Global food production: recalibrate or die

What does CCAFS’ new policy brief mean for the priorities set forth at GCARD 2012? Photo: Neil Palmer (CIAT)

The vast “corn belt” of the Midwestern United States, the “amber waves” of wheat in India’s Punjab region, and the rice paddies of Southeast Asia – iconic landscapes that could disappear before too long.

Our three most valuable calorie sources are all in peril from the negative effects of climate change. Maize yields tend to wilt with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, and wheat is vulnerable to drought, a phenomenon expected to increase drastically in occurrence. Rice, the grain that feeds over half the world, is exposed to a perfect quartet of negative impacts: flooding in some areas, drought in others, heat stress, and soil salinity increases.

For the record…

Recommendations made to the GCARD council at the close of the second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2). Photo: villeton

“We want GCARD to become a real process, not just an event,” said Monty Jones of FARA-Ghana, in his role as chair of the Outcomes Session on the final day of the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2).

That means holding the participants and organizers – especially GFAR and the CGIAR – of the conference accountable for the actions they propose to pursue between now and GCARD 2014.

No partnership = no foresight = no food.

If foresight practitioners are to offer useful results, they must integrate across multiple scales and stakeholders. Enter the Global Foresight Hub. Photo: Neil Palmer (CIAT)

One of the best examples of the inter-connectedness of the three themes for this year’s Gobal Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2) is the Global Foresight Hub, re-introduced on Wednesday by Joost Vervoort of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Vervoort’s take home message? You can have all the foresight you want, but if it’s not integrated across multiple scales and multiple stakeholders it won’t do anybody any good. In fact, the “Hub” exemplifies the inseparable nature of the Foresight and Partnership themes; their inter-dependence is the key to the practical application of foresight in agricultural research and development.

“Shed your organizational heart…”

What does it mean to actually build a local network of partners? A case study from Ghana shows us that it’s possible. Photo: Peter Casier

“…and put in your community heart!”

To adapt communities and local agriculture to the impacts of climate change, organizations can’t maintain an individualistic outlook, said Jesse Naab of CSIR-Ghana in a session on Partnerships for Environmental Resilience and Climate Change, day 2 of the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2). Instead, they must strive to collaborate and be on the lookout for ways to build capacity-enabling networks.

But tell us, Dr. Naab, how does that actually work?

5 minutes with CCAFS’ Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security

You can run into all kinds of people at major global agricultural conferences – Bruce Campbell, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), for example.

Spying Dr. Campbell alone, exposed like a gazelle in the vast corridors of the Conrad Hotel – the venue for the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2) – with nothing but a cup of coffee to defend himself, an auxiliary unit of the GCARD2 social reporting team seized the opportunity to corner him for a lightning interview.