challenges requires a broad range of skills, both in conducting the research, but also in prioritising the problems and defining funding strategies. 

Personally, I have long been keen on collaboration and working across disciplines and thus I genuinely welcome the new Global Food Security partnership of funders which was launched on 11 March. I consider such joint working to be an essential part of meeting our responsibility, as scientists, to provide the evidence to enable society to make informed choices on what to eat. 

We already have labelling to tell us whether a particular purchase is healthy or not; the information on the labels being informed by years of research on nutrition and physiology (funded, for example, by the Food Standards Agency). Consumers now also want to know what impact the production of a specific product has had on the environment. 

We have to catch up quickly. By working together, scientists and science funders can build upon past experience to achieve a desired outcome more rapidly. 

Another example lies in the area of plant and animal health. Climate change is predicted to increase the risks of severe negative economic impacts being caused by some diseases. Both the assessments of risks, and diagnosis at the molecular level, have many similarities between the plant and animal sectors yet often that knowledge has not been exchanged. 

Alternatively, working in partnership inspires the rewriting of objectives which often provides new insights into the intransigent problems of the past, again learning from best practice in other disciplines. 

Another aspect of this partnership is the fostering of collaboration between funders who focus on ‘upstream’ (or more basic) research, such as the Research Councils, and those charged with the responsibility for ensuring that research outputs have impact (e.g. government departments such as Defra). Development, together of strategic objectives, ensures that the outputs from upstream research do not just ‘sit on a shelf’ as a peer-reviewed paper, but are effectively used to deliver impact and benefit societies. 

Enhancing our ability as a group of public sector funders to deliver both excellence in science, and a useful and measurable impact on society, is both challenging and exciting. I have high hopes that the Global Food Security partnership will inspire the science community to help us achieve our goals.

About Professor Maggie Gill

Maggie Gill is (since 2006) the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser for Rural Affairs and the Environment for 80% of her time and works for DFID-Research, as part of the Food Team for the remaining 20%, on secondment from the University of Aberdeen (DFID is the UK Government’s Department for International Development.). 

Maggie’s career has included both research and research management starting with livestock production and moving on to the interface between agriculture and the environment and natural resource management issues. Her research has included collaboration with scientists in Australasia, North America and a number of developing countries. 

She worked for the Grassland Research Institute (which evolved into IGER) for 13 years before moving into international development in 1989. After 11 years of research, research management and ultimately as Chief Executive of Natural Resources International Ltd. (1996-2000), a company which was ‘spun out’ of the privatisation of the Natural Resources Institute (NRI), an Executive Agency of the Overseas Development Administration, Maggie returned to Scotland as Chief Executive and Director of Research at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen (2000-2006).

Contact details

Professor Maggie Gill, Director Rural & Environment Research and Analysis, The Scottish Government