Stanford University

Agriculture policy

Connecting the Dots 2015: The Food, Energy, Water and Climate Nexus

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For more information and to register, visit tomkat.stanford.edu/ctd.

Each year Stanford experts from a range of disciplines meet to discuss the interconnections and interactions among humanity's needs for and use of food, energy, water and the effect they have on climate and conflict.  These experts will illustrate and evaluate some of the ways in which decisions in one resource area can lead to trade-offs or co-benefits in others, and discuss opportunities to make decisions that can have positive benefits in one area while avoiding negative or unintended consequences in other areas.  This year, in celebration of our 5th anniversary of Connecting the Dots, we return to the food nexus. 
 

Confirmed Speakers

  • Keynote Speaker: Karen Ross, Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture
  • Professor Stacey Bent, TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, Precourt Institute for Energy, Chemical Engineering
  • Professor Roz Naylor, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Professor David Lobell, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Environmental Earth System Science, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment 
  • Professor Marshall Burke (food - conflict nexus), Environmental Earth System Science, Center on Food Security and the Environment
  • Professor Steve Luby (food - health nexus), Stanford Medicine, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Freeman Spogli Institue for International Studies
  • Professor Scott Rozelle (food, education and development nexus), Co-director, Rural Education Action Program, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Center on Food Security and the Environment

 

Student-led Breakout Sessions

  • Christopher Seifert, Graduate Student, Environmental Earth System Science
    "Boondoggle or Risk Reducer? Crop insurance as the farm subsidy of the 21st century"
  • William Chapman, Graduate Student, CEE-Atmosphere and Energy
    "No Red Meat or a New Electric Vehicle, Food Choices and Emissions"
  • Priya Fielding-Singh, PhD Candidate, Sociology
    Maria Deloso, Coterminal B.S/M.A. Candidate, Environmental Earth System Science  
    "From Farm to Lunch Tray: Toward a Healthy and Sustainable Federal School Lunch Program"
  • Rebecca Gilsdorf, PhD Candidate, Civil & Environmental Engineering
    Angela Harris, PhD Candidate, Civil & Environmental Engineering
    "Poop and Pesticides: Looking beyond production to consider food contamination"
Event Poster
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Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center
326 Galvez Street
Stanford University

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Fisheries and Food Security in China - 2015 Meeting

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Crowne Plaza Hotel Harbour City
Shanghai, China

Rosamond L. Naylor

The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-5697 (650) 725-1992
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Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Wrigley Professor of Earth System Science
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
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Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).

She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security. 

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Ling Cao

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Ling Cao completed her Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Trained as an agronomist and environmental scientist, she has focused on interdisciplinary research at the interface between the sustainability of food and natural systems. Her dissertation research quantitatively assessed the sustainability of emerging shrimp farming systems and technologies, and in particular focused on applying these results to producers and consumers in China and US. In early 2018, Cao was selected as a recipient of the “National Thousand Talents Program for Distinguished Young Scholars,” an initiative of the Chinese government to attract high-level talent from overseas to work full-time in China. In addition, she was also selected as a fellow of the “Shanghai Thousand Talents Program” which aims to recruit top-talent who are leaders in their fields to help enhance Shanghai's future development and sustainable competitiveness. Cao currently works as an associate professor in the Institute of Oceanography at Shanghai Jiao Tung University and continues to work with Roz Naylor and colleagues on fisheries and aquaculture research.

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The Importance of Marine Fisheries and Ecosystems for Food Security In China

Governance Structures and Resource Policy Reform: Insights from Agricultural Transition

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New research on the political economy of policy-induced distortions to incentives for optimal resource use in agriculture and insights from the study of the dramatic reforms in former state-controlled economy has led to enhanced insights on the role of governance structures on policy making in agricultural and natural resources. This paper reviews these research developments and key new insights.

 

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Annual Review of Resource Economics
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Johan Swinnen
Scott Rozelle

History of partnership between agro-industries and oil palm smallholders in Cameroon

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The present article explores the origin and changes in partnership agreements established between agro-industries and oil palm smallholders in Cameroon. The different forms of partnership which have existed over the years in the oil palm sector until now are assessed, notably the FONADER-sponsored smallholder scheme (1978 to 1991) and more recently the Afriland First Bank sponsored project of Socapalm Eseka (2007/2008 to present). Special attention is given to the factors and conditions that have influenced the outcomes of these partnerships, specifically the failure of the FONADER-sponsored smallholder scheme. The authors conclude that with the current absence of steady support from the government to oil palm smallholders, especially after the implementation of the structural adjustment plans, private partnership schemes between agro-industries and oil palm smallholders could be highly profitable for both stakeholders. Such partnerships can foster social cohesion and limit further encroachment of agro-industries into the primary forest, provided such partnership agreements are carefully planned and adequately implemented.

 

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Oilseeds and fats, Crops and Lipids
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Doomsday Vaults, Genebanks and Plant Breeding in the Age of Climate Change

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Read a full event summary here. 

Agricultural crops are on the front lines of climate change. Can we expect increased food production in the context of global warming? Do our crops come pre-adapted to a climate not seen since the dawn of agriculture, or must we take bold measures to prepare agriculture for climate change? This talk will focus on the role that crop diversity must necessarily play in facilitating the adaptation of agricultural crops to new climates and environments. Genebanks, the “Doomsday Vault” near the North Pole, and possible new roles for plant breeders and farmers will be explored. 
 

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Dr. Cary Fowler is perhaps best known as the “father” of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has described as an “inspirational symbol of peace and food security for the entire humanity.” Dr. Fowler proposed creation of this Arctic facility to Norway and headed the international committee that developed the plan for its establishment by Norway. The Seed Vault provides ultimate security for more than 850,000 unique crop varieties, the raw material for all future plant breeding and crop improvement efforts. He currently chairs the International Council that oversees its operations.

In 2005 Dr. Fowler was chosen to lead the new Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international organization cosponsored by Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). This position carried international diplomatic status. During his tenure, he built an endowment of $130 million and raised an additional $100 million (including the first major grant given for agriculture by the Gates Foundation) for programs to conserve crop diversity and make it available for plant breeding. The Trust organized a huge global project to rescue 90,000 threatened crop varieties in developing countries – the largest such effort in history - and is now engaged in an effort Dr. Fowler initiated with the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) to collect, conserve and pre-breed the wild relatives of 26 major crops. He oversaw development of a global information system to aid plant breeders and researchers find appropriate genetic materials from genebanks around the world. These initiatives at the Crop Trust, positioned the organization as a major path-breaking player in the global effort to adapt crops to climate change.

Prior to leading the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Dr. Fowler was Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås Norway. He headed research and the Ph.D. program at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies and was a member of the university committee that allocated research funding to the different departments. 

The U.N.’s FAO recruited him in the 1990s to lead the team to produce the UN’s first global assessment of the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources. He was personally responsible for drafting and negotiating the first FAO Global Plan of Action on the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources, formally adopted by 150 countries in 1996. Following this, Dr. Fowler served as Special Assistant to the Secretary General of the World Food Summit (twice) and represented the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR/World Bank) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. He chaired a series of Nordic government sponsored informal meetings of 15 countries to facilitate negotiations for this treaty. And, he represented Norway on the Panel of Experts of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Cary Fowler was born in 1949 and grew up in in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of a judge and a dietician. He studied at Simon Fraser University in Canada where he received a B.A. (honors – first class) degree. He earned his Ph.D. at Uppsala University in Sweden with a thesis on agricultural biodiversity and intellectual property rights. Dr. Fowler has lectured widely, been a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a visiting professor at the University of California – Davis. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles and several books including the classic Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity (University of Arizona Press), Unnatural Selection, Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution (Gordon & Breach Science Publishers) and The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources (UN-FAO).

Dr. Fowler currently serves on the boards of Rhodes College, the NY Botanical Garden Corporation, the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust and Amy Goldman Charitable Trust. He remains associated with the Global Crop Diversity Trust as Special Advisor. He is a former member of the U.S. National Plant Genetic Resources Board (appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture) and former board and executive committee member of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico. He has served as chair of the national Livestock Conservancy. He is the recipient of several awards: Right Livelihood Award, Vavilov Medal, the Heinz Award, Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings Award, the William Brown Award of the Missouri Botanical Garden and two honorary doctorates. He is one of two foreign elected members of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

 

Dr. Cary Fowler Speaker Senior Advisor, Global Crop Diversity Trust
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Food and Nutrition Policy Symposium Series

George Azzari

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George Azzari joined FSE as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in February 2015. He worked with David Lobell on designing, implementing, and applying new satellite-based monitoring techniques to study several aspects of food security. His current focuses include estimates of crop yields, crop classification, and detection of management practices in Africa, Asia, and the United States.  He is currently the Chief Technology Office at Atlas AI.

George's research uses a variety of satellite sensors from the private and public sector -including Landsat (NASA/USGS), Sentinel 1 and 2 (ESA), MODIS (NASA),  RapidEye (Planet), Planet Scope (Planet), and Skysat (Terrabella)- combined with crop modeling and machine learning techniques.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, where he worked with Mike Goulden on monitoring post-fire succession of southern California ecosystems from remote sensing data. He examined the impact of topographic illumination effects on long time series of optical satellite data.

European grain yield stagnation related to climate change

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The European Union led the world in wheat production and exports in 2014-15. Yet Europe is also the region where productivity has slowed the most. Yields of major crops have not increased as much as would be expected over the past 20 years, based on past productivity increases and innovations in agriculture.

Finding the causes of that stagnation is key to understanding the trajectory of the global food supply.

Logically, it would seem that climate change would affect crops. But in the overall picture of agriculture, it's hard to figure out how much. European farming is a complex venture, and other possible stagnating factors include changes in government policy. For example, farm subsidies are no longer based on productivity and the use of fertilizer is now controlled to reduce runoff into water supplies. Ongoing positive factors include improvements in farm management practices and advances in crop genetics.

Historically, scientists relied on models to estimate the effects of climate change. Now Stanford's Frances C. Moore has for the first time statistically quantified the relative importance of climate in the stagnation of European crops. She found that warming and precipitation trends are affecting European grain harvests. Moore is a PhD candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources.

"This study is sobering in that it shows climate drags on some of the crops in this region," said David Lobell, co-author of the paper. "Yet this new approach to looking at the problem will help us understand more quickly what impacts require more attention, and that can only be positive in the long term." Lobell is an associate professor of environmental Earth system science and the deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford. He is also a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He studies ways to improve crop yields in major agricultural regions, with emphasis on adaptation to climate change.

"This is a major step in using quantitative analysis to disentangle the effect of climate change in a complicated system," said Dáithí Stone, a pioneer in comparing actual seasonal weather forecasts with what those forecasts would have been if human activities had not emitted greenhouse gases. "It demonstrates that the signal has become large enough that we may see the effect of climate change in a complicated system like agriculture." Stone is a research scientist in the Computational Chemistry, Materials and Climate Group of Berkeley Lab.

How wheat and corn and barley grow

Moore considered two factors in the study: actual crop yields and expected crop yields given historic temperature and precipitation trends. She applied statistical analyses to look for patterns in regional maps of actual European yields of wheat, maize (known in the United States as corn), barley and sugar beets, from 1989 to 2009.

The study found that climate trends can explain 10 percent of the slowdown in wheat and barley yields, with changes in government policy and agriculture likely responsible for the remainder of the stagnation. Moore found evidence that long-term temperature and precipitation trends since 1989 reduced overall European yields of wheat by 2.5 percent and barley by 3.8 percent, while slightly increasing maize and sugar beet yields.

Moore also wanted to find out to what extent farmers had adapted their practices to accommodate changing conditions. She applied power analysis, a statistical tool to test the effect of adaptation. But she discovered the test was not effective in the context of this study.

"We think farmers have been hurt already by warming and drying trends in Italy," Moore said. Undaunted by the limits of statistical analysis to measure farmer adaptation, she is planning another way to find out. "I have been doing this work in front of a computer – in the future I would like to go to Italy," she said. "It would be interesting to talk to the farmers."

Leslie Willoughby is an intern at Stanford News Service.

Media Contact

Frances C. Moore, Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources: (617) 233-3380, fcmoore@stanford.edu

Dan Stober, Stanford News Service: (650) 721-6965, dstober@stanford.edu

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