[Music] hello everyone i'm stephen tupe vice chancellor of the university of cambridge and it's my great honor to welcome you to this cambridge conversation our popular series bringing you cambridge ideas and research i'll be the host and moderator for today's digital event after our conversation there will be around 20 minutes where our speakers will respond to audience questions and you can submit a question at any point by clicking on the q a box at the bottom of the page and typing in your question this event is being recorded and will be shared on our youtube channel the world's population currently sits at nearly 8 billion people just 100 years ago less than 2 billion people lived on this planet the population has quadrupled and every person needs to be fed the population has quadrupled but our earth remains the same size so we plant more crops and raise more cattle and build more food processing factories agriculture is among the greatest contributors to climate change emitting more greenhouse gases than all our cars trucks trains and airplanes combined farming uses our precious water supplies and is a major polluter of river systems through runoff from fertilizers and manure and as we clear forest and grassland we remove not only diverse plants and trees but the animals from insects to lizards to mammals to birds which inhabit those environments we aren't simply farming land to sustain ourselves either as prosperity increases we want food from all around the world my local supermarket here in cambridge stocks avocados all year round i can buy grapes any day of the year there's a complete stock of different meat available every day and that of course isn't only here in cambridge all over the world a rising middle class demands more rich and varied diets yet at the same time according to the united nations across the globe 690 million people regularly go to bed on an empty stomach and in 2021 it's likely to be more because it's estimated that up to an extra 132 million people have been left hungry because of the effects of the cobit pandemic we need more food to feed our world and that means growing more and more crops clearing more and more land creating more and more greenhouse emissions it's a vicious circle that has the potential to see us doubling the amount of crops grown by 2050. what's the solution how can we grow the crops needed to feed the earth's burgeoning population and at the same time limit global warming which will in turn make it harder to grow crop and raise livestock is it through genetic modification of crops the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides can we improve the fertility of the soil and the production of the world's staples naturally is it possible to save our remaining biodiversity even to integrate environments so that food production doesn't hinder life on earth we must become more efficient and that's something our cambridge scientists are working towards every day because our world depends on it with me today are giles oldroid director of the crop science center at the department of plant sciences in alliance with the national institute of agricultural botany professor david coombs is director of our conservation research initiative and director of the center for earth observation and he's based in the department of plant sciences dr carol ebay completed her phd as part of the gates cambridge scholarship program currently a postdoctoral scientist in the saunders laboratory at the john innes center norwich she also established the jr biotech foundation which provides training and support for africa-based researchers and students well welcome to each one of you it's great to have you uh with us today look i i think we all have this somewhat idyllic idea that farms certainly here in the uk are really pretty places with some cows sheep hedgerows crops but as the world approaches eight billion people that isn't the real picture is it giles could you paint a picture of agriculture in the 21st century for us yeah absolutely stephen yeah the image that is always advertised at us of agriculture i think is this rather pastoral idle of a family farm from the 1950s but in fact since that time we've had a massive transformation in our agricultural system that has involved a huge amount of intensification so we've seen a big increase in mechanization that's required much larger fields so fewer hedgerows because of the size of the machinery we've seen a lot more specialization in agriculture in the uk so rather than mixed livestock and arable farmers farmers have tended to be either livestock and having much larger herds or focused only on crop production and having a few crops that they rotate and then we've also seen over the last 70 years a much greater dependence on the use of chemical inputs into agriculture so that's inorganic fertilizers to provide nutrients to crop plants and then pesticides and herbicides and fungicides to control insect pests diseases and weeds that grow in our field so all of that has meant we grow a lot more food as you've already highlighted in fact you know here in the uk we've seen our food production triple quadruple over the last 70 years that's amazing and really it's meant that farming has kept up pace with the demands that's it come upon those from a growing population but it does mean that the agricultural landscape now supports far less biodiversity than it did 70 years ago and creates an awful lot more pollution because of the chemical inputs that's interesting carol you're uh from nigeria uh tell us a little bit about farming in your part of africa is it is industrialized in a sense as giles is just described here in the uk right so in nigeria just like most of africa there are different types of farming right there it's livestock farming crop farming there are people who like in kenya uh the flower industry is a big um uh marquette there as well however farming um can be industrialized uh but the majority of farmers in african countries still rely on subsistence farming and just to paint a picture of what agriculture looks like in africa as a continent and this mirrors across different nations is that um the majority in fact agriculture is the largest employer of labor in africa it employs an average of 54 of the population even up to 65 percent and now 90 percent of the people who produce the food that we eat are consumed in africa which are mainly smallholder farmers themselves live in extreme poverty and so subsistence farming is a way of leaving and livelihood for the majority of people but what we've seen is that for the industrialized farming is there however it is largely sponsored by politicians or governments or rich business people who are now buying on farms and lands and making it more industrial in order to use you know they use fertilizers and use all kinds of landscapes to improve uh food production not necessarily to feed the population to address hunger and starvation issues barrata from a business point of view we also have international influences and funders for instance that are funding industrial farming across africa and and there's a recent report from kenya where kenyan researchers actually did some research into agricultural research and development in kenya and found that 85 percent of our bill and nethergate's funded projects are actually industrial farming which are bad for the environment but also do not necessarily address the problem of hunger and starvation so we're still here uh majority of people relying on subsystems with no tools don't have access to markets don't have the right infrastructure don't have the right education and so we keep going around in circles and that's where we are at this point so i mean you've talked about an emerging sort of industrialization of agriculture uh in implanted in more traditional subsistence farming and and giles has talked about uh monoculture there is a theme here the need to perhaps recapture biodiversity in our farms david how do we go about trying to recapture biodiversity well i mean in the uk i think it's a very exciting time in that the government with its 25-year environment plan really is looking forward to investing public money in public good as it as it calls it and and i think that will involve um more protection and enhancement to nature in our agricultural lands uh for the services they provide to society so one of the important services is carbon storage in our woodlands but also in our peatlands and uh and that carbon carbon is staying in vegetation not going up into the atmosphere and that that makes it actually incredibly valuable it's got a new value which uh considered to unrecognize in our financial systems but it's creeping in uh as recognized as important uh financially and so i think there is there are opportunities in in the coming years for uh greater protection expansion of nature across our our british landscape and even small things like extending our a network of woodlands and biodiverse grasslands uh even on a small scale would be extremely valuable we've actually got 41 000 tiny fragments of ancient woodland left across the uk they were there because of um medieval land practices everybody needed to chop down a tree to build their house in those days so they kept these little bits of woodland but they're small we've got a chance to expand them so that so in the uk i think there's lots of opportunity where the real pressure on biodiversity is of course is in the tropics where we've got this really massive expansion of agriculture some uh for commodities for the west but also feeding a growing population and i think we do need to work out new mechanisms to make uh to make um those systems of sweden agriculture where people move move the agricultural land every few years it's just got to intensify that so they aren't occupying so much land that they're getting the same amount of yield out of small amounts and we've got to work out mechanisms of protecting forests by payment in in the tropical systems and savannas so that there's a sort of counterbalance this huge commodity market which is uh which is ruining uh much the tropical biodiversity so david you've you've painted a mixed picture of some opportunity but also some real challenges giles how would you go about addressing this question of biodiversity in agriculture yeah i i'm i'm rather excited by a sort of emerging vision which is really setting land aside for biodiversity but having that on a sort of landscape scale that really preserves the biodiversity it's not tiny fragments where they you know the tiniest bit of some bad year and you've lost that species of butterfly in that tiny fragment so i honestly i find the rewilding movement very exciting because i think it's a mechanism that facilitates that creation of sort of a landscape scale uh preservation of biodiversity so you're setting areas aside you say this is really about biodiversity and that's principally what we're focusing on and then you the counter of that is you have to say there's other areas where we're really focusing productivity uh because clearly as you already outlined stephen you know we've got a big challenge and that hasn't gone away it's actually going to get worse you know we're going to go from 8 to 10 billion people so and we're going to see increased wealth so demand for agricultural products is going to increase over the next 30 years and we're going to have to meet that increased demand so we do have to say there's areas that we do productivity from what i would like to see is that those areas where we're focusing on productivity that we drive up sustainability of that system so that you don't have areas where they're producing the producing food but then polluting the environments where you're trying to support biodiversity so we need to make those productive areas self-contained and maintain productivity but reduce all those chemical inputs so you're reducing the the the impact on the on the rest of the environment one of the ways of course of potentially increasing productivity and it relates to your own research i think is genetic modification of crops to improve their resilience to improve their uh yields etc but i don't have to tell you that some consumers and indeed some farmers are really quite nervous about uh genetic modification and crops uh how how do you how do you go about uh convincing people that uh that productivity gain is worth what are perceived to be risks i suppose you know i think it's i guess the i for me the argument is changing because all the discussion is changing because in fact you know it's not i don't think it's i mean yes it's a part of our productivity but i think what principally what i care about is sustainable productivity and equitable productivity so making sure the smallholder farmers as carol has alluded to are able to produce what they need and even produce in excess so they can they can sell it on the market and then that in middle and uh high income countries that we're actually driving of the sustainability of the system and you know i think really what we need is a transformation you know in the way we do agriculture because i don't think it's i mean it's producing food right now but it's at too high a price for the environment and and then in places like sub-saharan africa is just not even producing enough so we need to raise that productivity and reduce the the the impact on the environment so generally the reason that people are fearful of gm in part i think it's because it's a it's a difficult technology to understand it's easy to be fearful of something you don't understand and but then also people have seen that companies have used gm to gain a large market share of the global seed supply and i think that that's a legitimate concern and i think that's something that we should be discussing you know who controls the seed that we that we grow and we consume but if we're going to see this transformation if we're really going to achieve this sort of vision of come 2050 where we've preserved biodiversity we've met the needs of the global population and we've achieved sustainability in our crop productivity that's a huge ask and we're just not going to get that sort of scale of agricultural transformation with plant breeding alone plant breeding has been brilliant it's really driven up crop productivity over the 20th century but in the 21st century the outputs of plant breeding a plateau and that's because we've mined a lot of the existing diversity in our crop plants it's not to say there's no place for plant breeding going forwards but we're not going to get an agricultural transformation we're not going to be able to get rid of all the chemical inputs through plant breeding alone absolutely not you're going to have to accept other technologies including genetic modification gene editing these are exciting technologies first researchers and i think we can use those technologies to change the way we do farming for the for the better so sustainable productivity is a theme here that we'll obviously uh be pursuing uh for a while carol you've set up a foundation as i mentioned jr biotech to help build crop science capacity across africa and also to ensure that farmers across the continent are able to maximize productivity so tell us a little bit about the foundation and and what it's seeking to achieve right so i set up the jr biotech foundation from my own personal experience um growing up in nigeria doing my undergraduate degree there in core science and having to go to the us to do an advanced degree and found out that my undergraduate degree did not necessarily prepare me for the next steps in my career pursuits so while other people were thousands of steps ahead of me i was kind of behind trying to catch up and and and that that foundation not being quite strong isn't what we need at this time with the level of challenge challenges that we face in the agricultural sector even the healthcare environment across africa so i set up this foundation to and to educate to train to empower african researchers to utilize modern tools to equip them with the skills the knowledge that they need to be able to develop and meet their own research agenda because i think it's important that we recognize that african researchers are capable of solving their own problems in fact they understand their problems more than anybody else and they actually know the solutions what they like sometimes is the resources uh the willpower from the government uh because of poor governance which is everywhere however in some countries you know we're seeing more progress than in some other countries in africa so because africa is huge it's 54 countries and they're all independent states and so we we set up this to empower the african researchers right providing that access to knowledge access to tools um to resources where we can academic resources so at least they are teaching students with relevant materials of materials or knowledge that they can transform that that are relevant to the problems that they face so they can instead of relying on global north or technologies that we build here and disseminate which often mostly don't quite work because of the lack of context and the lack of experience surrounding those technologies but if you if they have the knowledge and access to the tools then they can't be creative to address their own problems and so this is what we do at jr about foundation but it's not just the training we're also encouraging african researchers to talk to one another and what you find is i'm from nigeria and we're very peculiar beautiful amazing people but most times we don't agree with each other and that's because we have religious differences social there are so many uh conflicts or differences that we don't actually always work together right tribal issues and all that stuff and then nigerians are there ghanaians there sometimes the solution we need maybe in ghana maybe in kenya maybe in ethiopia when we don't talk to each other we don't know where the solutions are what you see is that researchers always look to the global notes for solutions when they can actually talk together use what they have to create what they don't have and so this is what we're doing at jr biotech foundation is to sort of change that mindset cause a shift in the mindset of our people to start to talk to each other and start to develop solutions for themselves and the future uh generation so more pan-african collaboration not so much reliance on north-south flows it's uh sounds fascinating and really we need all we need all right we need all that collaboration but we want to see them see themselves that they are capable and they can actually develop and lead our research agenda to solve their own problems in partnerships with international uh collaborators and colleagues because we do need uh to work globally it's a global world right so we have to communicate with each other and see what's going on there but what we don't want to do is to rely totally on solutions coming from the global north to the global south to solve the problems because it really hasn't worked and i don't think that it just that way would work thank you thank you giles i know that you also do in fact collaborate you work in africa i think you've started some recent work with the gates foundation just tell us a little bit about that yeah so so so my research focuses on replacing inorganic fertilizers with beneficial microorganisms that can essentially deliver the same nutrients so that they're in fertilizers principally phosphorus and nitrogen and you know those technologies would be brilliant for in in the uk and and other high income countries because it could help the sustainability of the system but the greatest potential beneficiaries are smallholder farmers because their productivity is so cool simply because they're not using these fertilizers so they have very little nitrogen and phosphorus that they add to their crops and so their crops perform very poorly so the biggest beneficiaries of the technologies we're working on are smallholder farmers but they're also probably the some of the hardest farmers to impact really hard to get to and hard to get technologies to they have very little buying power they're often in isolated regions so it's extremely challenging to impact and this it's almost impossible for me sitting in cambridge to say okay i'm going to solve that problem all in one so very clearly we definitely need to do that through partnerships and so we've been we're developing uh particularly focus this year on developing the partners putting it in place of partnerships we need with researchers in sub-saharan africa to work alongside us to develop the technology and test them also in fields in africa um and i and i totally agree with carol it can't simply be you know technologies in the north handed over to technology to to people in the south it's gotta i think you if you're gonna we're gonna have impact particularly for smallholder farmers in sub-saharan africa we have to work in partnership with colleagues in in in those nations david i know that you also uh work uh outside the uk internationally uh tell us a little bit about what you've been up to in malaysia okay yeah well in malaysia and indonesia have both deforested large areas of their lowlands in the last 40 years of an amazing transformation and that's made money for in terms of timber and then natalie planting oil palm and making money from that and so the countries have become quite wealthy this distribution of wealth is perhaps more questionable but they they own them well and uh the question is now what what do we do going forward there's large areas of degraded forests left there's some really nice bits of forest and there's also lots of oil palmer state and some of it's maturing and needs chopping down and replanting and so we've been working on the ground but also with remote sensing technologies to really assess where the good quality forests left the degraded forests which are good quality are left and distinguishing that from the areas which may um get converted to oil palm in the future and so working working with organizations down there which which are actually looking to to a more sustainable future the the roundtable on sustainable oil parliament you now might see that uh sustainable sign on your food products in the supermarket working with the oil palm industry to try and make them um more sustainable and what so there's some simple things we can do um so leaving substantial areas 100 200 meters wide of rainforest along the riverways makes an enormous difference for biodiversity and we've really got to push for that and and not uh clearing rainforest on really steep slopes is a bit of a no-brainer as well but it does happen and so we've got the technologies the remote section sensing technologies which allow uh this to be monitored um and one one last thing which we're doing in kane which is not me it's um ed turner in zoology but just working with the oil palm companies to not use um not to use so many insects insecticides and herbicides but instead think about um about using natural systems uh to to kill the um to kill the pests on the crops integrated pest management itself so making making use of nature to actually control some of the pests thank you i i want to shift gears a little bit because i'm sure that many participants are are wondering what they can do in this context to make their own uh choices perhaps better from a from a sustainable a productivity point point of view what would you suggest consumers need to do do we have to change our attitude should we be cutting down on meat on imported vegetables should we be avoiding palm oil products giles any any suggestions um certainly i mean i think the number one is eat less meat right and and um i you know that that so here in the uk we've seen a lot of interest in veganism and i think that's brilliant and it would be awesome if the world population would just cut that meat consumption in half it would make a huge difference however when you look globally meat consumption is going up and you know places like sub-saharan africa and china are expelled really developing quickly as people become more wealthy they tend to eat more meat so i think the thing to avoid is the assumption that personal consumer choice will solve the problem i don't think we're going to solve the the demand for agricultural products products by simply relying on consumer choice it has a role to play but you also have to transform the farming system as well thanks david anything you'd add on that question well i agree completely about the eating less meat um i think ruminants particularly so cows and sheep and chicken and pigs are less of a problem and the the the problem of wealth massive chunks of the world's population india and china as they become wealthier consuming more meat and also more vegetable oils it is putting a lot of pressure on our tropical systems i'm afraid um oil palm is actually a really complicated one i think because oil palm is incredibly productive per unit area of land although we've grown to hate it it is actually producing a large amount of yield per unit area of the tropics if we if we need that oil and we and we're taking it from somewhere else we need a lot more land to produce that oil and there's also things like coconut we all love coconut but we hate oil palm but actually that's the same thing they're out there palms producing oil in different parts of the tropics so there's this strange thing going on in our psyches about what's good and bad in the tropics thank you as always these choices are not so easy at an individual level an important point that they may not be enough in any event that it's systems that have to change carol you know we are talking about choice but sometimes for uh people in parts of africa there isn't a lot of choice there may simply be not enough to eat uh how do we how do we really fundamentally address that even even more crucial problem yeah that's an important question because when i hear hear that people have a choice not to eat meat and not to eat certain things i say that's a developed world problem when you come to african countries many people don't eat meat because they don't have access to food right and meat is expensive right but for most people that would be sort of almost the only source of protein that they have yes there are lentils beans and legumes and other sources of protein but but at the same time meat has become almost a luxury for a lot of families like i said um that you know the statistic here is that over 220 million people are currently hungry in africa one in four are undernourished and so that's the problem most times what you know africa does not actually have a problem with shortage of food so to say because we have sixty percent of the vast uh uh uncultivated herbal land is in africa right they're uncultivated we have food all kinds of variety what we don't have is actually the the resources to to empower the farmers to produce food in a way that is sufficient and enough to feed the population we also have don't have the willpower of the of our governments as well as you know international uh influences i call them influencers just to be kind and nice here um you know pushing for different types of agenda that isn't really helping to address the issue of poverty that we have so a lot of families even in my own extended family don't actually have a choice of what to eat because most of them are struggling to find at least a square meal a day i remember growing up in nigeria food was you know mostly rationed in other words you weren't really eating to be full and satisfied and then decide what you don't want to eat like my son does here if you're actually eating so you have something in your stomach and so it puts enormous pressure on a lot of families parents women farmers who actually farm produce 90 of our food supply but yet don't have food themselves to eat and for their families so there is something fundamentally wrong with that picture and so i think what we need to do is to also protect the environment yes but also find other means and new technologies are good however we don't want to spread it too much in a way that then it disrupts the flow of farming or farming practices right that then interrupts um you know the process of farming for instance i'll say this i went to benin republic and there is a massive world bank project for people from france coming there to run projects going into rural communities where i can't even go to to talk to farmers and talk to them about mobile apps mobile apps and these are farmers who can't even speak french because they have their local dialects they don't have even basic literacy skills but what we are busy doing is selling mobile apps for them to connect them in order to improve them so so there's so many things that are wrong and it's not just one answer here but i think that we can do better and i and i hope and i look forward to seeing an africa that has enough to feed their population again you're reaffirming from a different place the importance of systemic approaches here and not not things that are just uh sort of seemingly easy answers look we have many questions uh from the audience so i'm going to turn over uh two questions from the participants uh now because they're really good ones the first one is about food waste in western countries in particular and and the question is given how much waste there is is there really a need for such enhanced production that's the question um maybe i'll start with you giles um i think if i i agree there's clearly an issue on waste and we can we can tackle food waste undoubtedly um there but you know that's been a that's been a possibility for how many i don't know 30 40 50 years well i mean the other argument i hear is we grow enough food so we just ship more food to those people in africa who don't have it um i i i think there is an issue with regard to what we're eating and how much waste we produce and we can certainly that's part of the piece um i would really like to see farmers in africa grow enough for their own consumption and their you know to be able to sell and and have a decent education as well so i think there i don't think the answer is for farmers in africa is just a ship food aid to them i think that's not the right answer they you want to you want to empower them to grow enough food um so i think that yes certainly though we can reduce our food waste it is a part of the puzzle i think in fact it's this is a whole big picture here of how do we feed a massive population with the smallest environmental input possible reducing food weight is part is clearly part of that but increasing enough food is equally a part of that uh dave would you like to add on this question well and answering one of the questions further up actually one of the enormous wastes of food rather than food waste i think is biofuel and if we allow if we try and solve the climate crisis by using biofuels that's going to have a huge impact on the natural environment because biofuels are extremely inefficient way of converting solar energy into human usable energy and so we will just lose much of our remaining um tropical forests and large areas to buy it for so that's a waste of uh food rather than food waste but we we also got to address the the issues of food waste in the west as well really interesting we we've got some very good provocative approaches here and and issues uh one person has asked about a debate currently happening in india about how to address food poverty best and the interlocutor says one group is arguing that government needs to provide free food directly through public distribution systems and other people say that the government needs to give money to individuals so that they can buy whatever food they like and other people talk about food stamp programs i do you have any sense and i'm going to go to you first carol as to whether you think any one of these approaches is is the right approach or or is it a misconceived uh entirely to try to address food property in any of these ways i think that's not a sustainable solution for a long-term problem right that has been there and is still there however i do see that that approach a mixture a combination of it can work for temporary uh using or provision of relief for struggling families of those who can eat right so in america there are food stamps here there is a social benefit where the government actually pays people provide housing benefits and access to food so yes we do need those however what we need for fundamentally is for the government to create policies and policy frameworks that actually will address the root cause of hunger in africa and that will be how do you empower the smallholder farmers islam is a problem for most of africa even though the the 60 of uncultivated arable land is in africa a lot of farmers don't have land to cultivate their crops in ethiopia land issue is a problem and that has been going on for so long where people don't have free access to land now in nigeria my own peculiar beautiful home country the rich people are intimidating the poor people by taking up their lands and building hotels and luxury homes and this is just a small percentage of the population so the issue of land has to be addressed from the government standpoint tools mechanized farming is important most of the women young people are no longer interested in agriculture and subsistence farming because it takes so long it's laborious and it does not bring any income to help them or their families so what you see is that there's a lot of people moving out from the rural communities to urban communities where most times they're even homeless they're hawking on the streets to make ends meet because farming is no more lucrative right so how do we empower the the young people investing in agribusiness is an option in investing in research and development agricultural research and development where education training and capacity building is at the forefront in our universities transforming the agricultural system education system as well so that is up to speed to to modern technologies and how people can actually apply it to create the solution so i mean we can go on and on right i do have quite a lot of ideas of how our government don't listen to me but you know but but yeah it's a multifaceted problem and and you know we can address it as we can as from the international standpoint we can't address some of this problem providing education like we're doing providing some kind of resources to at least empower the researchers who then work with the extension farmers who work with the smallholder farmers to at least provide basic education training on how to you know crop uh inter-crop or how to improve what they have in the meantime while we wait for some of our governments to wake up to the reality okay so uh short term yes maybe some band-aid solutions but there's medium-term action that we should be taking now and big policy questions that have to be addressed by government different type of questions but um so you know i that we we often solve so places in africa have you know a drought and then suddenly there's a there's a family and we we address it with a food plaster of food and we dump a load of free food into that enviro into that country which addresses the immediate starvation issue but food aid is actually a disaster when you talk about the agricultural economy and most of the people in that landscape are farmers who are actually dependent on their products to make uh money and if you dump free food into the market you undermine the value of their products so you know food aid is a plaster that you can stick over an immediate crisis but it's absolutely not the long-term solution and exactly what carol said how do you empower smallholder farmers 70 percent of the world's population who live under a dollar a day are smallholder farmers so the only the best way to get them out of that poverty is to raise the productivity of their farm because that's their income so i think the long-term solution here is to raise their productivity because it gives them the means to to develop themselves and to educate their children etc that's their product so empowering small older farmers to produce more is far better than this this um plaster that we stick over the occasional price or the these crisises and the famines that emerge i don't think that's a solution at all thank you david different type of question uh a bit more technical in a sense this is about opportunities for soil enrichment including the recapture of carbon in soil is is this something that we should be focused on as a means of addressing uh the challenges that we're discussing here in terms of food productivity certainly is yes it's a good point um of course our our arable systems where we're just growing cereals year after year on the same land uh causes the the carbon from the soil to all but disappear and if you look at the grassland it's got much more carbon in it and so efforts to to get more carbon back into the soil regenerative agricultural techniques are going to be a part of the story for sure in in in the uk and beyond and so i think it's a very active area how you can actually put carbon into the soil through returning um decomposed plants uh or not disturbing the soil how can you make sure that that carbon doesn't just um disappear over two or three years through microbial decomposition so what's the best way of doing that but it's it's definitely going to be part of the story and i think that that highlights actually a benefit of gm because actually herbicide tolerant crops you don't need to plow the farm the land because you control the the principal reason to plant the land is to control weeds before you plant your crop but with herbicide tolerant crops you can actually you control the wheat in a different way and you can you can reduce so you are seeing quite a big no-till movement emerging in the u.s where they're not plowing and that is great for is much better for soil fertility because you allow more carbon accumulation if you're not planning carol question for you specifically about uh impact of climate change that you're already seeing in african agriculture and particularly related to both food safety issues and then also migration which you referred to in terms of urbanization as well what are your thoughts on that right so climate change effect is a major one and i don't think that we are talking about it enough i don't think it's making a lot any kind of sense really to a lot of people except for those who are educated in that way to sort of be aware of its impact we don't have enough awareness campaign programs to kind of create that awareness that we need to know um you know the population um in africa not not really at a small scale formal level because they really don't care about what the climate is doing all they want to do is have their crops grow and have that access but from the point of the government again it goes back to the government it goes back to creating policies that will actually put some things um on the check and create that opportunity so then we are utilizing um less land so to say but be more efficient in our agricultural practices right so i think that that's a major issue that needs to be addressed but right now i don't think um that has become that has not really come as critical or very important and that's because a lot of the farmers are still struggling anyway to have access to seeds so gm seeds are great gm technology is great however the major problem across africa is that they can't afford the seeds they can't afford to buy those seeds in fact the seed system is a major challenge now because now there's a lot of mix up of all kinds of varieties of seeds for instance if i'm a rice grower i have the local varieties from somewhere i have all my gm seeds and you know the farmers are complaining that what happened to the seed bag that you gave me yesterday is now mixed up i'm now having lower production so there is a mixture of uh seeds um including gm with local varieties with natural red so all kinds of things going on at that level that need to be checked right we need to have proper regulations more strict regulations on how these technologies are disseminated into africa where are they coming from who's disseminating it in fact with abuscular mycorrhizal fungus it might be surprising but actually the spores now are being sold in markets across ghana in nigeria to farmers and what you see is that the scientists that we have worked with through our foundation are also looking to identify the highest performing spores the highest performing seed varieties so they can't you know give it to farmers to have access but that's at any individual level so to say the government is not coming into these issues to actually take the forefront to address them and so it's a big problem our soils are deteriorating rapidly and and environmental pollution is a major problem in fact food waste is there as well but the post-harvest waste is even more than you know here we're talking about you know the grocery stores shut down and then they throw everything in the bin can't even give it to people to eat right sometimes i want to go to co-op and get like you know the cheaper ones that are marked down but at home it's actually the post harvest so when they harvest tomatoes from the from the farms because they don't have access good access to the market you know because of transportation issues and all that then the food goes bad and it has to go to waste and that's a small holder farmer losing an entire season of cropping any energy so yes climate change is a major issue but we're not talking about it enough and i think because there are this other present so to say issues that have taken over the conversation giles do you want to comment at all on the on the gm seed issue that carol talked about you referred to it a little bit yourself earlier yeah so i i i'd be surprised if i mean that's really the only gm crop that's been grown in africa commercially is gm cotton so i'd be very surprised if there's gmc sort of getting mixed up in in other seed bugs but there is definitely an issue of um c certification that you know you can you can buy packs of seed on a market in africa that claim to be one thing and i'm not uh so yeah i mean carol's highlighting there's a lot of problems in the system particularly when we're dealing with africa i think we have to be careful not to just sort of throw our hands up and say oh there's so many problems we can't do anything so you know the seed system is is a solvable problem we've solved that problem here in the uk validation of lines is a solvable problem we solve that problem here so you know there's a means that it where there's a will there's a way and i think as carol has said i think if african governments really got on board and really aligned to what needs to be to be put in place and that aligned with the sort of the the organizations like the gates foundation the foreign commonwealth office for instance i think there'll be a real possibility to to make truly transformational change there but as carol says there's a lot that needs to go and be put in place to achieve that thanks uh david you referred earlier to uh your uh distrust of of solutions based around biofuels and there's a related question here from someone in the audience about just basic competition uh amongst land uses even for things that seem very positive so the the argument here is you know greenfield sites being taken up for mega scale solar projects for example uh is there a risk especially in a country with limited land base like the uk that we're going to get into a position where we've got really completing competing positive uses uh that will actually undermine uh the food systems further very good question yeah yes i mean one of the bits of work i've been uh thinking about recently is where to plant uh 30 000 hectares of trees per year which is what the government's promised to do in our complete in our crowded aisle and uh we don't want to plant them on prime agricultural land um because that will just take us out of food production we've got to import that food and perhaps cause more damage somewhere else to the environment um where where do you plant them well the easiest places to plant them up on the in the uplands where the soils are poor and there's little biodiversity and there's enough land there to plant trees uh to take up carbon is the government's main purpose for doing that um but if that would only work if we uh if we less meat otherwise again we're displacing the problem of buying in need from overseas rather than going on our own shore so so i think anything we do in in europe or uh these these highly populated areas uh there's there's fundamental trade-offs which we've got to worry about uh and but i i think there's there's often solutions uh with some careful thought i mean there's plenty of uh roof space to put solar panels on for example you know in urban areas so do we need to put them on green field sites thank you uh there are lots of questions and we're starting to run out of time i'm afraid but uh giles there's a there's a pretty fundamental question about whether big big agra agricultural corporations are actually open to the sustainable approaches that you've uh you've discussed are you seeing any changing patterns there uh most definitely actually i think most of the big um companies recognize sustainability as the future i mean it's also you know sustainability is in theory more profitable if you can have the same productivity with fewer inputs you know you don't have to buy the chemical fertilizer you don't have to use your tractors to spray them on the land it's actually easier to grow crops without having all those inputs and certainly cheaper so certainly the uh the the large corporations are interested but there's also a lot of interest from the philanthropic organizations as well and i i'm actually really excited about that so all of my work funded by the bill melinda gates foundation and foreign commonwealth and development office and and in fact all the technologies that we develop are going to be owned by the bill and melinda gates foundation so it's not going to the technology is not going to be owned by large corporations it's going to be open by owned by a charitable foundation who cares about ensuring that the poorest people on the planet can grow enough food so i think that that's a new model of of approaching particularly things like genetic modification uh modification rather than leaving it in the control of a few corporations actually having it in the control of the foundation who has a specific charitable interest uh and rather than a profitable one thanks uh we're really close to the end here but there's a an interesting question about whether or not uh there will be what you might describe as orphan crops in africa and i suppose other parts of the world because they they're not profitable for large corporations carol do you want to start and then i'll ask you uh giles for your comments on that and david if you have any final comments but i'm going to have to ask you to be very quick yeah absolutely there are hundreds of neglected orphan crops in africa and most of them are indigenous so these are the crops that people prefer to eat more than rice modern maize and the things that you know the economic sort of crops or the crops that you know most of the international friends would like to support um which we need to now invest in but actually the good thing or the good news is that a lot of african researchers are now turning around to look at how to improve the the orphan crops and how to you know build them to a point where they understand a lot more about their you know the genome and what they're consistent what they consist of the nutritional values of these crops and how they can actually enhance them so then you know most of the african people can have access to to this food which i love most of them actually and they're becoming very extinct uh due to climate change effects and just quickly um just to let giles know that you know it's not just bt cotton that is the gm there is bt maize there's also rice all kinds of improved varieties of rice then from pharaoh a lot of international organizations that are modifying and sending seeds to africa and then it's getting to the smallholder farmers and they're all mixing it up and so we need the checks and balances there but yes i'm yes for often crops and i hope that we can invest more giles any thank you uh thank you carol giles any comments on orphans yeah so an orphan crop isn't often because it's not being genetically improved so it means that there's not the it's not had the sort of genetics work done to it which means that you can really improve it even particularly effectively through breeding so yeah the crop science center here in cambridge i'm really excited about we're working on a new initiative a doctor croft because it doesn't take much actually to convert an orphan crop to a non-orphan crop to make it essentially take it forward so it is a fully genetically tractable system and in fact now with genomics as they are we can sequence the genome of these crops that's already going on we can control the the make the genetics as simple as possible so you can take it forward for breeding and we can sequence all the diversity that's present so i think we can actually quite quickly convert an orphan crop into a into a genetic a crop that can be easily genetically improved and it's something that we're excited to be trying to put in place right now here at the crop science sector thanks we really are out of time but i want to give david the last word and ask you david whether despite all the complexity which we have heard about and all of the systemic change that's required are you optimistic that we really can make a big difference uh to uh human food security over the course of of the next generation i'm i'm semi optimistic i think i think what we'll see over the next few decades is a continuation of loss of tropical um nature no question about that but i am hopeful that we'll we'll carry on producing enough food for everybody uh and i i think as this growing recognition of the climate crisis but also the biodiversity crisis uh sets into people's minds that there will be an appetite uh to protect properly protect um large areas of remaining nature that's my hope that it will the whole world be more black and white in terms of protected areas and intensive agriculture that's the way i think it's going and i guess that's you could take that as possibly optimistic great well look we've run out of time unfortunately and thank you all for really interesting questions it could have gone on for another hour uh but i want to thank our truly excellent speakers giles david and carol it was a a really informative and fascinating conversation going forward on tuesday the 15th of june please join me and uh professor hans van deven and dr shruti kapila for an illuminating discussion ranging from world war ii and decolonization to the present day beyond the shaping of asia will shape our future so keep an eye out for your invitations in the meantime this conversation will shortly be posted on our youtube channel thanks to all of you for joining us stay safe you
2021-06-11