New APLU report highlights the links between FTF and the international research community

This blog post was written by Dr. Montague Demment, Associate Vice President for International Development, APLU.

This document, "Feeding 10 Billion: A Dialogue between Feed the Future and the International Research Community," represents a product of a new phase in the relationship between USAID and the higher education research community. Under USAID leadership, in coordination with USDA, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) was asked to organize a process for researchers to have input into the research agenda of Feed the Future (FTF). The process was developed at a meeting at Purdue University in January 2011 that brought together a broad array of the researchers and international development community practitioners with key US Government agency representatives (USG). It was followed by a global e-consultation and a FTF Research Forum in Washington D.C. in June that attracted 400+ participants from the research community and USG. The process was designed to garner and synthesize diverse and expert opinions into a report. This document is the result.

FTF is a comprehensive and important initiative in concept and function. It spans the food system from production to consumption making the important link between food and human capital development. It calls on the “whole of government” to address food security, poverty and malnutrition. The challenge for all is to operationalize the research agenda so links are made across food system scientific boundaries and across agency boundaries in the whole of government approach. The present document focuses more on the former but by engaging U.S. universities and other research groups directly and their work with USAID, USDA, NSF, USGS and DOE, it increased the potential for interaction across USG entities. Such inter-agency FTF focused interaction is potentially very powerful. For example, the excellent work that is occurring at DOE on increasing photosynthesis efficiency for biofuels has the potential to be applied to food production, thereby not only impacting food supply but also changing energy input equations for crop production.

Looming over FTF and the global community are the projections for food security for 2050. The importance of addressing food supply could well be as great a challenge and potentially as disruptive a force as climate change. As Dr. Cassman pointed out in his presentation at the Purdue Meeting, past research advancement rates will not be sufficient to meet the expected demand through 2050. However, if they are sufficient, they may contribute to a more stable world. Without exaggeration the ability to increase food supply relative to population growth is a challenge of major proportions.

FTF addresses this problem by proposing a sustainable intensification approach that is both acceptable and palatable. To achieve sustainable intensification is challenging. To address food supply we have two choices at the extremes. We can increase food production by expanding the area of land under cultivation. This implies further deforestation of tropical regions, and further use of fragile lands that will have a major impact on the natural resource base and climate change. Alternatively, we can intensify production on existing agricultural lands, increasing yields on all land globally but with the largest gains on those where the yield gap is greatest. FTF’s challenge is to ensure that intensification is sustainable.

FTF also challenges us to achieve this with a focus on small holders (although the approach is not limited to small holders) and to do it in a way that food systems provide the nutrition that is critical to pregnant women and children in the first 1000 days of life. FTF recognizes the critical link between early nutrition and the cognitive and physical development of children that is the fundamental building block of social and economic development.

The FTF vision provides a realistic framework for development, but it challenges us to bring the best of our creative powers to solutions. This heterogeneous challenge landscape calls for a silver buckshot approach rather than a silver bullet approach. A comprehensive vision requires engaging the creativity and diversity of possible solutions to develop and choose the new approaches, technologies, and social and economic mechanisms that can achieve FTF goals within the constraints it imposes. The U.S. higher education system has the capacity to do this and desires to be a full partner in developing solutions.