What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

Rising fossil fuel energy costs spell trouble for global food security, Oregon State University

Horizon 2020 – first projects funded involving African researchers, PAEPARD

Sustainable Agriculture Research Falling Further Behind, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

OECD – FAO expect stronger production, lower prices over coming decade, FAO

The President of the United States of America meets Sir David, Thinking Country

New Ethiopian ‘livestock master plan’ aims to take 14 million out of poverty, ILRI

Farmgate prices may stay low for 10 more years, says report, Farmers Weekly

Web-based policy tool on small-scale farmer innovation, PAEPARD

Producer Movements in Integrated Landscape Management, Landscapes for People, Food and Nature

Benchmarking the sustainability performance of the Brazilian non-GM and GM soybean meal chains: An indicator-based approach, Gaitán-Cremaschi et al, Food Policy

Sustainable Food Systems

Food demand is expected to rise by 70% to 2050. Urbanisation and increasing incomes per capita are shifting diets to those more demanding of meat and other animal products, which has serious implications for the use of natural resources to produce food. Today around 1 in 8 people are malnourished and 870 million people chronically hungry, indicating our current food systems cannot meet present demand let alone future. Modifying the world’s food production systems to produce more food and perhaps distribute it more evenly, is made harder by a growing recognition of the negative impacts agriculture can have on the environment. Conversion of land to agriculture is the biggest threat to biodiversity. Agriculture places large demands on scarce natural resources, the overuse of which not only threatens the wider global environment and human wellbeing, but the very processes agriculture relies on e.g. pest control, pollination and rainfall.

A new report by the European Commission’s Science for Environment Policy, entitled Sustainable Food: A Recipe for Food Security and Environmental Protection, lays out the changes we need to make to our entire food system and the urgency with which we need to make them.

The report begins with a summary of the pressures on food production and the drivers of food demand namely: population growth; natural resource scarcity including land, biodiversity, water, climate change, and biofuels; changing dietary patterns and; rising food prices.

The report then turns to some of the solutions and pathways to making food systems more sustainable, advocating action around the following areas:

• Minimising food waste
• Rethinking land management and agricultural practices:
  • Using agroecological principles such as building soil organic matter, which the EU claim can reduce negative impacts and at the same time increase yields, although evidence of this potential win-win is scarce
  • Conservation agriculture and land sparing versus land sharing
  • Replenishing water supplies through, for example, no-till agriculture
  • Ensuring the long-term sustainability of fish stocks through expanding aquaculture
  • Reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change
  • Increasing the efficiency of agriculture through the application of science and technology
  • Understanding consumption patterns in a bid to contain the demand for the most resource-intensive types of food
  • Investing in smallholder farmers to help them increase their productivity and integration with global markets

Of course knowing that we need to undertake many of these actions is relatively easy. Understanding how to take action is hard and the report acknowledges that considerable policy and knowledge gaps exist, for example, what future per capita consumption levels will be, the benefits or impacts of different agricultural practices and ways of integrating multiple objectives in policy making.

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories, reports and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

After 2015 – Toward zero hunger and sustainable food production? SIANI

Science and NGO practice are closer than they appear, SciDev.Net

Sustainable Intensification: Getting the Most from the Land, Agri-Pulse

Scientists Unite to Share Ag Data and Feed the World, USDA

DNA double helix: discovery that led to 60 years of biological revolution, The Guardian

Genebank Standards for Plant Genetic Resources, FAO

Incremental change is not enough – climate, business experts, Thomson Reuters Foundation

Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions, PNAS

New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: Part 2, ONE

What we’ve been reading this week

This week’s summary on the news stories and blogs that have grabbed our attention. We welcome your thoughts and comments on these articles.

New study: A warming world will further intensify extreme precipitation events, NOAA

Pioneers in Sustainable Food Show We Can Eat Well and Protect Environment, NRDC

You taste what you see: Do organic labels bias taste perceptions? Lee et al

Transforming lives through improved access to agricultural education in Africa, NRI

Enterprise fund, Farm Africa

Land sparing versus land sharing: new evidence, Ideas for Sustainability

Traditional weeding methods still prevail on Ugandan farms, Pathways to Productivity

How can agribusiness work best for development? The Guardian

Important source of greenhouse gas emissions from farmland underestimated, UC Davis

Uganda’s genetically modified golden bananas, BBC

Robustness and strategies of adaptation among farmer varieties of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and Asian rice (Oryza sativa) across West Africa, PLoS One

Examining benefits and safety of genetically modified crops, Peoples Daily

Gender-sensitive climate finance crucial – experts, AlertNet

New IATP report addresses water governance in the 21st century, IATP

Loss of wild pollinators would hit crops, finds study, SciDev.Net

Fighting for family farmers, Huffington Post

The G-20 and Food Security: What Is the Right Agenda? The Stanley Institute

Obama signs ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ written by Monsanto-sponsored senator, RT