Our food systems are failing. Can trees and forests dish up better diets for everyone?

August 7, 2022 / activist360

*VI Agroforestry in Masaka, Uganda. September 2013. NatureDan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.*

Scientists argue for greater inclusion of trees and forests in the race to transform global food systems.

By Monica Evans, Forests News (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Despite all of the technological and informational advancements of recent decades, we’ve so far failed to feed our global population sufficiently, safely, nutritiously and sustainably.

Over 2 billion people experience food insecurity; almost 700 million are undernourished; and 39% of all adults are classified as overweight or obese.

A significant factor in these health challenges is that there’s a serious lack of food diversity: just 15 crops provide 90% of humanity’s energy intake and not enough nutrient-rich foods are being produced to go around. For instance, just 40 countries, representing 26% of the global population, have a sufficient supply of fruits and vegetables to meet recommended daily consumption.

Meanwhile, our global food system generates more than a third of global anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions; takes around 70% of all freshwater withdrawals; and is to blame for about a quarter of ocean acidification, alongside serious soil depletion and the destruction of natural habitats and biodiversity.

“It is increasingly evident that nothing short of a radical transformation of food systems will end global hunger and malnutrition while reversing to acceptable limits the environmental damage our food systems have already caused,” state the authors of a new Viewpoint in the July 2022 edition of leading journal, Lancet Planet Health.^“A new global food system must produce greater quantities of a more diverse range of nutrient-dense foods rather than only providing more calories. It must also produce these diverse foodstuffs sustainably, reversing current trajectories of land degradation so that production acts as a net carbon sink and reservoir of biodiversity.”

So, how can we help to bring that shift into being?

As the authors highlight, trees and forests have a critical role to play.

To date, this has been largely overlooked in food-system transformation conversations “because of the absence of a comprehensive and system-wide approach to food systems, problems related to measuring and recording multiple contributions from trees and forests, and a focus on forests as sources of timber rather than food… A perspective we consider to be in danger of being mistakenly replicated in current discourses in the international development community that see trees and forests primarily as global carbon stores,” write the authors.

So, how can we help to bring that shift into being? As the Viewpoint highlights, trees and forests represent a critical, but as-yet-underacknowledged, part of the solution.

“We’ve been surprised and disappointed that despite all that we have learned and what seem to us to be the obvious important roles of forests and trees, that they still seem to be largely ignored,” said Amy Ickowitz, the study’s lead author and a senior scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF).

“Conserving forests and promoting trees for food security and nutrition are some of the obvious ways to achieve ‘win-wins’, which are quite rare in addressing the tremendous challenges of global malnutrition, dwindling biodiversity, and climate change,” she said. “Of course, there are obstacles — institutional, economic, and logistical — but these can all be addressed, once there is agreement that food systems should be nudged in this direction. In our Viewpoint we offer some suggestions of how to do this”

Silent service-providers

The authors draw attention to the multiple ways that trees and forests already contribute towards healthy diets and sustainable food systems. Tree cover, for instance, has been linked to greater dietary diversity and higher consumption of nutrient-rich foods, such as fruits and vegetables. All nuts, and over half of all human-consumed fruits, grow on trees. Forests provide particularly important sources of wild foods — including fruits, vegetables and meat — for the 1.6 billion people around the globe who live within 5 kilometres of them. Trees and forests also provide fodder for animals, supporting the production of meat and milk.

Trees and forests also provide wood fuels, which are a critical source of energy for cooking for around 2.4 billion people, thus, enabling the consumption of nutrient-rich foods such as meats and legumes. They also provide incomes that can support food security and nutrition, such as through cultivating and selling tree crops like coffee and cocoa; employment in logging or ecotourism; and collecting and selling non-timber forest products. Agriculture benefits from the ecosystem services provided by trees and forests, such as pest and disease regulation, pollinator habitat, micro-climate control, water and nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, protection against soil erosion, and nitrogen fixation.

What’s more, trees and forests contribute to the stability and resilience of food systems, for example, through their tendency to survive extreme weather events better than annual crops; their role in supporting ‘lean-season’ diets through the provision of wild foods; their ability to fill seasonal gaps in food production; and the ‘safety net’ they provide in terms of offering wood and non-wood products that can be sold for income.

“Whether directly consumed as food or sold for food purchases, forest and tree products are, in many cases, the only resources accessible to women and other marginalized groups when hardship strikes and are therefore key resources to reduce their vulnerabilities,” state the authors.

Areas for intervention

To maximize the multiple benefits of including trees and forests more broadly and explicitly in food-system transformation, the authors list four key areas for intervention. First, they recommend building on current knowledge by increasing the scale of existing tree-based agricultural system solutions. Many of these solutions are not yet being adopted at sufficient scales to make decisive impact but could do so with appropriate support. This will in many cases require secure tree and land tenure, “which is not yet the case for many tree growers,” they write.

“To be effective, measures to increase land-tenure security should be connected with incentives for sustainable practices, including for tree maintenance on farms.”

Drivers for the adoption of agroforestry measures were also found to be highly context-specific, highlighting the importance of working with, and building on, existing local knowledge in any kind of agroforestry intervention.

Second, the authors recommend reorienting agricultural investments from staple crops to more diverse, nutrient-dense foods.

Over the past half-century, staple crops — such as wheat, maize and rice — have received billions of dollars in investment, which has enhanced their productivity and decreased their purchase prices in comparison to those of more nutritionally-important foods such as fruits, nuts and vegetables. In order to increase consumption of these, it will be critical to improve their productivity and lower their costs, alongside using education and social marketing to raise awareness of the health and environmental benefits of better food choices.

Third, there is a need to repurpose producer and consumer incentives towards nutrient-dense foods and more sustainable production practices. This will require policy shifts at both national and international levels. Currently, incentives such as direct price support and targeted fertiliser subsidies distort production towards staple crops.

“These incentives should be reduced or removed and direct and indirect price interventions by governments, which are designed to consider more closely both nutritional needs and environmental impacts, should be implemented,” write the authors.

Such subsidies could be reoriented towards producing nutrient-rich foods and integrating trees on farms.

Fourth, food and nutrition objectives ought to be explicitly integrated into forest restoration and conservation practices and policies. The global forest restoration agenda has to date been largely dominated by carbon-mitigation considerations. However, restoration initiatives that focus too narrowly on that objective — and neglect the needs of local people — often fail. Planting food trees, write the authors, could help to address multiple objectives at once, supporting local involvement and sustainable livelihoods alongside carbon sequestration.

As the authors make clear, trees and forests already contribute positively to diets and ecosystems across the globe and there is potential to scale up those contributions much further to address our multiple crises.

UN report: The world’s farms stretched to ‘a breaking point’

February 6, 2022 / activist360 / Leave a comment

*Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels*

The world’s climate-stressed and pollution-degraded farming and agricultural system must shift quickly to sustainable practices to feed an additional 2 billion mouths expected by 2050, a new United Nations report finds.

By Dana Nuccitelli, Yale Climate Connections (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5)

Almost 10% of the 8 billion people on earth are already undernourished with 3 billion lacking healthy diets, and the land and water resources farmers rely on stressed to “a breaking point.” And by 2050 there will be 2 billion more mouths to feed, warns a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

For now, farmers have been able to boost agricultural productivity by irrigating more land and applying heavier doses of fertilizer and pesticides. But the report says these practices are not sustainable: They have eroded and degraded soil while polluting and depleting water supplies and shrinking the world’s forests. The FAO report discusses some important climate change impacts, such as changing distribution of rainfall, the suitability of land for certain crops, the spread of insects and other pests, and shorter growing seasons in regions affected by more intense droughts. While not the sole source of obstacles facing global agriculture, the report makes clear that climate change is further stressing agricultural systems and amplifying global food production challenges.

The report also offers hope that the problems are solvable: Water degradation can be reversed by turning to smart planning and coordination of sustainable farming practices and by deploying new innovative technologies. More sustainable agriculture can also help fight climate change: For instance, the report notes that wiser use of soils can help sequester some of the greenhouse gasses currently emitted by agricultural activities.

Drastic changes in climate will require regions to adjust the crops they grow. For example, the report predicts that much cereal production will probably have to move north, to Canada and northern Eurasia. Brazil and northern Africa may have a harder time growing coffee, but it may get easier in eastern Africa. A changing climate “may bring opportunities for multiple rainfed cropping, particularly in the tropics and subtropics.” And for areas “where the climate becomes marginal for current staple and niche crops, there are alternative annual and perennial tree crops, livestock, and soil and water management options available.”

The report recommends seed and germoplasm exchanges globally and among regions, and investments to develop crops that can withstand changes in temperature, salinity, wind, and evaporation.

The changes will not be easy, the report says, but they may be necessary to avoid widespread hunger and other catastrophes.

Extensive land and water degradation

Over the past 20 years, the global population has risen by more than 25% from just over 6 billion to nearly 8 billion people. The amount of land used to grow crops has increased by just 4% over that time, as farmers have been able to meet the growing demand for food by dramatically increasing the productivity per acre of agricultural land. They’ve done so, for example, by increasing use of diesel-fueled machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides.

But these practices have come at a price. “Human-induced degradation affects 34 percent (1,660 million hectares) of agricultural land,” the FAO reports. “The treatment of soils with inorganic fertilizers to increase or sustain yields has had significant adverse effects on soil health, and has contributed to freshwater pollution induced by run-off and drainage.”

This degradation is especially extensive on irrigated farmland. Irrigation has been critical for meeting food demand because it produces two to three times as much food per acre as does rain-fed farmland. But irrigation also increases runoff of fertilizers and pesticides that can contaminate soil and groundwater.

The FAO reports also that globally, agriculture accounts for 72% of all surface and groundwater withdrawals, mainly for irrigation, which is depleting groundwater aquifers in many regions. Global groundwater withdrawals for irrigated agriculture increased by about 20% over the past decade alone.

Similarly, the quality of 13% of global soil, including 34% of agricultural land, has been degraded. This degradation has been caused by factors such as excessive fertilizer use, livestock overgrazing causing soil compaction and erosion, deforestation, and decreasing water availability.

Deforestation trends offer one relatively bright spot in the FAO report. The global forested area has declined by about 1% (47 million hectares) over the past decade, but that is a significant improvement from the nearly 2% decline (78 million hectares) in the 1990s. And in the November 2021 international climate negotiations in Glasgow, 141 countries, covering 91% of global forested area, agreed to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. It remains to be seen, of course, how many reach those commitments.

Climate change is worsening food system breakdowns

Climate change exacerbates farmers’ challenges by making weather more extreme and less reliable. Extreme heat can stress crops and farm workers while increasing evaporation of water from soil and transpiration from plants, thus amplifying agricultural water demands. Here too, it’s not all bad news: Agricultural productivity is expected to increase in regions that are currently relatively cold, but decrease in places that are hotter and drier, especially as climate change exacerbates droughts.

As with others, farmers will need to adapt to the changing climate, and making those adaptations can be expensive. For example, as the primary or sole producer of many of the country’s fruits, vegetables, and nuts, California effectively acts as America’s garden. But climate change is exacerbating droughts and water shortages in the state, and farmers are struggling to adapt. About 80% of all almonds in the world are grown in California, generating $6 billion in annual revenue, but almonds are a very water-intensive crop. As a result, some farmers have been forced to tear up their lucrative almond orchards. It’s a stark reminder that “adaptation” can sound easy on paper, but in practice can sometimes be painful and costly.

Farmers and planners will need to adapt

Adaptation will nevertheless be necessary in the face of an anticipated 50% increase in food demand by 2050 (including a doubling in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa), extensive land and water quality degradation, and a changing climate. The FAO report recommends four action areas to continue to meet rising global food demand.

First, adopting inclusive land and water governance through improved land-use planning to guide land and water allocation and promote sustainable resources management.
Second, implementing integrated solutions at scale, for example by helping farmers use available resources more efficiently while minimizing the associated adverse environmental impacts and also building resilience to climate change.
Third, embracing innovative technologies and management like remote sensing services; opening access to data and information on crops, natural resources and climatic conditions; and improving rainwater capture and increasing soil moisture retention.
Fourth, investing in long-term sustainable land, soil, and water management; in restoring degraded ecosystems; and in data and information management for farmers.

Fortunately, sustainable agricultural practices can also do double duty as climate solutions. The FAO reports that 31% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agri-food systems. Sustainable farming practices like regenerative agriculture can require less diesel-fueled machinery and less reliance on soil- and water-polluting pesticides while increasing the carbon stored in farmed soils.

Solving these multiple problems will require planning and coordination, the FAO writes in the report, and “data collection needs to improve.” Again, a bright side: The technology to improve data collection already exists, and advances in agricultural research have also put other solutions within reach. What is needed now is for policymakers and planners to coordinate work with farmers to adopt more sustainable practices and adapt more quickly to the changing climate. So, while the food system is currently at a “breaking point,” these more sustainable solutions are all within reach.

A Forest Garden With 500 Edible Plants Could Lead to a Sustainable Future

May 17, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Instead of neat rows of monoculture, forest gardens combine fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables together in one seemingly wild setting. This type of agroforestry mimics natural ecosystems and uses the space available in a sustainable way. UK-based Martin Crawford is one of the pioneers of forest gardening. Starting out with a flat field in 1994, his land has been transformed into a woodland and serves as an educational resource for others interested in forest gardening. This short film by Thomas Regnault focuses on Crawford’s forest garden, which is abundant, diverse, edible, and might be one answer to the future of food systems.