Global Food for Thought

Live Blog Post - Climate-Smart Food Security

By Sarah Small, Food Tank Research Associate

This post is recap of the "Climate-Smart Food Security" panel at our fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, DC.

At the Chicago Council’s Global Food Security Symposium today in Washington, DC, a panel on “Climate-Smart Food Security” addressed the role of family farmers in mitigating the effects of climate change including: climate-smart approaches already being used by smallholder farmers, opportunities to preserve natural resources, and the need for a “brown revolution.”

Panelists included: Howard W. Buffett, president of Buffet Farms Nebraska LLC; Jason Clay, senior vice president of Markets and Food at World Wildlife Fund; Strive Masiyiwa, chairman and founder of Econet Wireless; Gerald C. Nelson, a principal author of Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of a Changing Climate; Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank; and Judith D. Schwartz, author at Chelsea Green Publishing.

Expert Commentary by James Cameron

By James Cameron, Non-Executive Chairman, Climate Change Capital

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, DC.

There remains a stubborn lack of understanding about the systemic connection between water, food, energy and the climate – and what this means for the future feeding of the world.

By 2030, a growing global population – particularly of middle class consumers – is expected to require 30% more water, 40% more energy and 50% more food.  The challenge of meeting this demand is compounded by climate change risk and the interconnectedness of energy, water and food, for example, the agriculture industry uses 70% of the world’s freshwater.

Investors will have to understand that the assets they hold – whether in land, property, agriculture, energy or infrastructure – will be revalued because of the physical consequences of climate change and the public policy response to it, but also because consumer demand for more efficient and resilient alternatives will increase.

The value of land where it may be too hot to grow crops, or where irrigation schemes have run out of water, or where extensive use of fertilisers has degraded the soil will be lower than it was. McKinsey has estimated that more than one fifth of the world’s arable land is already seriously degraded from pollution, soil nutrient mining and salinisation.

There will be regions where climate change could create better conditions for certain crops, but investors will need to factor in these changes and ask is the infrastructure in place, are the skills there and how peaceful is the migration?

Commentary - Optimism about Agriculture’s Adaptive Capacity

By Greg Page, Cargill Executive Chairman
This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C.

The impacts of a changing climate on food security projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Climate Assessment and now the Chicago Council on Global Affairs raise legitimate concerns about the global food system’s ability to meet increasing challenges. All the factors that influence food production become more interdependent when faced with the range of possible impacts of a changing climate. The question is whether the food systems upon which we rely can adapt.

At Cargill we are optimistic that the world’s farmers can harness the power of photosynthesis, adapt to changing conditions and produce all the food needed for an increasingly prosperous world on its way to nine billion people.

Farmers are innovators and consummate optimizers. Every spring, they weigh input costs, projected commodity prices, short- and longer-term weather forecasts, soil moisture and myriad other factors, then decide what and when to plant to achieve the best return on their investment of time, energy and capital. They persistently demonstrate the ability to adapt to changes in the environment and successfully adopt new technologies.

This market-driven adaptive capacity consistently confounds expectations of imminent trouble. Consider the story of this year’s corn crop. In late April and early May, lingering effects of a severe winter had planting well behind schedule across much of the Corn Belt. Then the weather turned. In one week, Iowa farmers planted nearly 7 million acres of corn, a record pace enabled by innovations such as GPS-guided tractors that precisely drop seed and fertilizer at rates optimized for soil conditions in individual fields. This kind of adaptation and resiliency has resulted in worldwide year-to-year variability in crop production that is no greater today than it was 35 years ago. 

Expert Commentary by Chris Policinski

By Chris Policinski, President and CEO, Land O’Lakes, Inc.

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 22.

Discussions this week about the impact weather volatility and climate change have on global food production provide additional, powerful evidence of the fragile state of our world’s food security. Climate change is yet another component of the mounting challenges that we face in feeding a soaring global population, while natural resources such as water and arable land are becoming increasingly scarce.  As these challenges converge, it is more important than ever that we focus on solutions within our control to increase productivity and sustainability in agriculture.

There is good news in the fact that our industry has demonstrated an impressive capability to dramatically improve productivity. For example, in the past 70 years, farmers in the United States have increased corn production by 650 percent using 13 percent fewer acres of land, with a corresponding decrease in the use of crop inputs and natural resources. These types of productivity gains have been achieved through the adoption of modern business management practices on the farm and application of safe, proven technologies.

Live Blog Post - The Climate-Food Nexus and What It Means for Conflict, Economic Growth, and Sustainability

By Maria Antip, Sorbonne University, International Relations, MS

This post is recap of the "The Climate-Food Nexus and What It Means for Conflict, Economic Growth, and Sustainability" panel at our fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, DC.

The first session of the 2014 Symposium brought together a renowned panel with a wide range of backgrounds including a journalist, two private sector representatives , an NGO executive, a farmer, and a scientist.

The panel aimed to assess the risk and prioritize the opportunities for global food security in light of climate change. Michael Gerson, columnist at The Washington Post and ONE senior fellow, chaired the session, kicking  off with a bold statement that even smallholder farmers in remote developing places can adopt conservation practices. The focus on smallholder farmers continued and the panel reached the consensus that if we teach climate smart practices to farmers, and they understand the benefits, then they will adopt them.

President & CEO of Save the Children, Carolyn Miles,  stressed that women and children are the most vulnerable victims of weather disaster and hunger. She went on to stress that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life are critical—and after the age of 3, the damage from malnutrition is irreversible.

Commentary - Combating Hunger is Common Ground for Mothers Worldwide

By Natalie Rosenbloom, vice president of sustainability and partnerships at Monsanto. This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 22.

As a mother, nothing is more important to me than the health and safety of my children.  I believe that no matter where we come from, no matter what our means, every mother around the world shares a common bond: the need to provide our children with nutritious food. 

Fulfilling this fundamental need can bring different challenges in different parts of the world.  In developed countries, it can often boil down to affordability, having the means to provide healthy, well-rounded meals.  In developing countries like those in Sub-Saharan Africa, it can all depend on adequate rainfall for women farmers tending small crops.

The vast majority of farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are women, mothers tending crops on small areas of land to provide for their families in the months ahead.  About 90 percent of these farmers depend solely on rainfall to water their crops.  A period of drought can mean the difference between having enough food for their children or not.

Over the past seven years, a team of public and private organizations have worked together to help farmers in Africa better manage drought and adapt to climate change.  The Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) program is led by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), a nonprofit organization of people dedicated to providing better tools for African farmers to fight hunger and child malnutrition.  AATF works in collaboration with scientists of five governments in Africa, the public research institution CIMMYT and Monsanto, backed by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and USAID.  Together, the partnership is developing maize (corn) seed that uses water more efficiently and resists insect pests.

We are excited that the initial results from the first WEMA crop are promising, with food production more than doubling that of traditional seed.

Commentary - Resilient Smallholder Farming Systems Are Vital for Global Food Security and Nutrition

By Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 22.

The growing incidence and intensity of extreme weather events and rising price volatility are cases in point of shocks that increasingly threaten the global food system. As the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out, every additional decade of climate change is expected reduce average crop yields by about 1 percent.

More importantly, the effects of increasing climate shocks will not be uniform across regions and countries. Developing countries, especially in tropical regions, will disproportionately bear the burden of these impacts since they rely heavily on climate-dependent farming. Smallholder farmers—who account for most of the poor and hungry and have a large role to play in achieving global food security and nutrition—will be hit the hardest as their capacity to adapt is the weakest.

Commentary - Advancing Sustainable Solutions for Global Access to Nutrition

By John Ginascol, Vice President, Global Supply, Abbott Nutrition
This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 22.

Given the unprecedented scale and scope of changes taking place around the world today—societal, climatic, technological—we need to be more strategic, active and cooperative than ever before to achieve the solutions we need for a healthy planet and thriving global society.

Let’s look at a single one of the major, worldwide challenges we face: food security—in terms of both safety and reliability of supply. No one organization—public or private—can address an issue of this magnitude alone; it requires an enormous, concerted, and multi-faceted effort from the broad global community. The Chicago Council Symposium offers a significant opportunity to explore the many emerging issues around food security, particularly as they pertain to climate change.

Commentary - Protecting Children in Crisis: When Climate Disasters Strike

By Carolyn Miles, President & CEO, Save the Children

This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 22.

On a long plane ride home from the Philippines, I thought of the dozens of emergency sites I’d visited on this trip and the many courageous women I had met.  Mothers still living in evacuation shelters in Tacloban more than six months after Typhoon Haiyan affected 10 million families, destroying homes, food markets, health systems, and schools.

This epic storm—the worst ever to hit the Philippines—is just one of the 119 humanitarian emergencies Save the Children responded to in 48 countries in 2013. The majority of these were weather-related.  Meanwhile, some disasters like the slow onset hunger crises in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, while no longer in the news headlines, are still challenging the lives of tens of millions, many of them women and children.

So, the topic of this year’s Chicago Council Symposium, addressing the impact of climate change on food and nutrition security, could not be more relevant or timely for me. I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the Council on ways we can support the mothers who are facing these tremendous challenges.

Commentary - Local Solutions are Essential to Help Farmers Adapt to Changing Climates

By Paul Schickler, President, DuPont Pioneer
This post is part of a series produced by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its fifth Global Food Security Symposium 2014 in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 22.

While modern innovation transformed agriculture, helping farmers continuously adapt their operations in the face of climate change remains a top priority around the world. Today’s Global Food Security Symposium brought together agriculture industry veterans and next-generation entrepreneurs who have seen the impacts of weather volatility in the field firsthand. But the voice of the farmer must be heard to understand the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Farmers like panelist Trey Hill, a Maryland farmer who had to replant 1,000 acres of corn following this year’s cold snap, demonstrate the power of innovation applied at the local level. Hill’s fourth-generation Maryland farm is a model for sustainable management practices to increase productivity in one of the most environmentally sensitive areas – the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Novel decision services tools will help farmers like Trey have a prescriptive approach to whole-farm management, ultimately combining productive and sustainable practices to unlock the full potential of each acre.  

Technology adoption and innovation have improved farming in the developed world. A U.S. farmer with advanced seed technology, a smart phone and GPS is practicing a profoundly different kind of agriculture than her great grandfather did behind a mule decades ago. But for farmers in many developing countries, the process of growing food hasn’t changed much -- a fact we cannot ignore.

In the last month, many scientific reports have called for urgent climate change policy – zeroing in on agriculture as an important place to start. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change requests immediate action to adapt food systems with emphasis on increasing productivity and resiliency across the value chain. The Chicago Council’s report went further to highlight the fact that the bulk of climate change resources have focused on mitigation. The Council calls for greater focus on agriculture and food research, including gathering and analyzing data more rigorously to support adaptation. Building capacity in developing countries will be essential to this approach, since agriculture is localized.