ILRI's Carlos Sere on expert panel on sustainable food production at University of Minnesota

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute and member of a forthcoming expert panel on sustainable food production at the University of Minnesota (credit: ILRI).

Carlos Seré, director general of the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is one of three leaders of worldwide agricultural research centres who will discuss how increasing global demands for food can be addressed in sustainable ways during a forum on 'Sustainably Feeding the World' next week at the University of Minnesota (USA). The panel discussion will start at 1:30pm, on Monday, 18 October 2010, in the university's Cargill Building for Microbial and Plant Genomics.

All three panelists are directors-general of international research institutes that are part of the 15-member network known as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Besides Carlos Seré, who leads the International Livestock Research Institute, based in Nairobi, Kenya, the panelists include Shenggen Fan, of the International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington, DC, and Ruben Echeverria, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, based in Cali, Colombia.

'This is a rare opportunity to hear from some of today's most knowledgeable experts on global food prospects and policy,' said professor Brian Buhr, head of the university's Department of Applied Economics. 'To have all three of them together on one panel is unprecedented.'

Fan and Echeverria are graduates of the university's Department of Applied Economics. Later in the afternoon of 18 October 2010, Echeverria will be awarded the university's Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals. The department also will celebrate the accomplishments of the late Vernon Ruttan, who advised both Echeverria and Fan, with a ceremony officially naming its home building 'Ruttan Hall'.

Philip Pardey, of the university's Department of Applied Economics, co-directs a CGIAR HarvestChoice project and will moderate the panel of speakers. HarvestChoice works with all three international centres with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prabhu Pingali, Deputy Director of the Agricultural Development Program of the Gates Foundation and an international expert on global food issues, also will attend.

Greener pastures and better breeds could reduce carbon ‘hoofprint’

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Cows at the Boashan Community Dairy Feeding Centre, in Yunnan Province, China (photo credit: ILRI / Mann).

A new study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) finds reductions in greenhouse gasses could be worth a billion dollars to poor livestock farmers if they could sell saved carbon on international markets.

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by livestock operations in tropical countries—a major contributor to climate change—could be cut significantly by changing diets and breeds and improving degraded lands, according to a new study published today in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And as an added bonus, scientists found the small changes in production practices could provide a big payoff by providing poor farmers with up to US$1.3 billion annually in payments for carbon offsets.

'These technologically straightforward steps in livestock management could have a meaningful effect on greenhouse gas build-up, while simultaneously generating income for poor farmers,' said Philip Thornton, of ILRI, who co-authored the paper with ILRI’s Mario Herrero.

Livestock enterprises contribute about 18% of the world’s greenhouse gases, largely through deforestation to make room for livestock grazing and feed crops, the methane ruminant animals give off, and the nitrous oxide emitted by manure. Many worry these greenhouse gas emissions could grow due to increased livestock production to meet surging demand for meat and milk in developing countries.

Thornton and Herrero believe there are options readily available to prevent up to 417 million tons of carbon dioxide expected to be produced by livestock in tropical countries by 2030—a sum representing a savings of about 7% of all livestock-related global greenhouse gas emissions.

'Of course,' says Thornton, 'if we also manage to bring down consumption of meat and milk in rich countries, the amount of carbon saved will be even greater.' The difference between livestock production in rich and poor countries is a big concern to Thornton. 'We conducted this study to try to disentangle some of the complexities surrounding livestock systems, particularly those in developing countries. Livestock systems are not all the same, and there are large differences in their carbon footprint, their importance for the poor, and their mitigation potential.'

Most reductions of livestock-produced greenhouse gases would have to come from the more than half a billion livestock keepers in tropical countries. But the study finds that these struggling farmers could be motivated to adopt more climate-friendly practices.

'It would be a useful incentive if these farmers were allowed to sell the reductions they achieve as credits on global carbon markets,' Thornton said. 'We found that at US$20 per ton—which is what carbon was trading for last week on the European Climate Exchange—poor livestock keepers in tropical countries could generate about US$1.3 billion each year in carbon revenues.' Although carbon payments would not amount to a lot more income for each individual farmer (such payments might represent an increase in individual income of up to 15%), such payments should provide a tipping point for many smallholders considering intensifying their livestock production.

According to the ILRI study, livestock-related greenhouse gas reductions could be quickly achieved in tropical countries by modifying production practices, such as switching to more nutritious pasture grasses, supplementing diets with even small amounts of crop residues or grains, restoring degraded grazing lands, planting trees that both trap carbon and produce leaves that cows can eat, and adopting more productive breeds.

'We wanted to consider the impact in tropical countries because they are at the epicentre of a livestock revolution,' said Herrero. 'We expect consumption of milk and meat to roughly double in the developing world by 2050, which means it’s critical to adopt sustainable approaches now that contain and reduce the negative effects of livestock production, while allowing countries to realize the benefits, such as better nutrition and higher incomes for livestock-producing households.'

Herrero and Thornton said that changing diets and breeds could increase the amount of milk and meat produced by individual animals, thus reducing emissions because farmers would require fewer animals. For example, in Latin America, they note that switching cows from natural grasslands to pastures sown with a more nutritious grass called Brachiaria can increase daily milk production and weight gain by up to three-fold. This increase, they said, means fewer animals are needed to satisfy demand. In addition, Brachiaria also absorbs, or 'sequesters,' more carbon than degraded natural grasslands.

'Even if only about 30% of livestock owners in the region switch from natural grass to Brachiaria, which is what we consider a plausible adoption rate, that alone could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 30 million tons per year,' Thornton said.

Herrero and Thornton also said that, for a given level of demand, fewer animals would be needed if more farmers supplemented grazing with feed consisting of crop residues (often called 'stover'), such as the leaves and stalks of sorghum or maize plants, or with grains. In addition, they note there is the potential to boost production per animal by crossbreeding local with genetically improved breeds, the latter of which can provide more milk and meat than traditional breeds while emitting less methane per kilo of meat or milk produced.

Planting trees that have agricultural and feed uses, a practice known as 'agroforestry,' has the benefit of reducing feed costs for animals, while the trees themselves absorb carbon. Herrero and Thornton found that of the 33 million tons of carbon dioxide that could be reduced through wider use of agroforestry in livestock operations, almost two-thirds of it—72%—would come from the 'carbon sequestration' effects of the trees.

Carols Seré, ILRI’s Director General, said Thornton and Herrero’s work usefully steers the discussion of livestock’s contribution to climate change from blunt criticism of the impact of farm animals to meaningful efforts to address the environmental consequences of their increased production.

'There is a tendency today to simply demonize livestock as a cause of climate change without considering their importance, particularly for poor farmers in the developing world,' Seré said.

'Most of the farmers we work with have a relatively small environmental footprint,' he added, 'and they are intensely dependent on their animals for food, for income, and even as "engines" to plough their fields and transport their crops. What these farmers need are technological options and economic incentives that help them intensify their production in sustainable ways. Carbon payments would be a welcome additional incentive inducing such changes in smallholder livestock production.'

Key messages from the publication
(1) The impact of any given livestock intervention on mitigating total greenhouse gas emissions will be small.
To make a difference, we will need to implement many interventions and do so simultaneously. Mitigating the impacts of livestock systems on climate change will require taking a series of small incremental steps and implementing a wide range of different mitigation strategies to reduce carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

(2) We should aim for fewer, better fed, farm and herd animals.
Apart from strategies to sequester greater amounts of carbon, all strategies for mitigating greenhouse gases appear to require the intensification of animal diets and a reduction in animal numbers to produce the same volume of meat and milk.

(3) Ways to mitigate greenhouse gases in tropical livestock systems are technologically straightforward.
Apart from strategies to sequester carbon, all strategies for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions tested could be implemented at farm level with the appropriate economic and other incentives for resource-poor farmers.

(4) GHG mitigation strategies can be pro-poor.
Paying small-scale livestock farmers and herders for practices that help sequester carbon (under REDD or similar incentive schemes), although not trivial in management terms, would help smallholders generate greater and more diversified incomes.

(5) Mitigation strategies can also support strategies to help smallholders adapt to climate change.
Some interventions aiming to reduce greenhouse gases will also serve to help people cope with more unpredictable and extreme weather.

(6) All strategies will need to include appropriate incentives for smallholders.
A major incentive for small-scale livestock producers to change their production practices will be the increasing demand for livestock products in developing countries. But many smallholders will also need other economic incentives and more user-friendly technologies in order to make even straightforward changes in their production practices.

Read the whole paper at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: The potential for reduced methane and carbon dioxide emissions from livestock and pasture management in the tropics, 6 September 2010.

World Bank report and e-discussion on rising global interest in farmland: Who benefits?

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Village nestled in the landscape of central Malawi (photo by ILRI / Mann).

The recent food price crisis prompted an interest in acquiring farmland abroad to secure food supplies. Together with the biofuels boom and the financial crisis, it led to a rediscovery of the agricultural sector by different types of investors. However, there is concern that this wave of investment could deprive local communities of their rights and livelihoods. Reliable data on land acquisitions is scarce, leading to speculation and making it difficult for stakeholders to make well-informed decisions.

To fill this gap, the World Bank undertook a comprehensive study, which documented actual land transfers in 14 countries, examined 19 projects, reviewed media reports and explored the potential for increasing agricultural yields.

The demand for land has been enormous. The number of reported large scale farmland deals amounted to 45 million hectares in 2009 alone. That’s compared with an average expansion rate of 4 million hectares a year in the decade leading up to 2008. There is a strong investor focus on African countries with weak land governance. Furthermore, land is often transferred in a way that neglects existing land rights and is socially, economically, and environmentally unsustainable.

Recommendations of the World Bank report include the following.

01 Protect and recognize existing land rights, including and secondary rights such as grazing.

02 Make greater efforts to integrate investment strategies into national agricultural and rural development strategies, ensuring that social and environmental standards are adhered to.

03 Improve legal and institutional frameworks to deal with increased pressure on land.

04 Improve assessments of the economic and technical viability of investment projects.

05 Engage in more consultative and participatory processes to build on existing private-sector initiatives and voluntary standards such as the Equator Principles and the Forest Stewardship Council.

06 Increase the transparency of land acquisitions, including effective private-sector disclosure mechanisms.

You can join an online discussion to present your views on the report. The eDiscussion will take place from 13 September to 8 October 2010 and is jointly hosted by the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development and the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The aim is to gather inputs on recommendations for next steps from the perspective of three key stakeholder groups: civil society, public sector and private sector. The outcome of the eDiscussion will be considered at the World Bank’s Annual Meetings in October 2010 and a number of subsequent events.

If you wish to send a short written opening statement for the eDiscussion website, send your contribution to eDiscussion@donorplatform.org by 12 September 2010.

Read the whole World Bank report, Rising Global Interest in Farmland, September 2010.

The cerrado: Accounting for the food miracle (or madness?)

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

East Africa Boran cattle at ILRI's Kapiti Ranch (photo by ILRI / Elsworth)

A recent article in the Economist, 'The miracle of the cerrado [savanna],' is still stirring up passions.

Some, like our colleague Tom Tomich, formerly at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), in Nairobi and now at the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of California at Davos, California, take issue with the idea that large farms are necessarily more efficient and productive than small ones.

'How NOT to feed the world

'SIR – I believe you are correct to reject neo-Malthusian pessimism about 21st Century food prospects in your leader “How to feed the world: Brazil’s agricultural miracle” (28 Aug), but in the process, you ignore some of the most painful lessons of the 20th century and glibly advocate elements of agricultural strategy that long have been discredited as inappropriate for much of the world. True, the world does face food challenges in coming decades of similar magnitude to those tackled in the latter half of the 20th century. As you note, those successes came though a mix of scientific innovation, new inputs, and national policies that linked farmers with profitable market opportunities. (These innovations were adopted by many farmers, both small and large.) And Brazil’s Embrapa provides an apt example of the transformative power of public investment in agricultural science that should be emulated by more tropical countries; Brazil, to its credit, is striving to assist other countries in efforts to strengthen their agricultural R&D agencies.

'But you do a profound disservice to serious efforts to avert future food crises and the human misery these entail by extolling “capital intensive large farms” as the focus of agricultural development. The scientific evidence refuting your approach under conditions prevailing across much of Asia and Africa has been available for decades: as long as rural wages are low (characteristic of countries with chronic mass hunger), broad-based agricultural development (involving the majority of farms, which are small) is more economically efficient, leads to higher productivity per hectare, and creates more rural jobs than your approach.

'What about all those small farmers your approach would dispossess? Brazil (like the US, Canada, Australia, and Argentina) is endowed with relatively low population densities and significant resources of arable land such as the cerrado to bring into production; these conditions largely are absent in Asia and Africa. If heeded by their policymakers, your call for primacy of capital-intensive, large-farm development is a formula for economic inefficiency and social catastrophe (depriving the majority of farmers of their livelihoods—which in turn deprives them of food) and would further entrench the politics of patronage that has inhibited sound policy in so many tropical countries.'

Others, like our friends Luigi Guarino and Jeremy Cherfas over at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, want a broader environmental accounting:

'Is there really no downside to Brazil’s agricultural miracle?
'by LUIGI on SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

'It’s not easy to explain the Brazilian agricultural miracle to a lay audience in a couple of magazine pages, and The Economist makes a pretty good fist of it. It points out that the astonishing increase in crop and meat production in Brazil in the past ten to fifteen year — and it is astonishing, more that 300% by value — has come about due to an expansion in the amount of land under the plow, sure, but much more so due to an increase in productivity. It rightly heaps praise on Embrapa, Brazil’s agricultural research corporation, for devising a system that has made the cerrado, Brazil’s hitherto agronomically intractable savannah, so productive. It highlights the fact that a key part of that system is improved germplasm — of Brachiaria, soybean, zebu cattle — originally from other parts of the world, incidentally helping make the case for international interdependence in genetic resources.1 And much more.

'What it resolutely does not do is give any sense of the cost of all this. I don’t mean the monetary cost, though it would have been nice for policy makers to be reminded that agricultural research does cost money, though the potential returns are great. The graph shows what’s been happening to Embrapa’s budget of late. A billion reais of agricultural research in 2006 bought 108 billion reais of crop production.

'But I was really thinking of environmental and social costs. The Economist article says that Brazil is “often accused of levelling the rainforest to create its farms, but hardly any of this new land lies in Amazonia; most is cerrado.” So that’s all right then. No problem at all if 50% of one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots has been destroyed.2 After all, it’s not the Amazon. A truly comprehensive overview of Brazil’s undoubted agricultural successes would surely cast at least a cursory look at the downside, if only to say that it’s all been worth it. Especially since plans are afoot to export the system to the African savannah. And it’s not as if the information is not out there.

'A final observation. One key point the article makes is that the success of the agricultural development model used in the cerrado is that farms are big.

'Like almost every large farming country, Brazil is divided between productive giant operations and inefficient hobby farms.

'Well, leave aside for a moment whether it is empirically true that big means efficient and small inefficient in farming. Leave aside also the issue of with regard to what efficiency is being measured, and whether that makes any sense. Leave all that aside. I would not be surprised if millions of subsistence farming families around the world were to concede that what they did was not particularly efficient. But I think they would find it astonishing — and not a little insulting — to see their daily struggles described as a hobby.'

Read more at the Economist: The miracle of the cerrado, 28 August 2010, or Agricultural biodiversity Blog.

Meat/milk/eggs: Who should reduce—and who should increase—their consumption to slow global warming

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Agricultural systems analyst Mario Herrero (Cost Rica), based at the Nairobi, Kenya, campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), this July-August 2010 hosted a 'write-shop cum think tank' session with a group of leading world experts on the topic of food systems, particularly those involving meat, milk and eggs, and climate change.

Eight short filmed interviews of 4 of these experts on the following topics are posted on www.ilri.blip.tv. Click on the links below to view the interviews.

(1) From cows to camels: adapting to Africa’s drying climates
Ilona Glücks: Vétérinaires sans frontières (VSF), Switzerland

Many of Africa’s grazing lands are becoming drier with climate change. Some pastoral communities that have traditionally herded cattle, sheep and goats across these lands are switching to camels. Camels produce milk for longer than cattle, maintaining production even during prolonged dry seasons and droughts. Researchers expect that camels will become increasingly common and important to the economic and nutritional well-being of Africa’s pastoral households.

(2) Will deforestation remain the biggest driver of human-induced global warming?
Michael Obersteiner: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria

Deforestation historically has been the largest producer of human-generated greenhouse gases. Recent experience suggests that global deforestation trends can be reversed. Since 2002, for example, Brazil has virtually stopped the clearing of forests on a massive scale to make room for livestock grazing.

(3) We can reduce global warming through our food chains
Tara Garnett: Food Climate Research Network, University of Surrey, UK

Significant amounts of greenhouse gas produced by humans are generated by the growing, processing, distribution and sale of food. Much can be done to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in our food chains.

(4) We need to find equitable ways to reduce greenhouse gases
Tara Garnett: Food Climate Research Network, University of Surrey, UK

Scientists report that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 per cent by 2050. Research shows ways to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector, which generates a large amount of the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by humans. Policies to support such reductions must to take into account the different needs and circumstances of developed and developing nations.

(5) Will vegetarianism reduce global warming?
Tara Garnett: Food Climate Research Network, University of Surrey, UK

While changes need to be made to address growing problems of obesity and diet-based ill health in rich countries, animal products will remain vital to the nutrition of poor people in poor countries, where consumption of milk, meat and eggs is about a tenth the rate of that in rich countries. Whole populations becoming vegetarian or vegan will help neither the overfed nor underfed.

(6) How much land should be converted from foods to bio-fuels?
Tim Searchinger: Princeton University, USA

With land becoming increasingly scarce, converting lots of farms to grow crops for bio-fuels rather than food could reduce our food supplies and drive up food prices. Most of the world’s arable land now being used to grow food should not be converted for bio-fuel production. Rather, unused lands and non-food crops or waste biomass (e.g., inedible cereal stalks) should be sought for bio-fuel production.

(7) Should we curtail livestock or biofuel production to slow global warming?
Tim Searchinger: Princeton University, USA

Livestock enterprises today produce more greenhouse gases than the production of fuels derived from biomass; that’s because livestock keeping is still so much more common than bio-fuel production. But policies to curtail livestock production in poor countries would harm the poor. Livestock are the nutritional and economic mainstay of some one billion poor people today, and are likely only to increase in importance as the global human population grows to more than 9 billion by mid-century.

(8) Will we ever run our cars on bio-fuels?
Tim Searchinger: Princeton University, USA

One day we will probably grow enough bio-fuels to power airplanes. It is unlikely, however, that we shall ever produce bio-fuels at scales sufficiently large to replace petrol for our cars.

Livestock background paper for World Development Report 2010: Development in a changing climate

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Household takes refuge from the rain in central Malawi (photo by ILRI/Mann).

A paper on livestock and climate change—'The inter-linkages between rapid growth in livestock production, climate change, and the impacts on water resources, land use, and deforestation'—was prepared as a background paper to the World Bank’s acclaimed World Development Report 2010: Development in a Changing Climate. It was written by two agricultural systems analysts at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Philip Thornton and Mario Herrero.

The following is the abstract to the paper.

'Livestock systems globally are changing rapidly in response to human population growth, urbanization, and growing incomes. This paper discusses the linkages between burgeoning demand for livestock products, growth in livestock production, and the impacts this may have on natural resources, and how these may both affect and be affected by climate change in the coming decades.

'Water and land scarcity will increasingly have the potential to constrain food production growth, with adverse impacts on food security and human well-being. Climate change will exacerbate many of these trends, with direct effects on agricultural yields, water availability, and production risk.

'In the transition to a carbon-constrained economy, livestock systems will have a key role to play in mitigating future emissions. At the same time, appropriate pricing of greenhouse gas emissions will modify livestock production costs and patterns. Health and ethical considerations can also be expected to play an increasing role in modifying consumption patterns of livestock products, particularly in more developed countries.

'Livestock systems are heterogeneous, and a highly differentiated approach needs to be taken to assessing impacts and options, particularly as they affect the resource-poor and those vulnerable to global change. Development of comprehensive frameworks that can be used for assessing impacts and analyzing trade-offs at both local and regional levels is needed for identifying and targeting production practices and policies that are locally appropriate and can contribute to environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, and economic development.'

About the World Development Report 2010:
'Today's enormous development challenges are complicated by the reality of climate change─the two are inextricably linked and together demand immediate attention. Climate change threatens all countries, but particularly developing ones. Understanding what climate change means for development policy is the central aim of the World Development Report 2010.

'Estimates are that developing countries would bear some 75 to 80 percent of the costs of anticipated damages caused by the changing climate. Developing countries simply cannot afford to ignore climate change, nor can they focus on adaptation alone. So action to reduce vulnerability and lay the groundwork for a transition to low-carbon growth paths is imperative.

'The World Development Report 2010 explores how public policy can change to better help people cope with new or worsened risks, how land and water management must adapt to better protect a threatened natural environment while feeding an expanding and more prosperous population, and how energy systems will need to be transformed.

'The authors examine how to integrate development realities into climate policy─in international agreements, in instruments to generate carbon finance, and in steps to promote innovation and the diffusion of new technologies.

'The World Development Report 2010 is an urgent call for action, both for developing countries who are striving to ensure policies are adapted to the realities and dangers of a hotter planet, and for high-income countries who need to undertake ambitious mitigation while supporting developing countries efforts.

'The authors argue that a climate-smart world is within reach if we act now to tackle the substantial inertia in the climate, in infrastructure, and in behaviors and institutions; if we act together to reconcile needed growth with prudent and affordable development choices; and if we act differently by investing in the needed energy revolution and taking the steps required to adapt to a rapidly changing planet.'

Read more of ILRI livestock background paper: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 'The inter-linkages between rapid growth in livestock production, climate change, and the impacts on water resources, land use, and deforestation', 2010, by Philip Thornton and Mario Herrero.

Study of future of global food cites ways to advance and sustain livestock development

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI systems analyst Philip Thornton, participating in a media panel at the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen, December 2009 (photo by ILRI / P Kristjanson).

Publication this week of 21 papers in a special open-access edition of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, part of a UK government Foresight study on the future of the global food industry, is causing a bit of a stir. The mass media are focusing on the wilder predictions, such as the possibility that we may be growing meat artificially, in vats, to feed the 9 billion-plus people expected to be alive at mid-century.

But more importantly, this major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, argues that although big, the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable and many of the papers are optimistic.

What is needed in addition to novel approaches to increasing food production, they say, are better uses of an array of low-tech to high-tech solutions, some already available, others needing refinement or a rethink for meeting the needs of the world's vast army of smallholder farmers.

As the Guardian article reports: 'Other papers suggest a radical rethink of global food production is needed to reduce its dependence on oil. Up to 70% of the energy needed to grow and supply food at present is fossil-fuel based which in turn contributes to climate change.

'"The need for action is urgent given the time required for investment in research to deliver new technologies to those that need them and for political and social change to take place," says the paper by Beddington.

'"Major advances can be achieved with the concerted application of current technologies and the importance of investing in research sooner rather than later to enable the food system to cope with challenges in the coming decades," says the paper led by the population biologist Charles Godfray of Oxford University.'

Regarding novel ideas on the horizon, in an interview with the Guardian, Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, and an author of one of the papers, said conventional animal breeding may be insufficient to meet the anticipated doubling of demand for dairy and meat products in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and to do so in sustainable ways. Thornton described two 'wild cards' that could transform global meat and milk production: 'One is artificial meat, which is made in a giant vat, and the other is nanotechnology, which is expected to become more important as a vehicle for delivering medication to livestock.'

But Thornton cautions against holding out hope for any one technology to solve our looming global food insecurity. He says we need to invest now in options across the whole gamut of agricultural development. Livestock development in poor countries, he says, 'will increasingly be affected by competition for natural resources, particularly land and water, as well as competition between food and feed, and by the need to operate in a carbon-constrained economy.' To help the world's 600 million small-scale farmers and herders increase their production and do so more efficiently, he says, will require continuing advances in the three pillars of livestock development–breeding, nutrition, and animal health.

The final Foresight report will be published later this year in advance of the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

Read more at: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biology, Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects, by Philip Thornton.

The Guardian: Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050, 16 August 2010

Bringing climate change down to earth

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

The New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman addresses an interesting ‘disconnect’ in America in his column this week (Want the good news first?, 27 July 2010).

”The [US] Senate’s failure to act [on climate change] is a result of many factors, but one is that the climate-energy policy debate got disconnected from average people. We need less talk about “climate” and more about how conservation saves money, renewable energy creates jobs, restoring the gulf’s marshes sustains fishermen and preserving the rainforest helps poor people. Said Glenn Prickett, vice president at the Nature Conservancy: “We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth and show how it matters in people’s everyday lives.”

Some of those working to help farmers and herders in poor countries build sustainable agricultural systems and adapt to climate change have a similar message.

Funding for climate change research in developing countries, which are expected to be hit hardest by global warming, has increased dramatically in recent years, while funding for much traditional agricultural research for development has remained stagnant. Even so, scientists working at the cross-section of agricultural development and climate change say that there is not a lot in their research portfolios that is new because of the injection of new climate change funding. Rather, much of the new funding is allowing them to expand and refine decades of research on sustainable development of smallholder agriculture.

The two billion small-scale farmers and herders these agricultural scientists serve are, after all, already among the world’s foremost experts in climate change. They and their farming ancestors have managed to wrest food and livelihoods from changing tropical landscapes since the dawn of agriculture. No one has to tell them how climate change ‘matters in people’s everyday lives’.

Conserving rainforests, wetlands and other natural resources; restoring rangelands and farmlands into productive use; exploiting renewable energy, saving money and creating jobs; helping people build livelihoods that are sustainable over the long term–these are not new ideas. People have been working in these areas for decades. The hope of many agricultural research-for-development scientists is that the intellectual as well as financial spillovers from the current world focus interest on climate change will allow them to pursue these topics more vigorously; to connect to more, and more diverse, experts; to get more refined data on developing-countries; to make faster advances in their disciplines; and to help more people escape poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.

More . . . (New York Times, Want the good news first?, 27 July 2010)

Livestock: ‘Polluters of the Planet’ or ‘Pathways out of Poverty’? A public debate

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Two development experts recently debated the ‘public goods’ and ‘bads’ of global livestock production. They debated the question, ‘Should we eat less meat to increase food security’, in a ‘Spat’ column in the current (June 2010) issue of People and Science, published by the British Science Association.

Arguing ‘no’ (with reservations) is John McDermott, a Canadian veterinary epidemiologist who serves the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as Deputy Director General for Research. Arguing ‘yes’ (also with reservations) is Vicki Hird, a Senior Food Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, a UK-based environmental non-governmental organization.

The missions of both ILRI and Friends of the Earth have much in common. Both organizations, for example, are investigating ways to reduce climate change. And both want to manage natural resources in ways that conserve as much land, water, biodiversity and air as possible, with everyone getting a ‘fair share’ of those resources.

But when it comes to their views on livestock — as to whether cows, sheep, goats, pigs and other farm animals do more good than bad, or more bad than good, for people and their environments — each of these development experts sees livestock from a different perspective.

For Hird, who lives in Europe — where environmental concerns are major issues, and where the public embraces environmental causes and activism — livestock are largely ‘polluters of the planet’.

For McDermott, who lives in East Africa — where people’s greatest concerns are getting a job, putting food on the table and paying school and medical fees, a region where development concerns take centre stage — livestock represent ‘pathways out of poverty’.

As one might expect, Hird takes a ‘global’ and ‘environmental’ view of the impacts of livestock production, focusing on the inhumane industrial ‘factory farms’ of industrialized countries, the over-consumption of fatty meat by the rich, and the rape of South American forests to make room for cattle, sheep and goat ranches or for growing soy to feed pigs in Europe. Additionally, there is a growing push for sustainable practices, such as installing solar panels for factory operations, to reduce the carbon footprint of such industries. McDermott, also as one might expect, takes the perspective of the world’s 450 million small farmers, who raise their animals on grass and crop wastes rather than grain, whose children don’t yet eat enough meat, milk and eggs, and whose livelihoods depend directly on the natural resources they have at hand.

Both of these development experts, perhaps surprisingly, also agree on quite a lot when it comes to livestock. They agree that factory farming practices are becoming more and more unsustainable as well as inhumane; they agree that most people in rich countries would profit from eating less fatty meats; they agree that South America’s forests should not be felled so that rich people can eat more pigmeat; and they agree that finding more sustainable as well as equitable ways of producing livestock is in the general public interest.

What the debate focuses on, then, is not so much what to do but how to do it. And, as we shall see, on how long that should take.

McDermott argues for giving small farmers ‘incentives’, for example, to redistribute livestock herds or to intensify their crop-plus-livestock farming systems in ways that make more efficient use of natural resources.

Hird argues for more regulation of the livestock industry in richer countries in areas such as farm subsidies and taxation, and for raising awareness of the major environmental, social and health problems that livestock systems can cause so as to change public (meat-eating) behaviour.

McDermott thinks our biggest job is ‘to close the selective-evidence divide on both sides of the debate’ by getting more evidence in key areas; some industrial practices, he points out, make ‘very efficient’ uses of environmental resources. To come up with equitable policies in the global livestock sector, McDermott argues, will require better assessments — and at much more local levels — of the differing socio-economic as well as environmental trade-offs of those policies. ‘Before taking broad action’, he says, ‘we should use the best available knowledge to design and test interventions in pilot studies’.

Hird is impatient ‘to wait for a perfect evidence base’ before acting and says they have ‘presented a Sustainable Livestock Bill in Parliament to kick start the dialogue on vital UK action’.

In brief, Hird appears most interested in quickly getting to ‘less’ livestock intensive production’ and McDermott in developing long-term ‘smarter’ livestock intensive production’.

Let us know below what you think.

More . . . (People and Science Spat, June 2010)

Friends of the Earth

International Livestock Research Institute

In a new 2-minute filmed interview on the ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ of livestock by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), scientists Phil Thornton, of ILRI, and Andy Jarvis, of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), in Colombia, give their views on whether giving up eating meat altogether would help to save the environment. They describe the importance of livestock to the livelihoods of one billion of the world’s poor and caution that removing livestock from the environment would have its own effects. These scientists shared their views during the launch of a new initiative by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) called ‘Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.’

Farming extensively: A ‘third way’ for agriculture?

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Not to be missed is an inspired, and inspiring, 20-minute TED Talk by one of America's most famous cooks, New York's Dan Barber.

How I Fell in Love with a Fish is a presentation not for the 'self-righteous goody-two-shoes foodie,' says Barber (although he immediately confesses that, as a passionate chef and environmentalist, he is one). Rather, this is an instructive tale of how he fell out of love with one fish and into love with another, and the reasons for that, plus much else about our food systems.

His second (fishy) love affair takes place in Veta La Palma, a 27,000-acre totally self-sustaining fish farm in southwestern Spain that had formerly been a beef ranch and before that a wetlands. The owners of this fish farm reflooded the land, restoring the wetlands ecosystem, and began operating in radically sustainable ways. This farm doesn't feed its animals (fish); it measures its success not by how much fish it produces but rather by the health of its predators (birds); and, as a spill-over benefit, it serves the region as a water purification plant.

This fish farm / love story is, says Barber, a recipe for the future of good food. 'What we need,' says Barber, 'is a radically new conception of agriculture, one in which the food actually tastes good.'

And for those of you who may be wondering about where he stands on global food security, Barber does get to the question (which he admits he 'doesn't love'): 'But how we can feed the world'.

'Our current agro-business business plan is one in liquidation,' he cautions, because it is a business 'that is quickly eroding the ecological capital that makes that very production possible. . . . Our breadbaskets are threatened today not because of diminishing supply but because of diminishing resources.'

Barber answers the question 'How can we feed the world' with another, 'How can we create conditions for every community feeding itself?'

He answers, 'To do that, don't look at the agro-business model for the future. It's really old and its tired. It's high on capital, chemistry and machines. And it's never produced anything really good to eat. Look to farms that restore instead of deplete. Farms that farm extensively instead of just intensively. Farmers that are not just producers but are experts in relationships.'

To that end, we might look to many of the world's billion-plus small-scale farmers in developing countries who are ambitious to practice neither the unhealthy factory-farming of the rich nor the grinding subsistence farming of the poor.

This is what scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its research, development and agricultural partners are calling a 'third way' for the future of animal agriculture and mixed crop-and-livestock farming. This is an agriculture that would manage to feed the world while helping the world's 'bottom billion' climb out of hunger and poverty. Such a 'third way' of agriculture would feed both human nutrition and ambition in ways that build their livestock and other assets while conserving, not merely extracting, the Earth's remaining, land, water, air and other natural resources.

More . . . ('No simple solutions to livestock and climate change', opinion piece by ILRI Director General Carlos Seré published in SciDevNet, 10 November 2009)

When small is both beautiful and big: Heifer President JoLuck is co-recipient of 2010 World Food Prize

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday (16 June 2010) named Jo Luck, President of Heifer International, and David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, co-winners of the 2010 World Food Prize for spearheading two of the world’s foremost grassroots organizations working to end hunger and poverty.

In awarding the World Food Prize to Jo Luck and Beckmann, the World Food Prize Foundation is honouring not only these extraordinary individuals, but also the central role of non-governmental humanitarian organizations generally in mobilizing and empowering everyday citizens to end hunger worldwide.

David Beckmann has been head of Bread for the World — a collective Christian voice to end hunger — since 1991. Beckmann has marshalled some quarter of a million constituents to legislate for changing policies, programs and conditions that allow hunger to persist.

Jo Luck has built Heifer International, founded in 1944 and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, into one of the world’s premier hunger-fighting non-profit organizations. Her organization provides farm animals to extremely poor families, and in so doing, helps those families to become self-reliant.

Since becoming CEO of Heifer in 1992, Jo Luck expanded both the scope and impact of Heifer’s battle against hunger and poverty. To do this, she and her staff have worked with many local and global partners to institute animal husbandry policies, systems and practices that help people improve their lives.

One of Heifer’s partners is the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Jo Luck has served on ILRI’s board of trustees and her organization works with ILRI on a project to lift one million people in East Africa out of poverty through improved small-scale dairying.

Jo Luck has provided more than 30 kinds of farm animals—from bees to water buffaloes — along with trees, seeds and training — to families in desperate need of assets with which to build sustainable livelihoods. She has increased the number of long-term supporters of Heifer from 20,000 in 1992 to more than 500,000 in 2009. Her organization’s outreach has helped 12 million families –1.5 million families in 2009 alone — to put nutritious food on their tables while also helping to feed others through Heifer’s Passing on the Gift, which asks every family that receives an animal from Heifer to give one of its female offspring to another family in need.

Jo Luck's leadership at Heifer is characterized by full engagement of the hungry families and communities her organization works to benefit. And she has worked tirelessly to ensure that the American public has a better understanding of global issues, and the appropriate roles America and its people can play on the global stage. Heifer now has a broad and innovative portfolio of educational strategies promoting such understanding among its many US supporters. In particular, Jo Luck has raised public understanding of how life choices made by people in rich countries affect people living in chronic hunger and severe poverty.

To complement Heifer’s Passing on the Gift tradition, Jo Luck created an enabling framework, Cornerstones for Just and Sustainable Development, that imaginatively joins concerns for human nutrition and spiritual growth to management of animal and natural resources, gender equity, leadership and organizational and business development.

By placing animals and knowledge directly in the hands of farmers, Heifer has empowered millions of people, particularly women, to convert these assets into foods, jobs and incomes. A lasting legacy Jo Luck’s leadership of Heifer appears to be engaging aid donors and recipients alike emotionally as well as economically, which has proved to be a potent combination that provokes humanitarian action as well as visionary thinking.

Starting at Heifer as Director of International Program from 1989 to 1992, Jo Luck then served as president and CEO of Heifer International from 1992 to 2010. Earlier this year she stepped down as CEO and will remain president until 2011. She is writing a book about her experiences with the organization.

The 2010 World Food Prize will be formally presented to Jo Luck and David Beckmann at a ceremony at the Iowa State Capitol on 14 October 2010, which will be part of a 2010 Borlaug Dialogue that starts the previous day.

The theme of this year’s Dialogue is ‘Take it to the Farmer: Reaching the World’s Smallholders.’ Among the dignitaries who will make keynote presentations at the Dialogue are Kofi Annan, Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and 2001 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Howard Buffett, American philanthropist; Prabhu Pingall, Deputy Director of Agriculture at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Thomas Vilsack, US Secretary of Agriculture; and Carlos Seré, Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute. Seré will speak on the value of livestock in smallholder agriculture.

Further information about the Laureate Award Ceremony and symposium can be found at The World Food Prize.

Gates entry into CGIAR: Will research technologies or innovation systems rule the day?

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

In SciDev.Net this week, Yojana Sharma describes what people see as benefits and concerns about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joining the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which supports the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and 14 other centres around the world.

Prabhu Pingali, head of agriculture policy at the Foundation, acknowledges: ‘The big player in this game is obviously CGIAR. . . . The CGIAR has a much broader agenda than we do . . . .' This, says Sharma, 'is a reference to the group’s growing engagement with all aspects of improving agricultural productivity in the developing world.

Andy Hall, a researcher into rural innovation for the United Nations University in Maastricht, in the Netherlands, worries that: ‘The underlying thinking at Gates is that science can solve the problems . . . . This was the way CGIAR was in the past, and the danger is that Gates is reinventing that approach.’

Sharma concludes that: ‘The critics say that the tensions between those who favour a science- and technology-driven approach to increasing agricultural productivity, and others (such as Hall) who prefer to think in terms of promoting broader agricultural innovation systems, are at their acutest when it comes to genetically modified food.’

Which begs the question as to why so many think that a focus on agricultural technology is incompatible with a focus on agricultural innovation systems. Surely both approaches — interacting in synergy since the dawn of agriculture — are still needed.

http://www.scidev.net/

http://www.merit.unu.edu/

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/

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