Maintaining Diversity of Integrated Rice and Fish Production Confers Adaptability of Food Systems to Global Change
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REVIEW published: 09 November 2020 doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2020.576179 Maintaining Diversity of Integrated Rice and Fish Production Confers Adaptability of Food Systems to Global Change Sarah Freed 1*, Benoy Barman 2, Mark Dubois 3, Rica Joy Flor 4, Simon Funge-Smith 5, Rick Gregory 6, Buyung A. R. Hadi 4, Matthias Halwart 7, Mahfuzul Haque 2, S. V. Krishna Jagadish 8, Olivier M. Joffre 9, Manjurul Karim 3, Yumiko Kura 1, Matthew McCartney 10, Manoranjan Mondal 11, Van Kien Nguyen 12,13, Fergus Sinclair 14,15, Alexander M. Stuart 16, Xavier Tezzo 3,17, Sudhir Yadav 18 and Philippa J. Cohen 19 1 WorldFish, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2 WorldFish, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 3 WorldFish, Yangon, Myanmar, 4 Sustainable Impact Platform, International Rice Research Institute, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 5 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Bangkok, Thailand, 6 Independent Consultant, Yangon, Myanmar, 7 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy, 8 Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, United States, 9 Agence Française de Développement, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 10 International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 11 Sustainable Impact Platform, Edited by: International Rice Research Institute, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 12 An Giang University, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh Barbara Gemmill-Herren, City, Vietnam, 13 Fenner School of Environment & Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Prescott College, United States 14 World Agroforestry (International Centre for Research in Agroforestry, ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya, 15 School of Natural 16 Reviewed by: Sciences, Bangor University, Wales, United Kingdom, Sustainable Impact Platform, International Rice Research Institute, 17 18 Didier Bazile, Bogor, Indonesia, Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands, Sustainable Impact 19 Institut National de la Recherche Platform, International Rice Research Institute, Los Banos, Philippines, WorldFish, Penang, Malaysia Agronomique (INRA), France Luis F. Goulao, Rice and fish are preferred foods, critical for healthy and nutritious diets, and provide University of Lisbon, Portugal the foundations of local and national economies across Asia. Although transformations, *Correspondence: Sarah Freed or “revolutions,” in agriculture and aquaculture over the past half-century have primarily [email protected] relied upon intensified monoculture to increase rice and fish production, agroecological approaches that support biodiversity and utilize natural processes are particularly Specialty section: This article was submitted to relevant for achieving a transformation toward food systems with more inclusive, Agroecology and Ecosystem Services, nutrition-sensitive, and ecologically sound outcomes. Rice and fish production are a section of the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems frequently integrated within the same physical, temporal, and social spaces, with Received: 25 June 2020 substantial variation amongst the types of production practice and their extent. In Accepted: 06 October 2020 Cambodia, rice field fisheries that strongly rely upon natural processes persist in up Published: 09 November 2020 to 80% of rice farmland, whereas more input and infrastructure dependent rice-shrimp Citation: culture is expanding within the rice farmland of Vietnam. We demonstrate how a diverse Freed S, Barman B, Dubois M, Flor RJ, Funge-Smith S, Gregory R, suite of integrated production practices contribute to sustainable and nutrition-sensitive Hadi BAR, Halwart M, Haque M, food systems policy, research, and practice. We first develop a typology of integrated Jagadish SVK, Joffre OM, Karim M, Kura Y, McCartney M, Mondal M, production practices illustrating the nature and degree of: (a) fish stocking, (b) water Nguyen VK, Sinclair F, Stuart AM, management, (c) use of synthetic inputs, and (d) institutions that control access to Tezzo X, Yadav S and Cohen PJ fish. Second, we summarize recent research and innovations that have improved the (2020) Maintaining Diversity of Integrated Rice and Fish Production performance of each type of practice. Third, we synthesize data on the prevalence, Confers Adaptability of Food Systems outcomes, and trajectories of these practices in four South and Southeast Asian to Global Change. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 4:576179. countries that rely heavily on fish and rice for food and nutrition security. Focusing on doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2020.576179 changes since the food systems transformation brought about by the Green Revolution, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems | www.frontiersin.org 1 November 2020 | Volume 4 | Article 576179 Freed et al. Diversity of Integrated Fish and Rice Production we illustrate how integrated production practices continue to serve a variety of objectives to varying degrees: food and nutrition security, rural livelihood diversification and income improvement, and biodiversity conservation. Five shifts to support contemporary food system transformations [i.e., disaggregating (1) production practices and (2) objectives, (3) utilizing diverse metrics, (4) valuing emergent, place-based innovation, (5) building adaptive capacity] would accelerate progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 2, specifically through ensuring ecosystem maintenance, sustainable food production, and resilient agricultural practices with the capacity to adapt to global change. Keywords: food systems, integrated agri-aquaculture, inland fisheries, food security, food policy INTRODUCTION demonstrate this approach in the context of Asian agricultural landscapes and diets, which have been dominated by rice and fish The world’s food systems are simultaneously overreaching for more than a millennium (Ruddle, 1982; Miao, 2010). planetary boundaries and failing to meet nutritional needs Rice cultivation occurs in a range of agroecosystems, including (Gordon et al., 2017; Willett et al., 2019). In response, lowland areas that are seasonally inundated by rainfall and transformation of current food systems is increasingly called floodplains extending from the edges of rivers and lakes on to minimize environmental impacts and sustain livelihoods (Heckman, 1979; Fernando, 1993). These agroecosystems also while also producing food of sufficient quantity and quality to provide habitats for a “wide range of aquatic species (including meet the growing needs and demands of populations globally finfish, crustaceans, mollusks, reptiles, insects, amphibians, and (Ericksen et al., 2010; IPES-Food, 2016; Schipanski et al., 2016).A aquatic plants) used for consumption and/or sale” (FAO, 2014). food system incorporates “all the elements (environment, people, Rice-fish production practices (RFPPs) are those where the inputs, processes, infrastructures, institutions, etc.) and activities cultivation of rice takes place while allowing the simultaneous or that relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation, rotational presence of: naturally occurring fish and other aquatic and consumption of food, and the outputs of these activities, species that are harvested through fisheries; and/or introduced including socio-economic and environmental outcomes” (HLPE, fish populations that are cultured (FAO, 2014). Throughout 2014). Transformation toward more sustainable and equitable Asia, RFPPs have developed, persisted, and been transformed food systems is a foundation of the Sustainable Development under a range of environmental, social, and agricultural policy Goals, directly for the second goal “Zero Hunger” and as a critical contexts and comprise diverse fish species and rice varieties (e.g., enabler of many of the other goals (Caron et al., 2018). To re- Heckman, 1979; Halwart, 1998; Amilhat et al., 2009). Presence shape food systems to meet the environmental, economic, and of fish within agri-food systems is observed globally (Halwart social challenges of sustainability, we must shift away from a and Gupta, 2004) and is especially important in food insecure narrow productivity focus that dominated previous “revolutions” nations (Fisher et al., 2017). Despite this, incorporation of fish in agriculture (Pingali, 2012; Blesh et al., 2019), aquaculture in agricultural food security programs is lacking (Fisher et al., (Troell et al., 2014), and fisheries (Ratner and Allison, 2012). 2017) and fish are rarely more than anecdotally mentioned in Agroecological practices are important in the package of agroecology and food systems literature, despite their relative solutions needed to transform food systems (IPES-Food, 2016; resource efficiency among animal sources of dietary protein and HLPE, 2019) and to build resilience of livelihoods and landscapes rich micronutrient content for diets (Kawarazuka and Béné, in the face of global change (Sinclair et al., 2019). Agroecological 2011; Béné et al., 2015). practices are diverse, but can be characterized by a generic set In addition to the production of rice and fish for food and of agroecological principles, such as a preferential use of natural nutrition, RFPPs can provide a range of ecosystem services and processes and a focus on local suitability, equity, and systems farmer benefits, depending on the approach and application of management (Altieri, 2002; HLPE, 2019). The principles are agroecological principles. For example, RFPPs can make efficient conceptualized in categories of technical and/or biophysical and use of scarce water and land resources (Frei and Becker, 2005), of organizational, institutional and/or socio-economic attributes maintain