01. Climate Resilient Agriculture

“40% of food losses in countries in development happen between harvest and retail”

This story has been taken from the multimedia report Top 10 Frontier Technologies for Climate Action. Find it here.

From flooding in Pakistan to drought in Ethiopia, the world’s least developed economies are most at risk from climate change.

Extreme weather events in these countries can have a devastating effect on farming. This has massive implications. Around 500 million small-scale farms produce the food for a staggering 70% of the world’s population. Making sure that these farms can withstand a changing climate is vital to ensuring that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have enough to eat.

One way this can be done is increasing access to digital tools that help reduce waste and increase yield for farmers. There is certainly scope for improvement; at the moment, around 40% of food losses in countries in development happen between harvest and retail, compared to only 8% in developed economies. Increasing the use of digital tools in agriculture is more possible than ever because of the connectivity brought by mobile phones. The ubiquity of mobiles also makes it simpler to give farmers access to detailed weather information, to help them plan, to provide information about competitive market prices, and to increase their knowledge of different agricultural techniques.

As well as helping farmers to withstand climate shocks, better farming practices could lower the emissions of agriculture — using plant science to reduce environmental impact and increase yield, improving livestock rearing practices to reduce methane emissions and soil degradation. This is not a simple proposition in areas where basic agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation might be lacking and where at least one growing cycle is required to prove a concept. But with the world population expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, finding solutions is urgent.

Genetic Engineering

Crops are vulnerable to changes in the water, air, soil, sunlight and minerals, as well as to the effect of other plants, fungi and animals. Increased CO2 presence and volatile weather can affect not only yield but the nutritional value of the crops. One possible solution is editing crop genetics to give a plant desirable traits. What if drought resistant crops could be developed? Or specialised tropical crops? Or microbes that improve soil conditions to make nutrients more available?

Genetically engineered cereal crops are already grown around the world, with 19 countries in development accounting for 53% of the total. But new gene editing techniques are being developed all the time. Research is costly, and development cycles for new seeds are long, so it is rare that research specifically focuses on crops specific to economies in development. But in principle, if these new techniques were applied to crops essential to diets in these countries, it could make a huge difference to hunger.

Grazing Management

The grazing of cattle, sheep and other animals is essential in agriculture, essentially converting grass and other forage into meat, milk or wool. In many countries in development, this grazing is fairly unstructured, with livestock left to wander where they choose. This can cause damage to the soil, which prevents more feed from growing, which in turn ends up forcing livestock owners to buy feed for their animals. This is a problem for two reasons: it takes that food out of the human food chain, and purchased feed can be bad for animals’ digestive systems, leading to more methane. The best solution is to organise livestock to use the pasture better and allow grass to regenerate. Tech can help — through livestock monitoring, data analytics and knowledge sharing. Research into the methane produced by cows and sheep is at an advanced stage, but user-friendly tech to track grazing is at a very early stage and more work is needed.

Aquaculture

Aquaculture is the controlled process of cultivating fish or aquatic plants for human consumption. It happens in coastal ocean waters, freshwater ponds and rivers, and has been actively promoted as a way of alleviating poverty in countries that are in development. In many places, aquaculture and the fish it provides is people’s main source of protein. But often, fish farming is done in an inefficient and environmentally harmful way.

Tech solutions like automatic feeders, monitoring systems, data analytics and insight platforms can help to alleviate these harmful effects. There is no single solution — the market is fragmented and varies by species, country, and region. At the moment, development is a lot more advanced for high value species like salmon, and much less so for shrimp farming or seaweed cultivation.

Xpertsea is a Canadian startup that uses Artificial Intelligence to give seafood farmers the data they need at their fingertips. But it’s not always easy to convince farmers, who’ve been using their own traditional farming methods for years, to trust in data. Xpertsea acknowledge the importance of investing in farmer education, and their goal is to get traction in countries that are in development quickly because of the outsized impact they can have.

Food Loss

A bag of grain goes through many stages between harvest and being purchased in a market. In countries in development where there are limited options for storage, packaging and transportation, 40% of food loss happens before the food even reaches the consumer. If these processes could be improved so that less food is lost as it moves through the supply chain, it would mean that more food gets to consumers.

One big problem is a lack of electricity and other basic infrastructure — if you don’t have consistent power, it is hard to control the temperature of food. In recent years, there has been more investment in cold chain technologies that work off-grid, like solar-powered refrigeration. To pinpoint where loss is occurring, data is needed, and this is often lacking in developing contexts. Low-cost sensors could be one solution that might work despite a lack of basic infrastructure.

Want to explore the other nine Frontier Technologies for Climate Action? Click here.

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