Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

My research on grain legume cultivation and its potential effects on nutrition is just online. It includes a 'new' methodology to review potential impacts of agriculture on nutrition that may be of interest, structural equation modelling (SEM).

See: Grain legume cultivation and children's dietary diversity in rural farming households in Ghana and Kenya, in Food Security.

Dear All,

There is still about 80% of wastewater that remains untreated in the world.

This can be transformed partially into treated wastewater for irrigation as per ISO 16075 and pre-financed for delivery to farmers thanks to its commodititization.

It is possible to correlate commoditized treated wastewater with matched offers and demands of some food commodities for which (purchases and sales) commitments are ahead of related productions.

Best regards

I would suggest to explicitly include consumption aspects in the assessment of agroecology and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies, i.e. to explicitly adopt a food systems perspective when doing such an assessment, not focusing on agricultural production only. This is important in a context where agroecology may go along with lower yields and changed output patterns (e.g. when livestock is reared on grass, waste and by-products only). To avoid leakage or increased land use in such a case, changes in consumption patterns (reduced share of animal products in diets for high-income countries/classes; reduced food wastage and losses) are a key complement of big leverage to the changes on the production side.

Agroecology is a complexity of farm practices, social movement, holistical approaches and scientific challenges and views that is growing strongly during the last two decades. Particularly and in coincidence in the same moment that agrochemical problems, externalities in the agricultural sector and civil society in terms of food quality, quantity and typology and climate change is rising and on the table of policy makers and society.

Agroecology adopted a complex systems approach to understand agricultural systems as indivisible wholes “supported by interactions and synergies between and among biological components that enable these systems to sponsor their own soil fertility, productivity enhancement and crop protection” (Altieri 2002). Instead of focusing on isolated factors to increase productivity through targeted technical interventions (e.g. application of agrochemicals, irrigation or biotechnology), agroecology advocates a knowledge intensive focus on the health and co-evolution of the entire indivisible social and ecological system as it pertains within specific unique contexts.

Focusing in the previous comments, several others aspects on where this document could put the focus, is no only “innovation” instead of social innovation and agricultural practices.

During last decades a new movement is rising in the agricultural system related to a less consume of external inputs, synthetic fertilizers and chemical and new models of production and consume.

Complexity and Multicriterial Analysis must to be incorporated to the current research.

Main focus:     

• Urban and periurban agriculture (focusing on agroecological practices)
• Agroecology, resilience and climate change
• Agroecology and health (nutrients)
• Shift to agroecological practices, food security and social economy
• Incorporate Invisibles Values (More than only innovation or Incomes)
• Put in whole value food short chains in terms of food security
• Greening cities and agroecology (Cities for food)

Best regards

Walter A. Pengue

Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento,

Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA            

Dear all,

This topic is very actual today and in my opinion, it should cover agro-economic/agribusiness – environmental relationship (the negative effect caused by businesses on the environment) as well, then explain the role of the new technologies in terms of resource efficiency and minimization of environmental footprint. Besides, the role of the agriculture-aquaculture integration should be highlighted. For example, in terms of increasing water resource efficiency in aquaculture, more environmental practices should be applied. Implementation of more intensive closed-or semi-closed Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) configurations in fish farms have a potential to result in significant improvements of groundwater footprints and water resource efficiencies. Incorporation of a sludge and wastewater treatment units, capable of removal of ammonia (highly toxic for aquatic animals) and sludge (major source of nutrients in aquatic environment) will further increase environmental sustainability of the farm, reducing pollution of receiving water bodies, soil waterlogging and salinization. With RAS configuration, aquaculture-agriculture integration is very essential, as nutrient rich aquaculture discharges can be used for irrigation purposes, even in Aquaponics system. 

Regards, 

Lusine Tadevosyan

Project Coordinator

Sustainable Fisheries for enhanced Water Resourses in Armenia

ICARE Foundation

Yerevan, Armenia

[email protected], [email protected]

Thanks for the invitation to give feedback on the proposed draft scope of the HLPE report. After reading through the proposal we have a few suggestions for improvement:

1) We think the term 'agroecology' needs to be defined more clearly.

2) 'Other innovative approaches' also needs more specification, as this could now mean anything.

3) We would like to emphasise that 'agroecology' is a tool, not an objective. 

4) We suggest that as a first step, you assess the available innovative approaches, practices and technologies (as mentioned in bullet point 3) and that as a second step, you consider the appropriate regulations, standards, instruments, processes and governance mechanisms to support the implementation of promising options.

5) The previous point (4) needs differentiation for different regions as it probably depends on occurring soils, climate, current use or access to inputs and existing institutions.

6) As a first (broad) differentiation, a first distinction can be made into a) regions with higher yields (smaller yield gaps) and associated larger risks on environmental pollution and b) regions with lower yields (larger yield gaps) with a higher need to intensify production and/or a risk of soil nutrient mining.

7) We suggest to include both more organically oriented solutions as well as more technically and/or chemically oriented solutions in your analysis as both might have their merits.

Best of luck with the report.

Kind regards, Lotte Woittiez and Renske Hijbeek (Wageningen University, Plant Production Systems)

Dear Colleagues,

FI, and in particular FAO’s  Aquaculture Branch (FIAA), welcome the initiative.

Aquaculture has a long history of integration with agriculture, especially in Asia. It somewhat fell out of fashion in the early nineties as farmers sought to maximise production and profits from ever more expensive land: the links between on-farm recycling of materials were broken as farmers increasingly moved to monocultures and production of crops, livestock and fish became increasingly dependent on external fertilisers and feeds.

As the challenges of building livelihoods resilient to external threats - including climate change - and improving food security and nutrition increase, attention is turning once again to incorporation of aquaculture into farming systems. Issues to be considered at the farm/watershed scale include the harvesting, storage and use of water, the use of on-farm wastes in aquaculture ponds versus alternative on-farm uses, the use of pond water for crop irrigation, the production of crops  (especially vegetables) on pond dykes, and the integration of fish with rice and livestock. While there is a rich literature to draw upon, there remain critical knowledge gaps, including GHG emissions from fish/rice systems and biosafety and livestock/fish systems.

Various perspectives will need to be applied in assessing the merits of incorporating aquaculture in agroecological approaches: impacts on key resources (land, water), soils and biodiversity and on pesticide use and GHG emissions. Other issues are whether the nutrients that farmed fish provide – protein, lipids and micronutrients – can competitively meet the needs of poor consumers. Impacts of adoption of aquaculture on resilience, on on-farm labour and on incomes will be crucial; thus, markets, value chain linkages and value chain governance are important.

New technologies worth exploring in both rural and peri-urban areas include integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, which includes aquaponics (generally, closed recycle systems that utilize wastes produced by farmed fish or other aquatic animals to supplies the nutrients for plants grown hydroponically, which in turn purify the water), as well as the use of artificial substrates for periphyton production.

FIAA is working with SP2 and various departments to develop decision support tools for agroecology and in the development of food systems approaches to food security and malnutrition, including determination of nutritional water productivity.

Thank you for having given us the chance to comment.  FI will not, however, be suggesting a name for the Call for Experts for the Project Team for the report.

Best regards,

Manuel Barange

Director FIA

Internal Officer-in-Charge, FI

Agro-ecological approach should a base for sustainable agricultural intensification and building resilience. The efforts towards achieving sustainable agro-ecosystems must be relay on the ecological inclusiveness with location specific interventions enriched with mutual trades which benefits all entities equitably viz., producers, consumers and value chains and ecosystem services while safe guarding the environmental flows. Still there is huge untapped potential for birding these gaps whether it can be yield/production, nutrition, input use efficiency, ecological foot print, etc. We need to find a ways to develop and/or bring-back lost glories of the ecologically sound integrated production system which itself is resilient as well inputs efficient with less travel millage.    

I would say a more appropriate title would have been Sustainable Innovation for Agriculture and Food System. For arid pastoral areas the key to achieve the success of food security and nutrition should NOT (or cannot in my opinion) rely in the introduction of upgraded breeds of small ruminants or cattle. These livestock species are unsustainable becasue require upgraded veterinary inputs, husbandry and fodder. As unpalatable may sound for arid pastoral areas the only livestock species that can cope with the ineluctable and profound environmental changes caused by climate warming is the camel (C. dromedarius, and in high latitudes areas C. bactrianus).

This obvious fact is already happening and has been documented:

Kagunyu, A.W. & Wanjohi, J..2014. Camel rearing replacing cattle production among the Borana community in Isiolo County of Northern Kenya, as climate variability bites. Pastoralism 4: 13.

Namaalwa, J.et al., 2016   The potential of camel production in resilience building to climate variability in Karamoja, Uganda, RUFORUM Working Document Series (ISSN 1607-9345) No. 14 (1): 1027-1031. http://repository.ruforum.org

Salamula et al., 2017.  Socio-economic determinants of pastoralists’ choice of camel production in Karamoja sub-region, Uganda, Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 7:26.

However in many arid sub-Saharans areas such as Namibia, Botswana, northern South Africa such natural trend is impossible because of the absence of an existing indigenous camel population (and obviously of camel husbandry know-how). The problem could be solved by establishing demonstration camel breeding herds to initiate a restocking of the local pastoral people with this livestock species and to train local pastoralists on camel husbandry and production.

The "writing is on the wall" the longer we wait to act the worse it will be!

Dear All,

Good day again!

I think understanding nutrient cycling and budgeting vis-a-vis geo-medical problems with agroecological approach is essential. Generation of information on atmospheric input of N, S, B, F, I etc. will help in this regards. Micronutrients cycling in soil-plant-animal-human–continuum plays a key role in micronutrient nutrition of animals and human beings. Studying relationship between soil quality and animal and human health in collaboration with medical institutions will be rewarding and will help solve several nutritional problems.

Thanks and regards,

Pradip Dey