A Sustainability Challenge Food Security for All: Report of Two Workshops (2012) / Chapter Skim
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[Part II]: 1 ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
[Part II]: 1 ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Pages 131-164
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From page 131... ...
Subsequent speakers talked about the need for new agricultural paradigms; trends in agricultural productivity; and key natural resource constraints, including water, land and forests, biodiversity, and soils. There was also a session examining the likely impact of climate change on future food production and related risks and vulnerabilities.
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From page 132... ...
• Close to a billion people are chronically undernourished. While subject to possible estimation errors, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
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These may range from fortification of certain foods in some countries to training for life course approaches to address obesity risks in others. Meeting the Growing Demand de Haen explained that the second strategic goal requires ensuring future production growth to meet the demand of a growing and increasingly prosperous world population.3 Whether or not the world-wide food system will succeed in meeting that growing demand on a sustainable basis will depend on the effective interplay of a number of driving factors.
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From page 134... ...
Thus the gradual slowdown of overall demand growth is likely to continue. According to FAO's projection to 2050, published in 2009, global demand for agricultural products is expected to grow by about 70 percent compared to 2005/2007.4 Resource constraints, climate change and sustainable intensification: The task ahead is daunting considering the multiple resource constraints.
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From page 135... ...
They must have the political will to change priorities, mobilize public investment and reform institutions in favor of sustainable food and nutrition security. de Haen stated that a guiding principle must be combining measures to reduce hunger with investment in sustainable growth of food supplies.
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All of these natural inputs vary across time and space, making it difficult to identify the degree to which these factors account for measured variation in agricultural productivity vis-à-vis the effects of other factors, including differences in the scale (and structure) of production and unmeasured changes in the quality of conventional inputs (such as land, labor and capital)
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First is the need for a spatially explicit view of agricultural production processes given the spatial variation in the biological processes that define production agriculture. Second is the need to take a long-run perspective, likely decades rather than years, given the timeframes it typically takes for natural input cum agricultural productivity processes to play out.
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. Increases in food production can come from agricultural intensification, the expansion of the agricultural frontier, or a combination of the two.
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From page 139... ...
But the relative contribution of the factors accounted for in Figure II 1-2 is telling, and, for example, the point about knowledge as a constraint on yield makes it quite clear that there is an unmet need for agricultural extension. FIGURE II 1-2 Maize yield gap by region and contribution of five production constraints SOURCE: Hengsdijk and Langeveld, 2009 The task of reducing and closing yield gaps calls for appropriate farm systems management, inputs and technology, services and access to markets.
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From page 140... ...
The economic transformation whereby agricultural GDP declines rapidly relative to the total, and agricultural employment declines slowly, is in full swing. Sustainable progress and productivity growth in agriculture are needed for at least six good reasons in this context, all of which relate to and reinforce food security: food availability, conservation of natural resources, diversification of the rural economic space and rural non-farm employment, overall economic growth, poverty reduction, and income convergence between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors of the economy.
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Agriculture now takes 70 percent of global water withdrawals. If we continue producing food the way we do now, up to twice as much would go into food production in the form of evapo-transpiration through 2050.
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In both cases, lack of access to water is a threat to future food production, but in very different ways (see Figure II 1-3)
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In these regions spread across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South-East Asia, and pockets of Latin America, there is limited water access, but high scope to use more water for food production, both directly from rain and irrigation sources. A little additional water for crops at the right time can increase water productivity of water and land.
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LAND DEGRADATION AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION: SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA13 Paul L.G. Vlek, University of Bonn The state of our lands, both natural and men-appropriated, is difficult to track.
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. As this phenomenon is ubiquitous, it will have masked land degradation by compensating for degradation processes such as soil erosion or soil mining.
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than did wild caught seafood. Going forward, any increases in global seafood production, at least 14 The presentation is available at http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/sustainability/foodsecurity/PGA_062564, presentation by Jason Clay (May 2, 2011)
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However, seafood is also a very important source of protein and calories for many coastal areas in developing countries around the world. In terms of overall trade, seafood production is increasing in developing countries where fisheries have been less depleted, thanks to improved commercial fishing efforts; cheaper labor; and, in the case of aquaculture, temperatures that allow for growing year round.
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And Asia will come to dominate not only seafood production but also consumption as their economies strengthen. The sustainability of seafood is an ongoing concern.
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. Despite the potential for decreasing postharvest losses, it is likely that global food production will need to continue increasing at rates similar to those of the last two decades (UK Foresight Programme, 2011)
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In production landscapes, recognizing the value of pollination and natural enemy services should help land managers value the management of non-crop areas that act as a reservoir. In the developing world, a variety of community-based approaches are happening to ensure that appropriate action is taken at the community level to preserve the services that aid livelihoods.
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SOIL QUALITY OF TROPICAL AFRICA: AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF IMPROVED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY16 Uzo Mokwunye, Development Strategy Consultant The majority of the 800 million people who inhabit Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for employment and livelihood.
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From page 152... ...
This intensive cultivation has resulted in massive losses of plant nutrients, a process now described as "nutrient mining." It has been determined that by 2002, 132 million tons of nitrogen, 15 million tons of phosphorus and 90 million tons of potassium had been lost from 37 tropical African soils in 30 years. The most efficient way to improve the soil fertility is through the use of fertilizers, primarily inorganic fertilizers.
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He noted that if the ecosystem services being provided by these resources is limited, then the benefits of increased food safety could easily outweigh the biodiversity benefits. The need to value ecosystem services and balance these services against other factors was prominent in the discussion with Benton, emphasizing the need to educate farmers, especially in developing countries, about the values obtained from biodiversity such as pollination, flood protection, and soil fertility, as well as fuel and fiber.
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Nelson's presentation focused on three major themes: the current state of knowledge about climate change; the impact of climate change on crop yields, supply, demand and trade; and the assessment of the challenge of long term food security with and without climate change. Basing his discussion on direct climate change effects on a suite of four possible climate futures, Nelson stated that average temperatures would likely increase substantially -- especially after 2050 -- and that major changes in precipitation patterns are possible.
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FIGURE II 1-8 Yield Effects, Irrigated Rice, MIROC A1B (percent change between 2000 and 2050 climate) SOURCE: Presentation by Jerry Nelson, IFPRI, May 2, 2011.
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In order to increase food security and resilience to climate change, Nelson suggested that three specific objectives must be met: broad based economic growth, investments targeted to increase agricultural productivity, and strengthened international trade agreements. He emphasized the need to raise poor people's incomes to achieve food security and increase climate change resilience.
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RISKS AND VULNERABILITIES FROM CLIMATE CHANGE19 David Lobell, Stanford University This presentation focused on the risks that climate change poses to global food production. David Lobell noted that the emphasis on global scale should not detract from the fact that different regions could be affected differently, or that different uncertainties may be more relevant at some scales than at others.
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Tuber crops appear in experiments to benefit the most from higher CO2, although their sensitivity to temperature and moisture changes are less well known. 20 See Agricultural Productivity and Natural Resource Endowments by Philip Pardey.
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Whether or not these same regional differences persist will depend on better understanding the causes of recent regional climate trends. Overall, the impact of warming could be affecting productivity enough to alter conclusions from analysis of trends in multi-factor productivity discussed by Pardey and others, and also represents a likely minor but non-trivial cause of the increase in food prices over the past decade.
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2011. Paper presented at the National Academies first workshop, Measuring Food Insecurity and Assessing the Sustainability of Global Food Systems.
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2008. Conserving land, protecting water: Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture Series 6.
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Pp. 1-35 in Rainfed agriculture: unlocking the potential: Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture Series 7, S
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2008. Increasing corn for biofuel production reduces biocontrol services in agricultural landscapes.
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2011. Climate trends and global food production since 1980.
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