Month: July 2021

Next month the UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Summit will launch bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 SDGs, each of which relies to some degree on healthier, more sustainable and equitable food systems.

As world leaders prepare, and as the Pre-Summit meeting concluded in Rome this week, I took some time to revisit and reflect on the last year’s IFIAD conference – Covid-19 & Sustainable Food Systems – Transforming food systems in times of crises. Through it, we sought to learn from the Covid-19 crisis by examining the weaknesses (and strengths) it exposed in our food networks.

And as the world also moves towards the COP26 in Glasgow this November, contemplating the lessons we pulled from the depths of the Covid-19 crisis and applying them to Climate Change – arguably one of the biggest crises humanity will ever face – seemed pertinent and necessary.

My own MSc CCAFS research project is centered in buttressing our agricultural systems against the onslaught of climate change by ‘Climate Proofing’ our crops. My focus has been Tropical Forage Legumes which are critical for agricultural efficiency and resilience, particularly for small scale producers in developing countries.

Below is an excerpt of my thoughts from last year after the MSc CCAFS cohort attended the online IFIAD conference. I found much of what was relevant then remains entirely relevant to my own research goals now, particularly as my project and Masters course nears its completion.

‘Covid-19 highlighted the connectivity between sectors. A health crisis which demanded a political response whose affects cascaded down the economic and social building blocks of modern society, simultaneously exposing the fundamental inequalities and inherent strengths in each. We should expect the resilience of global food systems, when faced with the many challenges of climate change, to depend on a similarly multi-sectorial response. In this context, Covid-19 provided a unique opportunity to “Build-Back Better”.

Global food systems are underpinned by agriculture and trade. Agricultural resilience, particularly for developing nations, will require greater recognition, protection and empowerment of small-scale producers. This in turn will require systematic policy changes in land tenure, gender equality and the recognition of indigenous people. In terms of trade, the EU/Africa partnership was examined as a model of successful international trade. It particularly illustrates the importance of private enterprise (which showed enormous innovation in the face of Covid-19) in domestic productivity. Digital communication was central to this and we should aim to expand its role in future networking.

However, just as in agriculture, the recognition and protection of human rights is paramount. This will require systematic changes in data protection policies. Within the public sector, we should seek to align local and national governance towards common objectives. At the local level, a greater recognition of the value of civil society is needed. At the national level, the expansion of social and income protection, in all its forms, will be central to maintaining the equality at the heart of any resilient society.‘

The previous post explored how tropical legumes can contribute to greater agricultural efficiency. Today we will discuss how they can contribute to greater resilience.

State-of-the art climate models have established that (because of anthropogenic emissions) global land and sea temperatures will continue to warm for at least the next two decades regardless of what intervention we collectively take _¹. We must therefore tailor our crops to withstand the very high certainty of continued global warming. The tropical zone is particularly vulnerable, where extreme temperatures are already common and the risk of high magnitude events such as tropical storms is high ^₁.

Since the mid-1970s, the tropics have warmed at an average rate of 0.2°C per decade ^₂. On this trajectory, we are looking at a total baseline shift of ~1.5°C by 2030 ^₃. As this unfolds, the number of extreme (and potentially dangerous) hot days are expected to increase ^₁. And as the air temperature rises, the water holding capacity rises with it ^₄. Intense precipitation events are thus expected to occur more frequently, increasing the risk of flooding, even in places where total precipitation is decreasing ^₄. Already more than half of the tropical zone is heavily influenced by drought ^₅ but the continued disruption of global cycles such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation is driving up their frequency and severity ^₆.

In terms of food security, adverse impacts are likely to be greatest in regions where both current need and future growth for nutritional demand is greatest _⁷. Countries with large populations and fast-growing economies – China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil for example – are undergoing periods of major agricultural intensification and moving towards more intense livestock production _⁸. Protection against the onslaught of climate change in these regions is vital for global food security.

For the major food crops like Wheat, Rice and Maize, substantial progress has been made in breeding climate resilient cultivars. Yet, despite their multitude of environmental and commercial benefits (particularly for livestock) far less attention has been paid to legumes. If we are to buttress our tropical farming systems against climate change, we must rectify this immediately. A first step is finding genes that confer adaptability and resilience.

The problem is that the process of domestication, by design, breeds out genetic variation _⁹. We select the traits we need and discard those we don’t. As far back as the Neolithic age we have bred crops to be big and fruitful. Over thousands of generations we have selected only the best performing individuals, culminating in our modern day, monoculture crops that produce high yields. The trade off is that they require highly favorable and regulated farming conditions. Thus, of the relatively few domesticated legumes we do have, it is likely they have lost many potentially resilient genes in favor of those that confer a higher yield _⁹.

In comparison, preserved within wild and uncultivated legumes species (of which there are literally hundreds!) is likely to be a treasure trove of genetic variation. Having not been pushed through the bottleneck of domestication, this wild gene pool will be more diverse _³. Moreover, having adapted to fend for themselves under harsh, unregulated conditions, wild species are expected to display morphology or behavior that confers hardiness and self-sufficiency.

To breed self-sustaining and resilient farming crops, we should exploit self-sustaining and resilient genes _³. This process is far from easy or straightforwards but there are many national and international organizations currently working to do just that. Scientific Institutions like CGIAR, CIAT and ICARDA. In the next installment, I aim to provide a more detailed exploration of their work – past, present and future – towards ‘Climate Proof’ legumes.

Without this vital research in his corner, Mr. Peanut faces a devastating ‘KO’ in the ring….

_{1 -Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove, Daniela Jacob, M Bindi, S Brown, I Camilloni, A Diedhiou, R Djalante, K Ebi, F Engelbrecht, and J Guiot. 2018. ‘Impacts of 1.5 C global warming on natural and human systems’, Global warming of 1.5 C. An IPCC Special Report.}

_{2 -Malhi, Yadvinder, and James Wright. 2004. ‘Spatial patterns and recent trends in the climate of tropical rainforest regions’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359: 311-29.}

_{3- Mitchell, ML, HC Norman, and RDB Whalley. 2015. ‘Use of functional traits to identify Australian forage grasses, legumes and shrubs for domestication and use in pastoral areas under a changing climate’, Crop and Pasture Science, 66: 71-89.}

_{4 -Trenberth, Kevin E. 2006. ‘The impact of climate change and variability on heavy precipitation, floods, and droughts’, Encyclopedia of hydrological sciences.}

_{5 –Lal, R. 2018. ‘Erosion impact on soil quality in the tropics.’ in, Soil quality and soil erosion (CRC Press).}

_{6 -Moon, J, WK Lee, C Song, SG Lee, SB Heo, A Shvidenko, F Kraxner, M Lamchin, EJ Lee, and Y Zhu. 2017. ‘An introduction to Mid-Latitude ecotone: Sustainability and environmental challenges’, Siberian Journal of Forest Science, 6: 41-51.}

_{7 -Henry, BK, RJ Eckard, and KA Beauchemin. 2018. ‘Adaptation of ruminant livestock production systems to climate changes’, Animal, 12: s445-s56.}

_{8 -Delgado, Christopher L, Mark W Rosegrant, and Siet Meijer. 2001. “Livestock to 2020: The revolution continues.” In}

_{9- Abberton, Michael, Jacqueline Batley, Alison Bentley, John Bryant, Hongwei Cai, James Cockram, Antonio Costa de Oliveira, Leland J Cseke, Hannes Dempewolf, and Ciro De Pace. 2016. ‘Global agricultural intensification during climate change: a role for genomics’, Plant biotechnology journal, 14: 1095-98.}

I last left you with the story of Mr. Peanut and his quest to restore balance to the Earth’s nitrogen cycle. Today, we will explore this a little further in the context of tropical livestock production and highlight why we need more aggressive legumes.

Lets quickly recap…

In my previous post we looked at how, in the technological boom of the post-war era, we were able to dramatically intensify crop production with the invention of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilisers ^₁. This hailed in the ‘Green Revolution’, one of the most significant events in our agricultural history since our hunter-gatherer ancestors first started farming. But fast forward a few decades and our increasing reliance on synthetic fertliser is driving an increase in nitrous oxide emissions, a potent greenhouse gas with a “severe global warming potential” ^₂.

“A failure to adapt to the tropical context of Asia and Latin America brought with it a new set of problems.”

The rapid income growth and urbanisation of the post-revolution era meant price was not the constraint on food it had once been. Many more people were able to access more expensive, animal derived products like meat, milk and eggs ^₃. This trend has been labelled by many as the ‘Livestock Revolution’ ^₄. In recent decades, it has been particularly apparent in places like China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil – developing countries with large populations and growing economies ^₄. At the turn of the century, the average meat and dairy consumption in these regions had almost doubled from what it had been ^₄. To keep up with such demand, and with a seemingly inexhaustible source of synthetic fertiliser to hand for feed crop production, farmers turned to more intensive methods of raising livestock ^₄. But a failure to adapt the conventional, post-war regime to the tropical context of Asia and Latin America brought with it a new set of problems.

“Scientists, accustomed to housing stock in European and North American winters and the need to conserve forage for the winter, assumed that the dry season shortfall in feed supply in tropical regions might be overcome by hay conservation.”

The highly weathered, acidic soils of the tropical zone rapidly saw the efficacy of fertiliser diminish. And in the extreme dichotomy of the wet and dry seasons, poor feed quality quickly became a problem – particularly in periods of drought _⁵. This risked locking farmers into a downward spiral of low productivity and inefficiency. But, by including legumes into the feed, pasture or forage mix, farmers found a high-quality, protein-rich feed source _⁵. Their presence in the biome also improved soil structure, health and fertility, thus facilitating greater systematic efficiency across the board _{^{6, 7.}} .

“Commercialising legumes selected for their aggressive seedling establishment”

But life is tough in the tropics. To cope with the boom/bust cycle of the seasons, you have to be tough, hardy and quick to take advantage of the good times. Legume seedlings, unlike many of their tropical grass counterparts, establish relatively slowly and are quickly out-competed for space and resources before they can mature _⁸. This must change if successful grass-legume mixtures are to flourish and see farmers and their charges through the hard times. Commercialising legumes selected for their aggressive establishment will go a long way to resolving this particular issue _⁸.

The problem is, where breeding of grasses and cereal crops is highly advanced, for legumes it remains in its infancy. We know relatively little about tropical legumes and how best to breed superior strains. But we are gaining ground; Scientific Institutions like CGIAR, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) have spearheaded the Tropical Legumes Projects I, II and III to develop better legume varieties _⁹.

Most critically, not only must these varieties be more aggressive, they must also be matched with the myriad of ago-ecological conditions throughout the tropical zone ^₁₀. A major challenge for the future is tailoring them to an environment that is becoming increasingly unpredictable under climate change ^₁₁, ^₁₂. This brings us to the next phase in the Tropical Legume Project.

We will explore this issue in the next post where I will ask – how might we ‘Climate Proof’ Mr. Peanut?

_{1- Moreau, Delphine, Richard D Bardgett, Roger D Finlay, David L Jones, and Laurent Philippot. 2019. ‘A plant perspective on nitrogen cycling in the rhizosphere’, Functional Ecology, 33: 540-52.}

_{2- Beeckman, Fabian, Hans Motte, and Tom Beeckman. 2018. ‘Nitrification in agricultural soils: impact, actors and mitigation’, Current opinion in biotechnology, 50: 166-73.}

_{3- Hall, Nicolette G, and Hettie C Schönfeldt. 2013. ‘Total nitrogen vs. amino-acid profile as indicator of protein content of beef’, Food Chemistry, 140: 608-12.}

_{4 – Pica-Ciamarra, U, and J Otte. 2009. “The ‘Livestock Revolution’: Rhetoric and Reality, Pro-Poor Livestock Policy Initiative, A Living from Livestock.” In.: RPPLPI Research Report RR.}

_{5 – Humphreys, L. R. (2005). Tropical pasture utilisation. Cambridge university press.}

_{6 – Schultze-Kraft, Rainer, Michael Peters, and Peter Wenzl. 2020. “A historical appraisal of the tropical forages collection conserved at CIAT.” In Genetic Resources.}

_{7- Hassen, Abubeker. 2017. ‘Potential use of forage-legume intercropping technologies to adapt to climate-change impacts on mixed croplivestock systems in Africa: A review’, Regional Environmental Change, 17: 1713-24}

_{8 – Muir, JP, JCB Dubeux Jr, and LO Tedeschi. 2018. “New perspectives on forage legumes in mixed pastures.” In Proceedings of the CONFOR II International Conference on Forages. University of Lavras & Suprema Grafica e Editora, Lavras, MG, Brazil, 147-58}

_{9-Ojiewo, Chris, Emmanuel Monyo, Haile Desmae, Ousmane Boukar, Clare Mukankusi‐Mugisha, Mahendar Thudi, Manish K Pandey, Rachit K Saxena, Pooran M Gaur, and Sushil K Chaturvedi. 2019. ‘Genomics, genetics and breeding of tropical legumes for better livelihoods of smallholder farmers’, Plant Breeding, 138: 487-99}

_{10 -Rusdy, M. 2021. ‘Grass-legume intercropping for sustainability animal production in the tropics’, CAB Reviews, 16: 1-9}

_{11 – Lal, Rattan. 2009. ‘Soil degradation as a reason for inadequate human nutrition’, Food Security, 1: 45-57.}

_{12- Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F Stuart Chapin III, Eric Lambin, Timothy M Lenton, Marten Scheffer, Carl Folke, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. 2009. ‘Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for humanity’, Ecology and society, 14.}