Policy

November 10, 2017

Agriculture Action Day, it says here…

And FAO is all over it:

The impacts of climate change on food systems are a fundamental threat to humankind. Climate change disproportionately affects smallholder and family farmers, pastoralist, fishing and forest communities, who provide the bulk of our planet’s food. At the same time, agriculture contributes almost a quarter of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The event will highlight successful actions that contribute to agriculture-based solutions for addressing climate change in livestock, traditional agriculture systems, water, soil, food loss and waste, and integrated landscape management, and also includes sessions on climate data and Climate-Smart Agriculture. The sessions will feature successful interventions to ensure implementation and link the 2018 Facilitative Dialogue with the longer-term goals of the Paris Agreement. Young farmers will follow the event and present their impressions of the proposed agriculture-based climate solutions during the opening and closing plenaries.

With a bit of luck, the events on climate-smart agriculture and on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems, at least, will feature the role of agricultural biodiversity. But who can tell.

November 10, 2017

Nibbles: Maize breeding, Baking history, USDA collections, UNEP initiative, Saline rice, Coffee rust, Protein crisis

Breeding maize for high yields limits its plasticity.
“The rich ate fine, floured wheat bread. But if you were poor you cut your teeth on rye and black bread.”
USA, MLS and ITPGRFA.
Rethinking conservation. Again.
Content-free article on growing rice in slightly salty water.
BBC catches up with coffee rust.
Making animal feed sustainable. Easier said than done.

November 9, 2017

The way ahead on nutrition?

While waiting for agriculture to do that transformation thing, it may be worthwhile reading the latest Global Nutrition Report. Although some metrics are moving in the wrong direction, I found some comfort in this observation:

…‘triple duty actions’ which tackle malnutrition and other development challenges could yield multiple benefits across the SDGs. For example, diversification of food production landscapes can provide multiple benefits by: ensuring the basis of a nutritious food supply essential to address undernutrition and prevent diet-related NCDs; enabling the selection of micronutrient-rich crops with ecosystem benefits; and, if the focus is on women in food production, empowering women to become innovative food value chain entrepreneurs while minimising work and time burden.

So what’s stopping us?

November 9, 2017

Agriculture hoping to transform itself, and COP23

So, the UN Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as COP23, has started here in Bonn, and we’re trying to make sure the voice of agriculture is heard, on the fringes if nowhere else. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is busy touting its vision for an agricultural transformation under climate change. With a bunch of partners, they’ve organized a series of side events on the different dimensions that such a transformation will entail, including, perhaps most relevant to us here, the role ofcrop breeding and improvement. All the usual social media channels are in play, so follow along, and send in your questions and harangues.

November 7, 2017December 6, 2017

Another Governing Body done and dusted

Jeremy has been able to heroically deal with various housekeeping issues on the blog without interference from me for the past week or so because I’ve been in Kigali heroically dealing with the Seventh Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. As ever, Earth Negotiations Bulletin has done a great job of digesting each day’s deliberations, and then providing an overall summary. Perhaps the main outcome is a tentative move towards an at least partly subscription model for the Multilateral System. There has been interest in this from the private sector, though the exact level of contribution of course remains to be negotiated.

A great job, as I say, except for one thing. Here’s an excerpt from ENB’s final analysis of the meeting:

Veteran negotiator from the Netherlands Bert Visser, ETC Group’s Pat Mooney, famous for coining the terms “biopiracy” and “terminator seeds,” and IRRI’s bridge-builder Rory Hillocks were celebrated with standing ovations for their contribution to the Treaty and PGRFA conservation and sustainable use. Furthermore, side-events showcased a multitude of participatory programmes, community projects, and networks steadily working on agrobiodiversity conservation and sustainable use, within the Treaty framework but without the visibility they deserve. In the words of an African saying, “Many small people, in many small places, do many small things, which can alter the face of the world.” The challenge for the Treaty, as an expert summed up, is to bring them all together and let the world know.

I suspect, however, that “IRRI’s bridge-builder” is really Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton.

LATER: Glad to see this has now been corrected.