المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Dear HLPE – Project Team,

Congratulation to the immense effort to prepare the V0 Draft about „Agroecological approaches and other innovations….…..to enhance Food Security and Nutrition“. You did a very good job.

Nevertheless, there are some comments from the side of an animal nutritionist. May be, I did not understand in all cases the ways of thinking of agroecologists or I am wrong in some cases. Nevertheless, I will write my comments.

• To the headline of the Draft: „and other innovations“ is not clear to me? What means „other innovations“ and what is the borderline to agroecology? Do you cover also the animals (breeding, keeping, nutrition etc.)?

• The objective of the report: The cover letter gives many information, but a short information about the objective of the report is not clear to me. The authors should try to give an understandable short defination.

• The authors used many abbreviations. Therefore, it is hard to read the paper and to understand it. A list of abbreviations should be before the Table of Content or afterwards to make the paper more understandable for interested readers. To avoid any abbreviations would be another alternative and the acceptance/the interest in reading the paper outside from the agrarecologists would be increased.

• p. 13, l.36): „Agroecological approaches and other innovations for… that the global food system is not meeting the needs of the current world population…“ Is this situation a problem of food production or a problem of food distribution or it Is a problem of rich (countries and people) and poor (countries and people)?

• The four chapters to explain Agroecological principles and objectives are well done and contribute to the understanding of Agroecological principles and research to people from outside. But „Other innovations“ are still open.

• p. 34 ff.: Box 7 and Table 3 shows the 17 key aspects. Why do you only consider meat in your topics? Why not milk and eggs? Which meat do you mean (cattle, pork, poultry or total meat)? Meat is not equal to meat concerning all footprints. Poultry meat is much more favourable than beef.

• p. 36; Table 3 is not easy to understand
• p. 58 ff.; Chapter 2.5: Another point concerning human nutrition from agricultural production may be also the so-called „human edible fraction“ (hef) from all the food plants, such as cereals, legumes, oilseeds, potatoes, sugar beet and sugar cane etc. (see CAST (1999); Wilkinson (2011) Animal 5; 1014-1022; Ertl et al. (2015) 137, 119-125). These authors give values about substantial amounts of potentially human edible feeds. These values may help to assess food : feed competition between man and animals. As animal nutritionist, we use also the values for a better quantification of the food/feed competition.
• p. 76 ff.: I am surprised that the authors describe in short some study results and do not use in general the results from the NSA or NASEM („National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine“, 2016) report (420 p). For my understanding, this is a very critical and comprehensive material after 20 years GMcultivation under farm conditions. I reviewed this book as Book Review Editor of the Elsevier-journal „Animal Feed Science and Technology“ (see Attachment). The authors of NASEM (2016) give also some clear comments for GM-research in the future. For example, they conclude that „The genetic basis of complex traits, such as drought tolerance, water use efficacy and nitrogenuse efficiency is presently not yet fully understood. Only continued public founding of basic research will enable further advances in understanding of the physiological, biochemical and molecular basis of these important traits.” I think this is a clear statement for independent fundamental research. Companies are not interested to solve such problems. It is very expensive and they do not expect any profit. Personally, I consider the plant breeding as the starting point for the whole food chain and I am convinced that all „forms“ or methods of plant breeding have large importance for sustainable agriculture and finally, for food security and nutrition.

Also p. 76 ff.: Since 1998, we carried out at our Institute of Animal Nutrition 18 feeding studies with food producing animals (from laying quails upto dairy cows). GM-plants were cultivated on our experimental farm. In 2013, I edited a textbook „Animal Nutrition with Transgenic Plants“ (234 p.) in the CABI Biotechnology Series and we summerized many results of feeding studies (150) alover the world available for us during this time (see flyer attached). By the way, we made also the first study to follow the fate of tDNA-fragments in animal bodies (Einspanier et al. (2001); European Food Research and Technology 212, 129-134).

• Some minor comments:
• p. 11: 8 recommendations, but only 6 are given.
• p.13, l. 45, Figures 1 and 6 (p. 37) and some other places: Ecological Footprint should be defined/expained. I know many footprints, such as Carbon Footprint, Land footprint, Water footprint etc, but what means Ecological Footprint?
• p. 14, l. 2: Jones et al. 2015; sometimes cited, but I could the references not find in the list of references.
• p. 33; Figure 5: is not clear to me; should be more/better explained
• p.68: Box 11 seems to be not very informative. Furthermore, the figures are not in the SIsystem (Joule) and may much more vary as given there.
• p.73, Figure 12 is difficult to follow and to understand.
• p. 77, l. 23 – 27: The areas of cultivated GMplants should be updated (2017: about 188 mio. ha.).
• p. 81 and ff.: It is difficult to comment Chapter 4, because most boxes and also conclusions are not finished yet.
• p. 93: Figure 13: HLPE project cycle needs some explanation.
• p. 111, l. 44: References begining with Goergen et al. need some systematic/structur according ABC.

Gerhard Flachowsky

Institut of Animal Nutrition

Federal Research Institute of Animal Health

Bundesallee 37

38116 Braunschweig

Germany