The UK food industry is worth £80 billion and employs 3.6 million people. Driven by the triple threat of a growing population, the threat of climate change and a vulnerable supply of natural resources, the new policy by Defra outlines what the UK government perceives to be priority actions for the future, including:

• increasing the amount of food grown in Britain
• reducing the impact of agriculture upon the environment
• reducing agricultural emissions by the equivalent of 3 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2020
• reviewing the impacts of UK consumption on agricultural economies in the rest of the world
• addressing the issue of waste through reuse, recycling or energy generation
• informing consumers about healthy, sustainable food choices.

The policy also spells out plans to double its investment in agricultural research to £80 million by 2013, with a focus on helping farmers in developing nations.  Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State of Defra, said:

By turning research into practical ideas, and by learning from what the best are doing, we can achieve a lot more. Science will also tell us when nature is under strain.

‘Food 2030’ seeks to improve the UK food industry from production to distribution, providing better resources to farmers, whilst using natural resources sustainably to help the global food industry.  Benn said:

We need to increase food production to feed a growing world population – there’ll be another 2-3 billion people in 40 years.

The Financial Times reports that plans detailing how these changes will be effectuated, including any necessary new legislation, will be released in the coming months.

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Cesar Izaurralde, a soil scientist at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is quoted in a Reuters news piece as saying that farm management and carbon capture go hand-in-hand:

We know farm management has a very significant influence on how much carbon is in the soil … I think in the next two to three years the research community will have the tools ready.

Measuring how to count carbon, both in terms of how much is already there and what the capacity for storage is, is a challenge, as the Reuters article highlights:

Uncertain accounting is a critical obstacle in harnessing the potential of the agricultural sector and especially soils, which in theory could cut annual global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 10 percent from present levels by 2030.

Currently, there are two World Bank-funded trial projects happening in Kenya which are looking to understand how to lock carbon into the soil. Johannes Woelcke, the World Bank’s team leader in Kenya, talked about the projected carbon savings from the trials.

The Kenya trials … will cut carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 130,000 tonnes annually, involving 90,000 small-scale farmers.

Soil’s contribution to carbon capture and storage (CCS) could be a discussion point at the Copenhagen climate meeting in December. Reuters reported that the Copenhagen meeting may result in further incentives for farmers to apply low-carbon techniques on farms, possibly targeting the 2 billion poor living on small farms.

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Philip Pardey, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Minnesota, talks about the decline:

The ultimate consequences of the productivity slowdown are that we’re going to move away from a 50-year trend of declining real prices of food to moving back into a trend for increasing food prices.

Making agriculture R&D a top priority is key to ensuring, as Professor Pardey says, that food prices don’t increase.

However rising food prices have been a recent trend, according to the United Nations:

The U.N. World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeran said in Canberra on Monday that most of the developing world is paying more for food despite drops in commodity market prices during the global economic slowdown, with 200 million people joining the ranks of the hungry in the past two years.

By pushing on with greater agriculture investment funding, more can be done to battle against global food shortages and ensure more efficient food production.

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In drought conditions, plants begin to produce more of this hormone, which creates a number of changes to their physical structure. Their seeds lie dormant in the ground in order to wait out the dry period.  They slow their growth in order to conserve energy.  Tiny pores in their leaves are closed in order to prevent water from being lost.

Understanding how abscisic acid works in plants can help scientists replicate this phenomenon for farmers whose crops are suffering from drought conditions.  R&D such as this can help agricultural producers adapt to the impacts of climate change.

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Mapping the cowpea is notoriously time-consuming and difficult. But now production plans of new and improved cowpea varieties can begin to take shape. Continued development and research is a key part of the Farming First plan (read more about our sixth principle, which is to prioritise research initiatives).

Here’s how the researchers did it:

To build the map, the scientists first modified and then applied advanced genetic tools developed from human genome investigations that only recently have been applied to a few major crop plants.

But what exactly is a cowpea genetic map? Here’s an explanation:

The consensus genetic map of cowpea is a dense and detailed roadmap of its genome (a genome is a complete genetic blueprint). The map has approximately 1000 molecular markers throughout the genome. The markers, which are like signposts directing a motorist to a destination, are associated with traits desired for breeding and used to more deliberately design and assemble new superior varieties.

Cowpea is a staple for maize- and rice-based diets in Latin America and drought-prone areas such as Africa and Asia.

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Members of the Farming First coalition believe that:

1. Agriculture generally, and farmers especially, are vital to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
2. Increasing farm productivity in a sustainable way and decreasing waste and losses can significantly mitigate the effects of climate change, prevent deforestation, and protect biodiversity.
3. Adopting proven sustainable agricultural practices reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enhances the effect of natural carbon sinks.
4. Further research and innovation are essential to invent the necessary adaptation and mitigation solutions.

Download the action plan (PDF) Download the press release (PDF)

Therefore, farmers must be involved in implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. To support them, we must create sound and reliable incentives; we must share knowledge; and we must make adequate tools and technologies accessible to deliver both food and energy security.

As key stakeholders in agriculture, the world’s farmers, agronomists, scientists, engineers and industries are working together through an open coalition, to provide innovative solutions which reduce emissions from agriculture and adapt to climate change while increasing agricultural productivity to meet growing food needs.

Given growing food demands, we believe that rather than pursuing blanket reduction targets for GHG emissions in agriculture, governments should commit to climate change mitigation through improved and sustainable agricultural productivity across multiple factors including water use, carbon efficiency, improved nutrient use efficiency, and land-use intensity.

In response, the Farming First coalition would like to bring forward a series of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in accordance with its six-point action plan for enhancing sustainable development through agriculture.

The Farming First coalition calls on all governments active in the COP15 negotiations to:

1. Support the unique role of agriculture in the global climate change response.

• Ensure that agriculture is included within the UNFCCC negotiations at COP15 in Copenhagen.
• Refrain from setting an absolute emission reduction target for agriculture as an industry.

2. Encourage the use of all available and applicable climate change solutions.

• Promote agricultural best practices, particularly Integrated Crop Management (ICM), conservation agriculture, intercropping and fertilizer best management practices.
• Support increased investment in agricultural research, including links between agriculture and climate change, involving research centres, programmes and industry R&D.

3. Promote funding mechanisms which support the needs of all levels and forms of farming.

• Urge agricultural inclusion within multilateral financial mechanisms, potentially including the UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI).
• Promote voluntary carbon credit systems for GHG offsets from agriculture and land use to reward farmers for their contribution.
• Extend the scope of carbon markets to encompass the critical role of soil as a carbon sink.
• Establish international technology assessment and sharing programmes for climate change, as well as capacity-building programmes, including the development of local and global centres of excellence.

4. Reward resource-based productivity improvements as a direct contributor to climate-change effectiveness.

• Encourage productivity improvements – in a sustainable way – on existing agricultural land to avoid additional land clearing and give priority to the rehabilitation of degraded agricultural soils.
• Recognise the positive contribution of sustainable land management practices through increased coordinated agricultural research.
• Include robust methodologies and field-testing to overcome uncertainties around measurement, reporting and verification.
• Provide incentives to farmers and other stakeholders which reward adoption of sustainable and responsible production systems, better performing technologies and the efforts of early adopters.

5. Invest in capability sharing to encourage all farmers to play a role in climate change while safeguarding local and global food security.

• Enhance capacity building to implement sustainable land management policies and programmes.
• Create a dedicated adaptation fund for agriculture accessible to farmers’ organisations in developing countries.

Read the full Farming First climate change policy on the Farming First site here.

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“As a result of diminished resources and lack of funds for agriculture, we saw declines in productivity, we saw people moving out of farming to rely more on commodities like minerals, and rely more on imports of food rather than produce their own.”

Ajay Vashee also warned that the scale of the need is tremendous, and agricultural investments need to be sustained and expanded further in order to reap the anticipated outcomes.

The broadcast also addressed the structure of the Obama administration’s intended agriculture plan, which includes $3.5 billion over the next three years to help developing-world farmers produce more food and get their products to market.

Critical to heading off the food crisis in Africa is the prioritisation of research imperatives (per Farming First’s Principle 6). Joachim von Braun, Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, discussed the scale of the challenge facing global agriculture:

[I]f agricultural research and development were to increase from $5 billion a year to $15 billion, “10 years later we will have…300 million [fewer] people among the hungry poor. This is the largest benefit one can achieve with this type of investment.”

At a U.N meeting in September, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined the U.S. agriculture policy:

The strategy Clinton sketched out includes many of the elements experts say developing- world farmers need most: investments in research and development, access to improved seed and fertilizer, insurance programs for small farmers, as well as improved infrastructure such as roads and storage facilities to help farmers get their products to market.

The article highlights the fact that agriculture is a “good investment” for policymakers to make and that their efforts need to be farmer-focused and knowledge-based, aimed at diversifying the range of tools which they have at their disposal over the long-term.

Listen to the complete audio broadcast here:

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The interactive map allows viewers to explore case studies of how agricultural research has benefited individual countries and regions.  Each case study identifies key periods of time, target regions, and a more detailed account of each intervention.  It also provides additional links to related case studies from elsewhere.

The range of case studies includes:

• Combating cassava diseases in Nigeria and Ghana: This programme has contributed to 40% yield increases and has benefited 29 million local people
• Introducing zero-tillage agriculture in Argentina: This practice has improved soil fertility, created new agricultural jobs, and helped keep global soybean prices low
• Improving mungbean yields and resilience in south Asia: Introducing new varieties of mungbeans has helped improve yields, shorten maturity times, and increase resilience to pests to the extent that global production increased by 35% over the past 25 years.

There are many more case studies on the site, which helps create a visual cue for understanding agriculture’s advancements since the mid-20th century.

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Reuters breaks down what is at stake for Brazil and the rest of the world:

At stake is a $250 billion farm industry, food for millions of poor and supplies to world markets of Brazil’s major export crops such as soybeans and coffee.

We can’t change our planting calendar or the rains. How can I minimize my risks? We hope science will provide some answers.

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The project is a joint initiative by the Technology Strategy Board, Defra and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), according to Farmer’s Guardian.  The aim is to “bring Government, business and researchers together in a major initiative” addressing a reliable food supply in the future.

A key element of the initiative is to prioritise research initiatives by focusing on the newest technological advances and learning how to make them work to better farming:

The first project will see up to £13m invested in new research and development to help crop growers to respond to the challenges of increasing productivity while reducing the environmental impact of crop production.

National Farmers Union president Peter Kendall echoed the call for research and understanding of how farmers can use technology to their advantage:

We need science and technology to deliver solutions and I am sure that forward-looking, innovative farm businesses across the UK will be fully supportive of this important new programme.

The subjects that the fund will address are crop productivity, sustainable livestock production, waste reduction and management and greenhouse gas reduction.

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