Five, 10-minute abstract-driven presentations.  

Speakers and Presentations:

• Chair: Peter Carberry, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

• Francesca Harris, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK   
  Trading water: Exploring interstate trade of cereals in India
  Slides/ Recording

• Ahmadou Ly, Universite Gaston Berger, Senegal
  Effects of rainfall shocks on child's nutrition in Senegal
  Slides/ Recording

• Thom Achterbosch, Wageningen Economic Research, the Netherlands
  Healthy diets and reduced land pressure: Towards a double gain for future food systems in Nigeria
  Slides/ Recording

• Megan Deeney, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK
  Plastics in the food system: Human health, economic and environmental impacts - a systematic scoping review

• Dominic Rowland, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK / Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
  The importance of forested landscapes for food security and nutrition across agricultural transitions: A multi-country analysis
  Slides/ Recording

• Q&A
  Recording

Abstracts:

Trading water: Exploring interstate trade of cereals in India

Francesca Harris, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK   

Introduction:  The agricultural production of crops requires significant volumes of water. India is the second-largest producer of cereals in the world, and is currently self-sufficient in cereals. However, India’s cereal production is increasingly dependent on irrigation from ground- and surface-water resources, which are rapidly depleting in some states. As India’s population and economy grows, food demand is increasing. Trade of cereals from water-abundant to water-scarce states could reduce dependency on groundwater. In this study, we examine the influence of inter-state trade on agricultural water use and relate this to the challenge of ensuring sustainable food systems in India

Methods:  We explore the water use of India’s food system through the production, trade, and demand of cereal crops. Cereal production and demand were linked using an optimisation model of inter-state food trade. The model is based on economic cost and state production, uses, and demand of the five major Indian cereal crops (rice, wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum). Data sources included the Indian government for cereal production, and the National Sample Survey (2011-12) for cereal demand. Water use for cereal production in each state was estimated using crop water footprints, which consider rainfall (green) and ground and surface (blue) water use per unit of production. We calculate the water use of Indian cereal production in 2011-12, and compare to a hypothetical scenario of no inter-state trade to demonstrate how trade currently affects India’s water use.

Findings:  In 2011-12, India produced 251 Mt of cereals. Rice and wheat had the highest production, followed by maize, millet, and sorghum. The highest net-exporting states were Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The highest net-importing states were in the Northeast region of India, including Manipur and Nagaland. The total water use (green and blue) of cereal production in 2011-12 was 282 Gm3, of which 32% was blue water. Uttar Pradesh had the highest total and blue water footprint. States with the most over-exploited groundwater (Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi) contribute to 13% of the total cereal exports, and 16% of the total blue water footprint. Cereal trade in India has a large effect on water usage: if states were to produce all their own cereals, the blue water footprint would increase by 25%, but the green water footprint would decline by 13%. The virtual water trade of cereals has therefore redistributed rainfall water efficiently between different states, reducing the dependency on ground- and surface-water resources overall. However, in a no-trade scenario there would be no change in the water used from states with high levels of groundwater depletion.

Conclusions:  Here, we show that inter-state cereal trade in India has a large effect on water use and is an important consideration for water management. India is highly reliant on ground and surface water for irrigation compared to other countries. Currently, groundwater-scarce states are net exporting cereal crops, a pattern which is likely to be unsustainable. Recent policies to reduce inter-state trade barriers in India mean domestic trade could increase. Trade has the potential to both positively and negatively impact water use and availability, therefore an improved understanding is needed to inform policies for a sustainable food future.

Effects of rainfall shocks on child's nutrition in Senegal

Ahmadou Ly, Universite Gaston Berger, Senegal

Introduction: This paper examines the potential effects of rainfall shocks on child malnutrition in Senegalese rural areas. Malnutrition is a major cause of mortality in developing countries and in 2016, more than 16% of children in rural areas in Senegal were malnourished. Agriculture stands out as the major activity in those rural areas and is essentially dependent on rainfall. However, the question of the linkages of rainfall shocks to child nutrition remains unclear in the literature and no attempt has been made to explore its effects in the Senegalese context.

Methods:  To assess these effects, we used a survey of 3740 children (from 0 to 5 years) living in 1662 rural households in Senegal in 2014. We considered three main indicators of nutrition status based on anthropometric measurements: weight-for-age, weight-for-height and height-for-age, that can reflect respectively whether children are underweight, wasted, or stunted. Rainfall data, originated from the National Meteorology Agency, were used to calculate variability. With an ordinary least squares regression, we tested the effect of rainfall variability on the three nutritional status indicators listed above. Moreover, the estimation procedure looked at channel transmissions through which rainfall shocks could affect children’s nutritional status.

Findings:  We found that rainfall shocks happening during the fetal period have a significant and positive effect on actual child malnutrition, as they lower weight-for-age and height-for-age z-scores, respectively by 0.13 and 0.35. Moreover, rainfall shocks happening in the first and the second year of life have significant effects on the weight-for-height and the weight-for-age, respectively. We also identified household income as a significant channel transmission through which rainfall shocks exert negative effects.

Conclusions:  These findings suggest strong policy implications as they need to explore how to develop irrigated agriculture and improve social safety net distribution strategies by a better targeting of communities vulnerable to rainfall shocks.

Healthy diets and reduced land pressure: Towards a double gain for future food systems in Nigeria

Thom Achterbosch, Wageningen Economic Research, the Netherlands

Introduction:  Malnutrition in all its forms remains a key concern in Nigeria. Nigeria also experiences strong GDP growth and high fertility rates, suggesting an unfinished demographic revolution. This, coupled with urbanization trends, places tremendous pressure on natural resources and the food systems that are dependent on them. Evidence suggests consumption patterns move simultaneously towards and away from healthy diets with economic development and changing market conditions. This study aims to analyse how the food system in Nigeria is expected to transform in the next decades, and to identify the leverage points for making sure that the transformation contributes to balanced diets.

Methods:  There is increasing recognition that the interplay between market decisions and contextual drivers at multiple levels is important for understanding dietary quality and nutritional outcomes of food systems. This study employs scenario methods to understand how the indirect drivers of the food system interact at multiple scales simultaneously – supra-national level, national and sub-national level for Nigeria and household level – and addressing feedback loops between national and supra-national level and between producers and consumers in Nigeria. We use the MAGNET model, a well-established global economy-wide model used for global projections on agriculture, biobased economy, climate, food security, and nutrition as well as country-specific assessments. The model helps to explore food systems dynamics, by capturing the interlinkages among different food industry players (farmers, processors, suppliers, traders, and consumers) in one consistent framework. By linking MAGNET to the Global Expanded Nutrients Supply (GENUS) database, we relate the developments occurring on a macro-level with detailed macro- and micronutrient consumption. We identified scarcity of agricultural land as a key constraining factor for Nigeria’s food system. Corresponding scenarios distinguish two plausible worlds for Nigeria where (1) land would be used extensively without inputs substitution and (2) non-land inputs, particularly labour, would substitute increasingly scarcer land.

Findings:  The modelling exercise shows that (macro-level) structural change in agriculture and transformation in the food system are important elements in diet change in Nigeria. The Nigeria (agri-fish-) food system is undergoing substantial change under the influence of global and domestic drivers, and model analysis gives insight into the processes of adjustment. Nigeria is currently the country with the lowest level of input use in agriculture (in value terms) in the global database that underpins the MAGNET model, and with a reserve of just 10% of agricultural land that can be brought into production. Model projections suggest that a process of intensification of agriculture in combination with land substitution appears critical for the evolution of food and nutrition security. A striking result is that intensification in the analysis results in greater diversity of the production systems, which in turn cascades into positive effects on the diversity in the food supply. This suggests that intensification in Nigeria would lead to the availability of foods with higher density in micronutrients than without intensification. The results underpin the importance of more research and development and a strengthened innovation system aimed at both staple crops and diversification of crops and livestock.

Conclusions:  This study provides a perspective on the future of food systems in Nigeria, taking into account an interplay of various macroeconomic and biophysical drivers. Model projections suggest that a process of intensification of agriculture in combination with land substitution appears critical for the evolution of food and nutrition security, and for shifts towards healthy diets for the population. Intensification results in greater diversity of the production systems, which in turn cascades into positive effects on the diversity in the food supply and better food security outcomes.

Plastics in the food system: Human health, economic and environmental impacts - a systematic scoping review

Megan Deeney, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK

Introduction:  Amid increasing media attention and public awareness of the potentially harmful impacts of plastics, global production of this ubiquitous material has doubled in the last two decades to over 380 million tonnes per year. But how much do we know about the impacts of food system plastics? This systematic scoping review aims to characterise food system literature from ‘farm to flush’, examining the extent (volume of research), range (variety of exposure-outcome relationships) and nature (study characteristics) of evidence pertaining to the impacts - both benefical and harmful - of food system plastics on human health, food security and economics at the individual or household level, and the environment.

Methods:  Our systematic scoping review methodology follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Extension for Scoping Reviews. We conducted a systematic search within nine web-based scientific databases and 15 grey literature sources for evidence from 2000 onwards, capturing studies from any geographic location. Exposures are defined as any plastic listed by The Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) resin identification codes, used at any point within the food system. Comparator groups may include a control (no plastic), different types of plastic, non-plastic material, or different levels of exposure to plastics (i.e. in volume or over time). All study designs are eligible provided that they result in quantitative data demostrating an association or effect of food system plastic. Descriptive cross-sectional studies and case studies that diagnose cause of death, injury or illness are also accepted. Outcomes – including intermediate - are unrestricted in order to capture any quantifiable effects along pathways to the three domains of human health, food security and economics at the individual or household level, and the environment.

Findings:  Database searches returned 92,148 results, of which 41,782 were removed as duplicates. Following title and abstract screening, 6,845 results were included for full text screening. Here we present data for the first 500 randomly selected results (~25% of total) to be included for analysis in our review. Among food system sub-sectors, agricultural production represents the most prominent plastic exposure (N=312 / 61%) where for instance studies examine the effects of mulching, row covers and fishing equipment. The frequency of studies decreases at each stage of the food system, from Processing, Storage and Distribution (29%), Sales and Marketing (7%), Household Consumption/Kitchen Level (3%) and Disposal and Waste Management (0.2%). Within this preliminary sample of literature the impacts on food security and economics at the individual or household level account for 69% of outcomes captured, whereas relatively less outcomes for human health (20%) and the environment (11%) feature. The most common exposure-outcome pathway is between plastics used in agricultural production and their impacts on food security and economics at the individual or household level.

Conclusions:  Much of the public debate around plastics – as it relates to the food system - centres on the negative pollution effects of visible items emanating from the consumption end of the system (i.e. straws, coffee cups). However, our initial findings suggest that the weight of research on impacts of food system plastics may be at earlier stages in the food system such as agricultural production, processing, storage and distribution, suggesting possble gaps for more research. Our preliminary results reveal studies claiming both beneficial and harmful impacts of plastics. In light of this, we hypothesise that understanding such trade-offs when addressing the ‘plastic problem’ will be critical for food system sustainability.

The importance of forested landscapes for food security and nutrition across agricultural transitions: A multi-country analysis

Dominic Rowland, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK / Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Introduction:  Smallholder family farms are increasingly becoming commercialized and transitioning away from diverse subsistence systems towards specialized market-orientated operations, leading to dramatic shifts in the scale and nature of agricultural landscapes and the associated effects on the environment, ecosystem service provisioning, livelihoods, well-being, and health of local populations. We examine how changes in agricultural landscapes manifest themselves as dietary transitions, which represent an often overlooked social dimension of tropical conservation. We show that there are some complex interactions between forests, people, and landscape configurations with consequences for health and nutrition that hold true across a broad range of diverse landscapes.

Methods:  We have applied a novel methodological approach as part of the Agrarian Change Project, which aims to explore the nature of forest loss and landscape-scale agricultural transitions in tropical forested areas across seven landscapes in different countries (Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Cameroon, and Zambia). Each landscape has historically undergone and is currently undergoing agriculture-driven landscape transformation and three experimental zones we established within each landscape representing increasing levels of deforestation and transition away from forest-based livelihoods. Zones represented different stages of transition and were paired with household surveys (n=1904) exploring the diets and livelihoods of local people. Zone 1 represents landscapes where people are carrying out subsistence farming and are heavily dependent on forests. Zone 2 represents areas with an intermediate or mixed-farming system with less access to forests. Zone 3 represents locations that have been converted to monoculture agricultural systems with very little access to forests. We conducted a comparative analysis by using a mixed model approach that allowed us to draw some broad conclusions about the impacts of agricultural intensification, forests, and diets at the landscape scale.

Findings:  After controlling for a wide range of variables known to contribute to the status of a household’s food security and nutrition, including relative wealth, education levels, household size, land availability, etc., we found that both a household’s position along the forest transition/agricultural intensification curve and their reliance on forests can have large impacts on their food security, dietary diversity, and consumption frequency of nutritionally-important individual food groups. Reduced reliance on forests can negatively impact food security to varying degrees across zones, whereas dietary diversity is significantly better for those who have an intermediate level reliance on forests. Furthermore, in both cases, the size of the effects of forest use are mediated by an interaction with landscape configuration. The impact of reduced reliance on forests for food security is amplified for those who remain forest-dependent in the highly modified agricultural zones. Contrastingly, the positive effects of maintaining a moderate level of forest dependence are diluted when maintained in the heavily modified zone. Other factors that consistently impact food security and nutrition are wealth, the amount of land owned, and self-producing staple foods.

Conclusions:  We examine the contributions of forests to diets across a wide range of forested landscapes with varying degrees of agricultural modification. The mixed model approach coupled with a nested experimental design provides some insights into some of the less-obvious trade-offs related to agricultural intensification at the expense of forest systems. We find consistent positive associations between forest use and dietary quality, but also that the associations between dietary quality and forest use are strongest in the most agricultural landscapes. This suggests that the dietary importance of forests may increase with increased agricultural modification.