News story from the conference: Dryland regions unite to combat food security

A. A. Khan

Credit: WCSJ

30 June 2011 | EN

[DOHA, QATAR] A global alliance to boost food security in the arid regions, through common research and adoption of new technologies is soon to be launched, a conference has heard.

The Global Dry Land Alliance, a Qatar government initiative, would enable member states to pool their research efforts to strengthen food security in arid countries.

Drylands make up about 45 per cent of the world’s land area where around two billion people live. But these countries do not share equal financial resources for combating food insecurity. The Alliance would provide technical or financial support to struggling member states through food security programmes, agricultural development investment partnerships and new regional centres of excellence.

Full news story here

Crucial science stories get lost in a time of political turmoil

It is easy to forget, amidst the violence in so many Middle Eastern countries, that the Arab region will face enormous food security problems unless action is urgently taken.

Only science research and technology transfer can hope to solve this enormous problem, said experts from the International Fund for Agriculture Development.

Important science stories get lost during political turmoil. Credit: Flickr/Kodak Agfa

Lack of water, and degradation of the agricultural land because of climate change are the key threats to the future of the region, said Mahmoud El-Solh, director-general of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas.

Besides these problems, transborder diseases - such as the wheat rust, Ug99 - threaten agriculture. But science research and technology transfer cannot play their role unless the politicians are convinced of their necessity.

“We cannot do anything  if the politicians do not make serious policy to fight this challenge,” said Hussein Awad, of the West Noubaria Rural Development Project in Egypt.

The Arab region suffers from many problems at all levels, especially from a lack of security caused by political conflict, revolution and an increase in organised crime.

As a science  journalist in the Arab world it is difficult to draw the attention of politicians to this. How do we go about this? That is our challenge.

Hichem Boumedjout, SciDev.Net contributor in Algeria

And the hard task lies ahead

It was amazing, a striking convergence of a wide range of dedicated professionals – from plant scientists to policymakers. Such a diverse gathering underpinned the importance of improving the nutrition of the world’s poor.

But I gathered from the International Food Policy Research Institute’s conference in New

For these experts and policy makers, the hard task lies ahead. Credit: IFPRI

Delhi that it is a complex problem with no simple solutions. It is always good to meet and share ideas, and even prescribe some solutions in a building as luxurious and imposing as the Taj Palace Hotel but what next?

It will need the bringing together of experts in agriculture, nutrition, health and policy to understand their complementary roles. They have largely worked in isolation, like antagonists.

“People do not live in isolation. Let us all become professional silo breakers,” Francesco Branco, Director, Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, World Health Organization aptly captured it.

Agriculture alone cannot achieve better quality food for the poor. And, therefore, health must be considered as an element in agriculture.

“Combating under-nutrition will require contributions from the fields of agriculture, health, water and sanitation, education, and social protection,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President, Global Development Program. What a wide range of people to be involved!

Leveraging agriculture to improve health and nutrition will be challenge. Bringing the three together to New Delhi revealed that a lot of work needs to be done in and enhancing coordination as well as improving joint planning, management and evaluating programmes.

For Africa the task is even much bigger. I couldn’t agree more with Boitshepo Giyose, Advisor on Food and Security, New Partnership for Africa Development when she said, “Nutrition is non-sectoral. It is a new journey and the work has only begun. We should strive to have Africa free of hunger.”

Governments are starting to come to grips with the reality but they do not know what to do, according to John McDermott, deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). A government is the custodian of a people’s security including their food security.

In New Delhi they mixed and shared admirably but the hard task lies ahead. Over to you ladies and gentlemen. I am wishing you all the best.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

The higher they rise, the harder they find it to collaborate

Experts in the fields of of agriculture, nutrition and health need to collaborate beyond conferences. Credit:IFPRI

I thought they worked together easily. But the further they climb the academic ladder and the more responsibilities they take on, the scarcer their interactions become.

And nothing, at this meeting, illustrated it as vividly as today’s session on Addressing Agriculture-Associated Diseases.

This international conference, organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), is aimed at initiating conversations between experts in agriculture, nutrition and health, since they have complementary roles. Rajul Pandya Lorch, of IFPRI, calls it finding synergies for the three to leverage agriculture, nutrition and health.

“Our experience is that farmers appreciate collaboration but scientists work in isolation,” said Kabba Joiner, a health consultant from Burkina Faso.

There are few areas where experts work together. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, taught me that one of them is in climate change.

“This is one of the few areas with a multi-sectoral approach,” he said.

John McDermott, deputy director general for research at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), says that disciplines only come to consensus when there is a serious crisis. Then, you see some semblance of collaboration. Otherwise, in normal, day-to-day activities, even within an institution, it is difficult to find it.

Very few research institutions, he said, share facilities. They are full of compartmentalisation. “From the young at universities we need to get people out of their silos. The young also quickly learn to pick it up,” said McDermott, adding “we are best friends at big meetings like this but then it ends there”.

Even with intradepartmental collaborations, like those between malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS departments in the ministry of health, working together is like undertaking the energy-sapping stunt of climbing a tall mountain from the rear, according one delegate from Ghana.

“The higher you go, the more impossible working together becomes,” he said. That is the dilemma that experts in agriculture, nutrition and health face – yet their roles are complementary.

Dominique Charron, Programme leader at the International Development Research Centre, prays that experts will change from collaborating only at meetings.

McDermott finds few successes, among them the 2008 avian flue pandemic when animal and human health experts came together. But still, he says, it is doable

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

Integration, integration, integration

Rajul Pandya Lorch: We need innovations and technologies that will increase production but also ... address safety and nutritional value

Where is the problem of food insecurity, health and nutrition at its most severe? The developing world, particularly Africa, bears the brunt. And where are the solutions?

Calls were made as the conference began for a radical shift in agricultural policies and research to link increased production to health and nutrition. This holds the key to better livelihoods for the poor majority who wholly depend on agriculture in the developing world.

Rajul Pandya Lorch, fead of the 2020 Vision Initiative and Chief of Staff at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said the meeting should address policy, linkages and research gaps.

She wants scientists in the three areas to stop working in isolation, as their branches of expertise are intertwined in real life situations – and that is a serious gap that must be bridged.

“These are some of the things we will look at in the meeting. We do not only need innovations and technologies that will increase production but also to use science to address safety and the nutritional value of the foods produced,” she said.

An integrated approach is needed to address gaps in the whole food value chain – from pre-production technologies to infrastructure and markets that are accessible, and affordable, to the poor.

But the conference, inaugurated yesterday by Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, has a huge task to deliberate on so many issues in the next two days.

Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman of India’s University Grants Commission, expects it also to deal with this fact: the availability of food does not guarantee good nutrition or the health needs of the people. Science must be one of the pillars in agricultural policies to address quality and safety.

It is for this reason that IFPRI director-general, Shenggen Fan, thinks agricultural research needs to be viewed in tandem with nutrition and health.

“They need to design agricultural policies and investments for health and nutrition and not production alone,” he said, adding that agricultural science must focus not only on production but also address health, nutrition and diseases that are linked to agriculture like malaria and avian flu.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

SciDev.Net to blog from New Delhi agriculture conference

Credit: Monsanto

Next week, I will be attending an international conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health, organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and to be held in New Delhi from February 10-12, 2011.

Leaders in agriculture, nutrition and health from across the globe will gather to deliberate on how to create a more integrated system that mobilises agriculture to improve people’s nutrition and health.

The event will be opened by Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, and be guided by an advisory committee that includes John Kufuor, former president of Ghana and M.S. Swaminathan best known as the father of the green revolution in India

The conference will examine linkages between agriculture, nutrition and health and explore opportunities for improving nutrition and reducing health risks along the whole value chain.

I am looking forward in particular to hearing how individual countries are faring in their efforts to make these linkages, and what we can learn from them.

I will be blogging throughout the meeting, and tweeting from @scidevnet. Meanwhile check out our SciDev.Net spotlight, The Challenge of Improving Nutrition, and serve you with the conference deliberations as it progresses through this blog.

Ochieng’ Ogodo, Sub-Saharan Africa News Editor, SciDev.Net

India too big for a science straight jacket?

Prithviraj Chavan (TWAS)

 

“India’s too big to be straight-jacketed into a single framework for science and technology [S&T],” said India’s science minister Prithviraj Chavan, in an interview for TWAS, ahead of the 21^st General Meeting of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), in Hyderabad, India.

Chavan said that “some areas of Indian S&T will continue to develop at a steady pace, while other areas will experience accelerated growth — at times leading to the discovery of ‘leapfrog’ technologies that will have a dramatic impact on the economy”. That would be welcome, but not quite everything.

I do not want to be a wet blanket, but somehow improvement in India’s economy has not translated into equitable growth. Chavan’s facts about seven per cent increase in India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is true. Equally true is that the country has slipped down the global hunger index (GHI), ranking 67 out of 88 nations in the 2010 report released by the International Food Policy Research Institute in October. Home to 42 per cent of underweight children under five years, the country still lags behind Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Sudan in the GHI. Maybe that is why the Indian jacket’s fit in general is not quite so good.

Even on the science front, there have been a couple of disquieting reports of late. One is about the country slipping down (and a nasty fall that too) in the technology index, though some experts did tell SciDev.Net that different methods of measuring science performance could yield a different result.

The latest Goldman Sachs report confirms India lagging on R&D intensity front. Chavan also noted the need to increase, rather double, India’s spending on research and development (R&D) from the present less than one per cent of the national wealth to two per cent. For some reason this “doubling” of India’s R&D spending, as a per cent of its GDP, has not occurred, although one has heard it often, from prime ministers, their scientific advisors and senior scientists.

On the other hand, the Research Councils of UK’s latest report, based on a survey from 1981 to 2008, says India’s scientific output is growing rapidly, and its science citation impact — a measure of how often its papers are cited by other scientists — has doubled. Although India’s share of the global output remains low, it has nevertheless, shot up fast.

That is possibly why the Indian science jacket is a bit tricky to judge at first glance.

What’s your view?

T V Padma, South Asia Regional Coordinator, SciDev.Net

Ugandan biotech law remains elusive

Ugandan biotechnology is showing good form. Genetically modified varieties of banana, cassava, cotton and maize are being developed at labs in the country. These have been given traits to address a number of local problems including drought , disease  and low nutritional contents.

However, although the country’s government approved a GM policy in 2005, it has yet to adopt a law regulating the use of genetically modified organisms. This law is a prerequisite for the improved crops to reach the country’s farmers.

There is widespread anxiety among Ugandan biotechnologists about the delay in getting a biosafety law passed by Parliament. Unfortunately, they may have some time yet to wait before they know for sure the fate of the products they are developing.

So what is holding up the bill? Well, GM is a controversial issue, and one that does not have full support among Ugandan politicians. But a contributing factor will now be the upcoming national elections in 2011. Re-election will be foremost in the minds of most Ugandan MPs in the months leading up to it. And so the bill is likely to be passed on to the next Parliament, says Maxwell Otim, UNCST deputy executive secretary.

Linda Nordling, SciDev.Net columnist

Mega-programme whistle-stop tour

GCARD (credit: GCARD)

The CGIAR presented a draft version of its long-awaited mega-programmes, or thematic areas of work (TAWs) as they’re now being called, to GCARD this morning.

There are 8 TAWs and 3 ‘cross-cutting platforms’ that will be integral to all programmes—but the final numbers of both these may change.

TAW1: Agricultural systems for the poor and vulnerable

This will focus on ‘poverty hotspots’, looking at sustainable agriculture and food security, among other things. TAW1 is expected to improve the lives of more than 250 million poor people, with production increases of at least 10% over 10 years.

TAW2: Enabling agricultural incomes for the poor

The policies, institutions and markets required to boost rural incomes. TAW2 is expected to reduce the cost of taking goods to market by at least 20%.

TAW3: Sustainable crop increases for global food security

This will research options for increasing productivity of the three main cereal crops including identifying genes, accelerating the development of new varieties, improving crop management and supporting pro-poor policies.  CGIAR estimates it will affect three billion people.

Gender is one of the cross-cutting platforms (credit: USAID)

TAW4: Agriculture, nutrition and health

This is expected to reduce malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and foodborne disease.

TAW5: Water, soils and ecosystems

This is expected to improve access to water for productive purposes for 200 million people within 20 years; boost ecosystem resilience and reverse trends of water degradation.

TAW6: Forests and trees

This includes objectives such as harnessing forest ecosystem services for the poor. TAW6 should help reduce deforestation by 10% by 2030; reduce carbon emissions and increase the planting of tree genetic resources on 50,000 square kilometres of agricultural and degraded lands by 2030.

TAW7: Climate change and agriculture

This  is expected to produce science-based vulnerability assessments and lead to better national and global policies for accessing and using adaptation and mitigation technologies.

TAW8: Mobilising agricultural biodiversity for food security and resilience

Research will include creating a broader range of tools in molecular characterisation and boosting the use of genetic diversity, among others. TAW8 is expected to increase agricultural productivity, broaden the coverage of gene collections and safeguard biodiversity.

CGIAR is also proposing three ‘cross-cutting platforms’ in:

1. gender in agriculture

2. capacity strengthening to promote learning and knowledge sharing; and

3. Strategic planning and intelligence

Sian Lewis
Commisioning editor, SciDev.Net

Are the crop world’s “big three” stealing the show?

Star attraction: Delegates are concerned the three food security crops are leaving crops like cassava in the shade

Are key crops such as cassava and sorghum being neglected in favour of the “big three” (rice, wheat and maize)?

The CGIAR’s thematic area (formerly known as mega-programme) three, ‘Optimising productivity of global food security crops’, generated some engaging dialogue about whether the organisation is prioritising the right crops.

“Why are we ignoring sorghum, barley, millet and legumes?” APAARI’s Raj Paroda wanted to know. Lydia Sasu of the Farmers Organisation Network in Ghana agreed. “We don’t eat maize in my area!” she exclaimed, to nods of approval. “I would be very grateful if you could consider other crops.”

Marianne Banziger – deputy director general, Research and Partnership, at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, CIMMYT, – assured delegates that the CGIAR was not suggesting these were the only important crops, reminding them that this is just one area and that the crops being put forward would be addressed in other programmes. But she admitted: “It has not been covered adequately where [within the thematic areas] other crops will be taken care of”.

It was a long time before the issue was put to rest.

“If I don’t see cassava, if I don’t see plantain, it would be hard for me to support the CGIAR,” warned a delegate from the African Development Bank. And a delegate from Gabon said: “We need strong programmes for other crops in order to really address the food security of those people who depend on these crops.”

Feedback from all eight sessions will be presented tomorrow. I look forward to seeing whether the “ignored” crops have managed to find a home in the CGIAR’s reforms.

Naomi Antony
Assistant news editor, SciDev.Net