Around the world, alarm bells are sounding about food safety issues. On December 12, Finland announced plans to increase its emergency grain reserves in preparation for a possible shortage; a catastrophic crop failure in the summer of 2021 left the country’s grain levels at their lowest level in 10 years.
A report published the same week warned that some 8.3 million people in Somalia are likely to face critical levels of food insecurity next spring after five consecutive seasons of low rainfall. The UK’s National Farmers’ Union has warned the country is sleepwalking through a food supply crisis, with production of energy-intensive crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and pears likely reaching record levels since records began. in 1985.
The war in Ukraine and its myriad aftermath no doubt played a role in triggering these food emergencies. “It’s not a question of whether we’re going to have a food crisis,” warned Svein Tore Holsether, head of Norwegian fertilizer producer Yara International, in March, just weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. “That’s how big this crisis is going to be.”
However, even before the conflict in Ukraine, climate change was putting increasing pressure on food production around the world. Yields of staple crops such as maize are expected to suffer significant and imminent declines: a NASA study estimated that the side effects of Greenhouse gas emissionsincluding rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, could reduce global corn production by 24% by 2030, a sharp drop that the study’s lead author acknowledged would have “serious implications across the world”.
Many other critical crops are likely to be similarly affected: studies suggest that global food production is set to drop by 25% over the next 25 years due to climate change, at the same time that global food supply needs to double to keep up with estimated growth in the human population, which is estimated to have reached the 8 billion milestone last month.
Given the circumstances, it is more essential than ever to develop more sustainable farming methods that allow farmers to adapt to climate change.
Innovating in agriculture to overcome soil salinity
A major challenge is the profound decline in the amount of arable land available for agriculture. Factors such as erosion and pollution have stripped Earth of more than a third of its arable land since 1975, and around 43% of the world’s population lives in areas affected by land degradation.
Not only are soils steadily losing carbon, but a combination of heat stress and rising ocean temperatures is causing a significant increase in soil salinity, reducing crop yields and reducing farmers’ margins to the point where the crop cannot be more financially viable in some parcels of land. Earth.
One study estimated that the effects on global food production are substantial: each year, around 124 trillion kilocalories are lost due to soil salinity, enough to feed around 170 million people every day.
Fortunately, some entrepreneurs and researchers have found promising solutions to recover land that would normally not be suitable for agricultural activities due to its high salt content. Italian entrepreneur Gaetano Buglisi has developed a series of projects aimed at revitalizing abandoned or misused farmland and today grows more than 1,000 hectares of fruit in southern Italy.
Although the salinity of this land made it unsuitable for most crops and conventional farming techniques, Buglisi was able to find specific varieties of exotic fruits, such as mangoes, that could withstand the high salt content of the soil and combined with Agriculture 4.0 techniques to regenerate both . the formerly abandoned land and the surrounding farming community.
Given the accelerating effects of climate change on Italian agriculture (the country suffered large-scale crop failures in the summer of 2022 after the worst drought in 70 years, with widespread salt contamination), projects like Buglisi are likely to become more commonplace.
Agricultural innovations for complex climates
Similarly, researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, a country that has particularly salty soil that makes sustainable agriculture difficult and is especially vulnerable to climate change, have created a “Salt Lab” to find crops that are naturally more resistant in salty soils, such as the mango variety identified by Gaetano Buglisi.
The Salt Lab has already made several major advances; its researchers discovered a genetic mutation in some barley strains with 30% higher yields in high salinity soils than other strains, and are now partnering with agtech start-up Red Sea Farms to operate a pilot greenhouse testing whether tomatoes can be successfully grown using mostly salt water to irrigate the crops, as well as energy-efficiently cooling the greenhouse.
Develop ways to conserve dwindling water resources
If the pilot greenhouse is successful, it could serve as a model for countless regions that are currently inhospitable to agriculture due to the scarcity of potable water.
While naturally arid countries such as Saudi Arabia have long struggled with freshwater scarcity, water resources are becoming scarce across the world: the amount of water available to each person, on average, has decreased by more than 20%. over the past two decades. More worryingly, this shortage occurs just when extreme heat and climate-induced droughts lead to the need for increased irrigation of crops.
In addition to the saltwater irrigation option that Red Sea Farms and KAUST are testing, there are several encouraging projects that aim to keep crop yields high while using less of our precious freshwater resources.
Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Hoff, a former lily planter, invented the Waterboxx “plant cocoon”, a device made from recycled cardboard that collects condensation overnight to water the plants in small doses, preventing the water from evaporating and protecting the plants. roots of plants from the Sun.
Over the past five years, over 55,000 trees have been planted with 20,000 Waterboxx units (the device is reusable) and up to 90% less water has been used than with drip irrigation.
Other innovators are focusing on improving drip irrigation
Uri Shani, former chairman of the Israel Water Authority and professor of soil physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, founded irrigation company N-Drip Shani envisioned a new emitter design, a small but critical component of irrigation systems . drip irrigation, capable of operating only with water pressure provided by gravity.
N-Drip’s first field trial in Eswatini indicated that the system was able to increase crop yields by 30% using less water, and the system is now undergoing major trials in 17 countries from the southwestern US. to Vietnam.
Food crises around the world are truly alarming, especially since the recent COP27 climate conference shows a lack of ambition for the decisive action needed to slow the alarming pace of climate change. In the coming years, agriculture will come under increasing pressure as extreme weather events proliferate, soils become saltier and drier, and freshwater resources become scarcer.
As such, building a more resilient agricultural system, whether it’s revitalizing underutilized land with carefully selected crop varieties or reinventing irrigation systems to drastically reduce freshwater use, must be an urgent priority.
For Times of Sustainability. Article in English
