2004 World Food Prize International Symposium

THE WORLD FOOD PRIZE 2009 Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium Food, Agriculture, and National Security in a Globalized World October 14-16, 2009 - Des Moines, Iowa Conversation: Agriculture and Climate Change – Part of the Solution October 16, 2009 – 2:00-4:00 p.m. Hans Herren – Co-chair, International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development; 1995 World Food Prize Laureate Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, friends. It’s very nice again to be here together this afternoon with however few you are, but I am sure these are the hard-core, interested people, to look at the issue of climate change and agriculture. And as we heard a few times that agriculture is the problem, or part of the problem, to climate change, maybe we’ll also see how agriculture can be part of the solution. To do this, we will literally go down to earth, because that’s where agriculture has to contribute to the adaptation but also mitigation to climate change. We have a formidable panel this afternoon, and we’ll try to focus on solutions, but only after we state again the problem – because I think we have to understand the problem well in order to also look at the solutions and make sure there is a proper fit between what are the problems and what kind of solutions can we talk about. Really the idea is that we do understand the bottleneck which we have, in terms of agriculture being now part of the problem of climate change, and how we can turn it around, make it the part of the solution. You heard earlier about thinking about outrages; there’s many more of them. To me, one is the obvious fact of our lifestyle, how our lifestyle is contributing to make life not only difficult for us, in our own generation or my generation, but the one of our children and, even worse, so the one of the people in the developing countries, which will bear the brunt, I think, of our excesses in terms of contributing to climate change. Our belief in technological fixes has brought us mostly into that situation. And I think we need to now, as we move forward, think that technological fixes would be part of it – yes, we need some. But I think we should not just rely on these tech-fixes, which usually are short-term and address symptoms. And that’s what we’ve been doing since the Club of Rome told us, “Watch out, your resources are limited, and more people are coming,” and that we should really try to handle our Earth with more care. Most of it was ignored. Thirty years later, when there was a revision of the book Limits to Growth, it turns out that quite a bit of what was in there actually is sort of coming true – not everything; it’s hard to predict 25-30 years ahead. But just the fact that many of the issues raised originally in that book actually came true and panned out show that people should pay more attention to what at least we say today about dealing with our future. The Club of Rome actually tried at that time to alarm mostly our leaders, but many leaders chose to ignore it for the sake of growth – growth above all. Now, we need growth as [a way] out of poverty, but I think even way back then people were thinking, “So what about a different type of growth?” Maybe green growth, sustainable growth? And we are still struggling today with this. UNEF is about to publish next year a new report on the green economy in which there will be a whole chapter on also agriculture – how to make agriculture green. And this is really something that we’re going to talk about yet today with this panel: how to change, from black, as some people would say – it’s not only brown, it’s actually black – and to go all over to green. Because that is really, I think, necessary if we want to feed the world, not only for the next 5-10 years or through this crisis and another crisis and yet another crisis, but really to make sure that we use our science, our technology, and, above all, the knowledge of the farmers to make sure that we have all of us a future. 2009-Borlaug-Dialogue-Agriculture-Climate-Change - 1 Just having heard Gebisa’s essay, I could hardly have summarized the [IAASTD] Ag Assessment much better. Interesting – I don’t know if he’s here, but I’m sure he must have read a part of it; I was happy to see his analysis of the situation very much also in line with the Ag Assessment, which again calls for changing the way we do things. So we will try to show you that, actually, we have tools in a toolbox to do better. Now, the question is, okay, what are these tools exactly? Do we need any more training to use these tools? Can they be used just at random, or is there a system how to use these tools? And so that’s what we’re going to get into later. And the way we’ll do this – we’ll start with a presentation, looking at the key issues, and then we have some panelists. The rest of the panelists will look at the problem from different angles – from the soil, from the soil microorganisms, and then from the animal side, and not the least, from the people, because the consumers are also a big part of the problem, and unless they contribute, I think we’ll not go anywhere. So let me introduce the different speakers. First we have Helena Paul. She is co-director of an organization called EcoNexus; I’m sure that most of you have heard about it, a not-for-profit based in the United Kingdom. Ms. Paul has worked for over 20 years on issues related to agriculture biodiversity and sustainability, tropical forests, oil exploitation in the tropics, indigenous people’s rights, and genetic engineering. So you can see that we have somebody here who really I think can understand the issues which link agriculture to climate change. And the fact that she was involved also in international negotiation, with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity [and] also with the UNFCC, shows that we have somebody here really can talk from firsthand experience what’s going on in this area. Yyou have the detail, I think, somewhere in your documents about what else, where she comes from, what she’s done. She has also authored a number of publications, particularly on agrofuels, for example, which is what’s been probably one of your topics you’ve been dealing with in the last few years, but also biotechnology issues. Then we will have Dr. John Reganold. He is the Regents professor of soil sciences and agroecology at Washington State University. And I emphasized the agroecology because he’s going to bring in that aspect here, which I think has not really been discussed enough yet. He’s one of sustainable agriculture’s leading scientists. Dr. Reganold measures the effect of alternative and conventional farming systems on soil health – and it’s important that health is in here, because when you think “health” you also think prevention, to be ahead of the game rather than behind – also crop quality, financial performance, environmental quality, and social parameters. And he has been a professor at Washington State since 1983 where he does research and teaches courses in soil science and organic farming. He spearheaded the development of the university’s organic agricultural system major, which was the first in the United States. So as you can see, he has been sort of a revolutionary in the system, also bringing organic farming, the study of it, into the university – because that was the big problem. There have been some things done at the edge without all the science, which actually needs to go into that aspect of agriculture also. And I think he has a lot, a huge amount of catch-up to do in terms of science to improve the understanding and the working and also the limitation of organic agroecology, organic agriculture, even biodynamic agriculture, agroecology. Then we have Peg Armstrong-Gustafson. She is from Iowa, from right around the corner here. She is the owner and founder of Amson Technology. Ms. Armstrong-Gustafson brings 30 years of marketing and product-management experience to her strategic consulting practice. Amson Technology – sort of the interesting part here – specializes in climate change, sustainability, and carbon offsets involving technology and business development. So we’ll hear about sort of technological ways of helping sustainable farming; that’s very important, so we’ll hear more about that from that aspect. Then we have Dr. Anita Idel. She is a veterinarian, mediator, and also a lecturer at the University of Kassel in Germany. Here we’re going to have the animal world represented.; we heard earlier that we didn’t hear enough about livestock. The whole Ag Assessment didn’t have enough about, I guess, livestock – although 2009-Borlaug-Dialogue-Agriculture-Climate-Change - 2 she was one of the authors, but one of the few authors within the whole assessment dealing with livestock issues. So maybe the IAASTD-2 will work with you to get more people involved. Since 2002, Dr. Idel has been leading the project-management consultancy, Animal Health & Agrobiodiversity, so you can see the connection there.

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