Frank Rijsberman, Keynote Speech, GFIA Abu Dhabi, February 3, 2014

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WHY DRY AREAS SHOULD INVEST MASSIVELY IN INNOVATION TO ENSURE FOOD SECURITY

Frank Rijsberman

CEO, CGIAR Consortium

Nobody will be surprised that in dry areas water is scarce. As a water expert I have been asked many

times if that means people in dry areas do not have enough water to drink, that is, not enough water for

their domestic use? My answer surprises many people: that in the dry areas there is plenty of water to

drink, shower, and even to water golf courses. Even if there isn’t, the high value of water in these uses

means it is affordable to desalinate.

For dry areas the core problem is that growing food requires much more water than all other uses

combined, that is to say, in dry areas there just isn’t enough water to grow food. Desalination is not

affordable for agriculture and, at the scale it would require, would have significant environmental

impacts.

So there has obviously been a lot of focus on growing more food with less water in dry areas, ‘more crop

per drop’. Many water-management innovations have originated in this region. Water harvesting and

irrigation have a rich history in the region from its elaborate qanat tunnel systems to the irrigation

systems that watered the hanging gardens of ancient Babylon. Modern drip irrigation and the increased

reuse of waste water were pioneered in the region. Recent attempts to ensure domestic food self-

sufficiency through massive investments in irrigation have been less successful though. Saudi Arabia, for

example, made massive investments in irrigation to boost domestic wheat production, based on

pumping and cleaning up water from deep underground. Due to high energy costs, and depletion of

groundwater, this program is now being phased out. 2015 will be the last market year for local wheat

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production, and the Kingdom will then be fully dependent on imported wheat by 2016. Qatar also

recently switched its food security strategy from growing fodder domestically with reused water, to

imports.

The complex challenges facing dry areas cannot be solved with one silver bullet, but will require an

integrated approach involving sustainable natural resource management, crop and livestock genetic

improvement as well as socio-economic innovation. Enhancing the ability of communities in dry areas to

increase their livelihoods will require a combination of sustainable intensification and diversification of

production systems where possible, while in marginal lands, with fragile agro-ecosystems, the strategy

should be to aim at production system resilience rather than intensification. The bottom line, though, is

that a dry country like Egypt, even with its history of massive investments in irrigation systems and

access to a generous portion of Nile river water, simply does not have enough water to feed its

population.

The conclusion is: dry areas will be food importers and governments in this region appear to have

accepted that conclusion.

So if they have to import food, what can governments do to ensure food security? Massive investments

have already been made in at least three types of solutions:

1. Buying farmland elsewhere, particularly in Africa: investments to acquire tens of thousands of

hectares of farmland have been made by

companies from, among others, the UAE,

partnering with the UAE government in realizing a

strategic food security program. These ’greenfield

investments’ have proved to be more problematic

than expected, including accusations of ’land

grabs‘.

2. Storing large quantities of staple foods to guard

against shortage or price spikes, proposed currently in Saudi Arabia: this is a very expensive

option when food is as costly as it is now.

3. As recent as late last year investors from Gulf States also began investing heavily in established

agri-food businesses in Europe and the US. Even if it proves to be successful, this strategy will

require many billions of dollars to have the desired effect.

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There is one more option – one with a very strong track record – that in my view is currently under-

represented in the investment portfolio of governments in the region: investment in innovation in

agriculture. My recommendation here today is that governments in dry areas, such as our hosts here in

the UAE, should consider massively increasing their investments in innovation, specifically in research

for agricultural development, to safeguard their future food security by keeping global food prices low. I

realize that there may well be strong support for this idea, given that the focus of this conference is after

all on innovation in agriculture.

Let me please reinforce my assertion that agricultural research for development - the engine that drives

innovation - is an excellent investment opportunity for dry area governments, and allow me to go back

in time a little. In the 70’s, when the world was equally worried, or perhaps even more worried, about

global food security - particularly about famines in Asia - the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations took the

initiative to make major investments in agricultural innovation. They set-up international agricultural

research institutes for commodities, such as rice, wheat, maize, and potatoes, for tropical agriculture,

and for dry areas. These institutes became CGIAR, the world’s leading agricultural research partnership,

working towards a food secure future. With their partners, CGIAR Centers developed high yielding

varieties for staple cereals that were the engine of the Green Revolution, that helped prevent famines in

Asia, and led to abundant food and low food prices for several decades. All evaluations show that

returns on these investments were phenomenal.

Today, with recurrent food price spikes and significant rises in food prices overall, fears about food

security have come back with a vengeance. The UK’s Chief Scientist, John Beddington, referred to this as

the ’Perfect Storm by 2030‘: the need to increase food production by 50%, energy production by 50%

and water use by 30% – all coming to a head in 2030, while at the same time facing increasing risks of

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floods and droughts due to climate change. Escalating food prices have brought people into the streets

in many food importing countries, including this region. Tensions due to migration have increased and

will continue to do so if we do not take action. People are migrating because higher food prices, if not

matched by income increases, push them back into poverty.

This is not just the problem for a future generation: while obesity is a key problem in parts of the world,

including the Gulf, fully forty percent of children under five in developing countries, some 200 million

children, are stunted. An irreversible condition that, due to chronic malnutrition, affects their brain

development as well as their height – and means they will never reach their full potential.

Can research once more save the day, as my five-year old son would say, for his generation?

We have to ensure that children receive plenty of

nutritious foods, so they grow up to reach their full

potential. One promising approach is by developing

new varieties of staple food crops that are rich in the

minerals and vitamins that children need. CGIAR has

been developing such crops. New high-yielding, and

more nutritious varieties of foods such as maize,

cassava, beans, pearl millet, rice, beans and orange

sweet potato are already being widely grown and eaten—our goal is to reach 50 million persons in

farming households with these crops by 2018. We have already achieved about 10% of this goal.

Research is the engine that drives innovation, and innovation is what helps to develop solutions for food

security challenges. This is certainly an exciting time to be an agricultural scientist. The life science

revolution is just reaching agriculture. The cost of sequencing full genomes, of discovering genetics that

unlock life’s secrets, is falling faster than the decline in the costs of integrated circuits that drove the IT

revolution. Our understanding of genetics and genomics has evolved so rapidly that what wasn’t

possible just 3-5 years ago has not only become possible, but also affordable today. We can now

identify the right combination of genes to produce the resilience to grow crops in arid conditions. To this

end, a new integrated breeding platform that CGIAR Centers and national partners are establishing in

Morocco is expected to have particular relevance for the dry area environment and agricultural context.

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CGIAR scientists are working on discovery science that in some cases certainly sound as futuristic as the

lab-grown hamburger - for example, redesigning the basic architecture of rice and wheat, making them

more efficient in their photosynthesis processes, transforming them from a so-called 'C3' plant to what

more closely resembles a 'C4' plant, such as maize, sugar and sorghum. Because of their leaf anatomy

and biochemical specificity, C3 plants such as rice, wheat, potatoes and cassava, have slower

photosynthesis rates in hot environments, use more water and nitrogen fertiliser while having lower

yields than C4 plants. Such modified rice and wheat plants should increase yield, water and nitrogen use

efficiency by 30-50%. These projects may be able to deliver a product to plant breeders and farmers for

field testing in just 12 years. No other evolutionary mechanism exists that could be added to a C3 plant

so as to deliver that superior combination of benefits.

Much of our work has to find applications even more quickly. An example is creating an evergreen

agriculture, a transformative approach to climate-proofing and enhancing crop production that is

already delivering results to millions of farmers today. The EverGreen Agriculture project is promoting

the use of strategically placed fertiliser trees and shrubs in crop fields to ‘re-green’ desolate landscapes,

enhance soil fertility, and buffer food crops from drought and rising temperatures. Results are

significant. In Zambia, unfertilised maize yields in the vicinity of Faidherbia trees averaged 4.1 tonnes

per hectare, compared to 1.3 tonnes per hectare nearby but beyond the canopy. In Malawi, maize yields

were doubled when hundreds of thousands of farmers established fertilizer tree species on their farms.

And in Niger, more than 1.2 million households have recently regenerated 200 million fertilizer trees on

their sorghum and millet fields across 5 million hectares. The potential for re-greening the drylands

everywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa is enormous.

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In addition to boosting productivity through sustainable intensification, we also have to protect crops

against diseases, and post-harvest loss. When a new form of wheat stem rust, a disastrous wheat

disease, was discovered in Uganda in 1999 (and therefore called Ug99), the race was on to develop Ug99

resistant wheat varieties before the disease spread. CGIAR partnered with many others, in particular

Cornell University, in the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and today Ug99-resistant varieties have been

made available to farmers, preventing disasters at a scale affecting many millions of people.

Much of the world’s food supplies are contaminated by the deadly aflatoxin produced by a mold

(Aspergillus flavus). African farmers alone lose as much as $450 million in potential trade every year

because of aflatoxin contamination. Long-term exposure to aflatoxin can damage the health of livestock,

cause cancer and liver diseases in humans, weaken the immune system, and retard the growth and

development of children. CGIAR scientists and partners have developed a low-cost and sustainable

solution called aflasafeTM. This natural, biological control product consistently reduces contamination in

farmers’ fields and in the store by up to 90%. Country and region-specific aflasafe products are under

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development in nine African countries. Large-scale development and adoption of aflasafeTM could help

developing countries restore vital trading links and protect the health of millions currently at risk from

aflatoxin-related illnesses.

Finally we have to prepare for the future, both new opportunities and new threats. An example of new

opportunities is linked to cell phones and remote sensing. Collaborating with US universities, CGIAR has

developed low cost sensors and remote sensing information to adapt precision agriculture techniques to

the needs of low income farmers, and achieved fertilizer and water savings of up to US$ 300 per hectare

in Mexican and Asian farmers’ fields. In Africa, farmers can now use their cell phones to purchase inputs,

get expert advice, obtain insurance, and sell their products.

Examples of new threats relate to climate change. A CGIAR project called Climate Analogues identifies

communities that represent the past and future states of a particular climate. It allows farmers to travel

to a place where their future climate is experienced today, to learn from other farmers how they have

adapted to climate challenges.

In CGIAR today close to 90% of the research of the 15

CGIAR research Centers is organized in 16 global CGIAR

Research Programs that can be directly linked to the

UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for food security,

health, nutrition and environmental challenges.

Achieving these goals requires investment– particularly

from public funds as many of the food security issues of

the developing world in general, and of the dry areas in

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particular, do not present large enough markets of farmers with an ability to pay to generate a profit for

private sector companies. Although funding for public international agricultural research for

development, largely but not only through CGIAR, has doubled in the last 5 years, given the billions

invested in other solutions, and the challenges we face, the billion dollar of CGIAR funding accomplished

in 2013 is still modest.

For major investors in food security, such as the dry area governments, and particularly our hosts here in

Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, the Gulf States, or the region at large, my recommendation is to massively

increase investment in agricultural innovation in national systems, as well as taking a seat at the table of

the international system. In the interest of many stakeholders around the world, but particularly food

importing countries, history shows us that this is the most effective route to keeping global food prices

low.