A recently released study, conducted by Stanford Earth scientists, provides further confirmation that investing in agricultural innovation produces the two-fold benefit of allowing modern agriculture to intensify crop yields while doing it in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly.
The study - conducted by Jennifer Burney, Steven Davis and David Lobell - concludes that "advances in high-yield agriculture over the latter part of the 20th century have prevented massive amounts of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere - the equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide."
Moreover, because crop yields were improved it reduced the "need to convert forests to farmland, a process that typically involves burning of trees and other plants, which generates carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."
Remarkably, the researchers estimated that "if not for increased yields, additional greenhouse gas emissions from clearing land for farming would have been equal to as much as a third of the world's total output of greenhouse gases since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1850."
From an investment perspective, the researchers "calculated that for every dollar spent on agricultural research and development since 1961, emissions of the three principal greenhouse gases - methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide - were reduced by the equivalent of about a quarter of a ton of carbon dioxide - a high rate of financial return compared to other approaches to reducing the gases."
"Our results dispel the notion that modern intensive agriculture is inherently worse for the environment than a more 'old-fashioned' way of doing things," said Burney, the lead author of a paper describing the study that will be published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Steven Davis, a co-author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, echoed Burney in saying:
"When we look at the costs of the research and development that went into these improvements, we find that funding agricultural research ranks among the cheapest ways to prevent greenhouse gas emissions."
Of course, we at the Global Harvest Initiative have long understood that investing in agricultural research and innovation pays off in terms of better protecting the environment and allowing farmers to produce more with less land and water.
We also know that closing the global productivity gap to meet our growing population's food needs by 2050 requires more investment in research and innovation to produce the new technologies that will help modern agriculture continue to be good stewards of the land and environment. Think about it this way, "without the advances in high-yield agriculture, several billion additional acres of cropland would have been needed" to farm. In no way, would that have been good for the environment.
David Beckmann's dedication to Bread for the World and World Bank has changed the lives of people across the world, through grassroots efforts to support government policies and programs aiding millions of impoverished and hungry people across the world.
As CEO of Heifer, Jo Luck has created an organization that educates the world's poorest nations and communities to create opportunities for themselves, while constantly advocating on their behalf to increase policies and legislation on local and global schemes.
Each year the WFP recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to any field of food supply, which improves the quality, quantity or availability of food throughout the world. The 2009 WFP Laureate award recipient was Dr. Gebisa Estos, of Ethiopia.
The Global Harvest Initiative is looking forward to going to the World Food Prize in October, where we will have the opportunity to meet with David Beckmann and Jo Luck, the 2010 WFP Laureates. While at the WFP, GHI will unveil the first ever Global Agricultural Productivity Report, GAP Report, during a featured side event. The GAP Report is being developed in partnership with the Farm Foundation and the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it will provide global and regional measures of productivity growth, and establish a process to maintain and report the measurements on a continuing basis. GHI is committed to creating and maintaining the GAP Report by annually publishing updated measures, along with evaluations of progress and suggestions for progress and suggestions for ways globally to close the productivity gap in order to meet the challenge of doubling agriculture production in the next 40 years and do it in a sustainable way.
- "How can U.S. development programs best build capacity, unlock capital, supply infrastructure and create an environment for marked-let growth;
- how can companies most effectively contribute to the growth of local enterprises and local employment through their supply chains and investments; and
- what are the specific opportunities and challenges of increasing investment across Africa?"
Daniel Yohannes, Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO, provided the opening remarks, followed by a discussion among three CEO's (Justin Chinyanta, Chairman & CEO, Loita Capital Partners International LTD, Tim Solso, Chairman & CEO, Cummins Inc., and Chad Holliday, Former Chairman & CEO, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company) from the United States and Africa. Kermal Dervis, Vice President and director of Global Economy and Development, moderated the discussion while Jennifer Potter, President and CEO of IGD provided introductory remarks.
From the discussion that followed, it was clear that for any significant global economic development and poverty reduction to occur, it will be essential for the private sector to lead the effort. All of the speakers expressed optimism that it could be accomplished although it will be a long and difficult journey as there are many obstacles. It was emphasized that the private sector needs to "step up to the plate," have a long term outlook, and that poor countries also must have good governance and an environment conducive for business investment. Two recent publications were made available at the event:
- "A New Strategy to Leverage Business for International Development" authored by Robert Mosbacher, Jr. and published by the Global Economy and Development at Brookings (working paper #4, May 2010), and
- "The Business Case for Foreign Aid Reform" by Initiative for Global Development.
On April 27, 2010, in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Center for Strategic and International Studies launched the report of its Task Force on Food Security, co-chaired by Senator Richard Lugar, Senator Robert Casey, and Representative Betty McCollum, entitled "Cultivating Global Food Security: A Strategy for U.S. Leadership on Productivity, Agricultural Research and Trade". This event marked the outcome of many discussions and meetings of the Task Force which had been charged with developing recommendations for a long-term U.S. strategic approach to global food security. The Task Force's membership included leaders from government, business, academia, and the nongovernmental and philanthropy communities.
Today is Earth Day. The Global Harvest Initiative and its partner companies and organizations are proud to celebrate and commemorate the significance of this day to millions of people around the world.
While it may be cliché - "every day is Earth Day for farmers" - and those of us engaged in agriculture. We love the land. We dedicate ourselves daily to conserving as much of it as possible, understanding that global agriculture - farmers - must produce more with less if are to feed the 9 billion people who are expected to inhabit the Earth in the year 2050.
I think Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson understood that 40 years ago when the first Earth Day recognition was celebrated on April 22, 1970.
In a forward-looking dissertation titled Agriculture from 2000 to 2050 - The Business As Usual Scenario, Dr. Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund effectively argues that the "business as usual" model for food production is not sustainable as the global population explodes over the next 40 years.
Dr. Clay, who presented his paper last month at the Global Harvest Initiative 2010 Symposium, Closing the Gap: Examining an Alternative Future, proposes freezing the footprint of food by intensifying, not expanding production.
It's a compelling piece that also has been published in GHI's book Benefits of An Alternative Future. The most persuasive aspect of Dr. Clay's thesis is that it offers solutions for how we can feed the 9 billion people who will inhabit the Earth in 2050, while at the same time recognizing that we must be able to do in a way that sustains the planet. In other words, Dr. Clay urges that we need to do more with less impact on land and water resources.
Few would argue that now is the time for us to start thinking about how to meet the food demands of a growing global population with fewer natural resources as we advance toward the year 2050. A recurring Global Harvest Initiative theme has been to embrace a collective thought process to closing this looming productivity gap, and eschewing the idea of a "one-size-fits-all" approach to meeting this challenge.
With this blog, GHI has endeavored to engage and enlist divergence opinions about how global agriculture can address this issue in ways that encourages enterprise while understanding that we must move forward in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way that is paramount to achieving the end of feeding the world's population 40 years down the road.
A good example of GHI's approach is our recently released, commissioned five-chapter study Benefits of an Alternative Future. Dr. Michel Petit, in his paper, Agriculture: A Reassessment Following Recent Controversies, deftly argues for an inclusive approach to meet the future global food demand.
Recently, when agricultural leaders and stakeholders gathered in Paris for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Ministerial Meeting - the first such assembly since 1998 - a critical question was posed to a roundtable of agriculture ministers, organizations and corporate leaders: "What actions are you prioritizing to prepare the food and agriculture system for the needs of a rapidly changing world?"
Of course, that is the question that all of us, inside and outside of agriculture, must answer sooner rather than later as "the global food and agriculture system will have to provide sustainably for billions more people and meet greater demands on quality, affordability and availability. Farming will be competing with other sectors for land, water and investment, while climate change adds new pressures," an OECD paper stated in outlining the challenges.
The importance of agriculture in the scheme of government stability was underscored this week in a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Mahmoud Qureshi. During a joint press conference on CSPAN Secretary Clinton noted that "60
to 70 percent of the people of Pakistan rely on agriculture and therefore "we ignore agriculture at our peril". While Secretary Clinton's words that "we ignore agriculture at our peril" may ring a bit ominous and alarmist, she is absolutely right in her assessment.
Eight days and counting to our 2010 Symposium, Closing the Gap: Examining an Alternative Future. The symposium, which will be held on March 17 in Washington, D.C., continues the Global Harvest Initiative's quest to explore and develop specific policies with a global perspective, while having the power to change the way agricultural products are produced and secured.
We expect it to be an exciting day of engaging discussions around the topics of agriculture, hunger, conservation and food security.We've assembled a wonderful group of presenters who will offer their ideas - both from a policy and philosophical perspective - regarding how we address the challenge of feeding the 9 billion people who are expected to populate the planet in 2050. Here's an updated program agenda:
GHI 2010 Symposium Agenda.A highlight of this year's Symposium will be the unveiling of a five-part study, which was commissioned by GHI to provide a fact-based blueprint for developing the policies and systems necessary to sustainably meet growing demand. This diverse group of experts provide additional perspective on the difficulty of the challenges ahead, as well as the global consequences of not closing the productivity gap.