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Ultraprocessed foods – like cookies, chips, frozen meals and fast food – may contribute to cognitive decline

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Ultraprocessed foods – like cookies, chips, frozen meals and fast food – may contribute to cognitive decline

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Ultraprocessed foods – like cookies, chips, frozen meals and fast food – may contribute to cognitive decline

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Researchers are trying to understand whether ultraprocessed foods erode brain health in the aging process.

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How does food get contaminated? The unsafe habits that kill more than 400,000 people a year

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How does food get contaminated? The unsafe habits that kill more than 400,000 people a year

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Unsafe foods, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), contribute to poor health, including impaired growth and development, micro-nutrient deficiencies, noncommunicable and infectious diseases, and mental illness. Globally, one in ten people are affected by food-borne diseases each year. Antonina Mutoro, a nutrition researcher at the African Population and Health Research Center, explains what causes food contamination and how we can lower the risk of disease.
What is food contamination?

Access to safe and nutritious food is a basic human right which many do not enjoy, partly because of food contamination. This is defined as the presence of harmful chemicals and microorganisms in food that can cause illness. According to the WHO, food contamination affects about one in every ten people globally and causes about 420,000 deaths annually.

Food contamination can be:

physical: foreign objects in food can potentially cause injury or carry disease-causing microorganisms. Pieces of metal, glass and stones can be choking hazards, or cause cuts or damage to teeth. Hair is another physical contaminant.

biological: living organisms in food, including microorganisms (bacteria, viruses and protozoa), pests (weevils, cockroaches and rats) or parasites (worms), can cause disease.

chemical: substances like soap residue, pesticide residue and toxins produced by microorganisms such as aflatoxins can lead to poisoning.

What are the most common causes of food contamination?

The most common cause of food contamination is poor food handling. This includes not washing your hands at the appropriate time - before eating and preparing food, after using the toilet, or after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing. Using dirty utensils, not washing fruits and vegetables with clean water, and storing raw and cooked food in the same place can also be harmful. Sick people should not handle food. And you should avoid consuming under-cooked foods, particularly meat.

Poor farming practices can also contaminate food. This includes the heavy use of pesticides and antibiotics, or growing fruits and vegetables using contaminated soil and water. The use of inadequately composted or raw animal manure or sewage is also harmful.

Read more: Power cuts and food safety: how to avoid illness during loadshedding

Fresh foods can lead to a number of illnesses. In Kenya, for instance, the contamination of meat, fruits and vegetables with human waste is relatively common. This is attributed to the use of contaminated water to wash food. Flies carrying contaminants can also directly transfer faecal matter and bacteria onto plant leaves or fruits.

Street foods are another common source of food contamination. These foods are widely consumed in low- and middle-income countries because they're cheap and easily accessible.

What are the signs that you've eaten contaminated food?

Biological and chemical substances are the most common food contaminants. They account for more than 200 food-borne illnesses, including typhoid, cholera and listeriosis. Food-borne illnesses usually present as diarrhoea, vomiting and stomach pains.

In severe cases, food-borne illnesses can lead to neurological disorders, organ failure and even death. It's therefore advisable to seek immediate medical attention if you begin to experience symptoms like persistent diarrhoea and vomiting after eating or drinking.

Children aged under five are the most vulnerable to food-borne illnesses. They bear 40% of the food-borne disease burden. A child's immune system is still developing and can't fight off infections as effectively as an adult's.

In low- and middle-income countries, reduced immunity in children can also occur as a result of malnutrition and frequent exposure to infections due to poor hygiene and sanitation, including a lack of access to safe water and toilets. Additionally, when children are ill, they tend to have poor appetites. This translates to reduced food intake. Coupled with increased nutrient losses through diarrhoea and vomiting, this can lead to a cycle of infection and malnutrition and, in extreme cases, death.

Pregnant women and people with reduced immunity due to illness or age are equally vulnerable and extra care should, therefore, be taken to prevent food-borne illnesses among these groups.

What can we do to prevent food contamination?

Food-borne illnesses also have negative economic impacts, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The World Bank estimates it costs more than US$15 billion annually to treat these illnesses in these countries. So it's important to have preventive strategies in place.

Food contamination can be prevented through simple measures:

washing your hands at key times (before preparing, serving or eating meals; before feeding children, after using the toilet or after disposing of faeces)

wearing clean, protective clothing during food preparation

storing food properly

washing raw foods with clean water

keeping raw and cooked foods separate

using separate utensils for meats and for food meant to be eaten raw.

Good farming practices, such as the use of clean water and application of approved pesticides in recommended amounts, can help prevent food contamination.

Food vendors also need to be trained on food safety, and provided with clean water and proper sanitation.

As part of the research team at the African Population and Health Research Center, I'm working on the Healthy Food Africa project, which aims to boost food security in urban informal settlements through the promotion of food safety. In Kenya, the project is working closely with the Nairobi county government to develop a food safety training manual targeting street food vendors. This will go a long way towards improving food safety in the city.

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How does food get contaminated? The unsafe habits that kill more than 400,000 people a year

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Biological and chemical substances are the most common food contaminants and account for over 200 food-borne illnesses.

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Your snacks may be delicious, but are they safe?

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Your snacks may be delicious, but are they safe?

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Roasted meat on sticks popularly known as 'Suya' is a common delicacy in Nigeria. Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images

Food safety is a concern for Nigerians after increasing reports of food-borne illnesses in recent years. According to the Consumer Advocacy for Food Safety and Nutrition Initiative (CAFSANI), consumption of unsafe food in Nigeria results in about 173 million cases of diarrhoea and approximately 33,000 deaths due to foodborne illnesses.

The country has over the years experienced repeated outbreaks of diseases that can be transmitted through contaminated food, including cholera and lassa fever.

Food safety is a global issue affecting everyone, regardless of location or social status. According to the World Health Organization, food-borne diseases affect an estimated 600 million people annually, resulting in 420,000 deaths globally.
Nigeria has significant challenges when it comes to food safety - behaviour around food hygiene. For most developing countries, it can be difficult to practise food safety when clean water and sanitation aren't available. Some of the other factors that influence food safety in Nigeria are population growth, income inequality, long food supply chains, education gaps and poor regulation.
As a microbiological expert, I am often asked, "how safe is my snack?" The answer to this is not straightforward. It depends on various factors like where the ingredients come from, and how snacks are prepared and stored.

In Nigeria, snacks are small food items that are eaten between meals - a quick bite, as a stand-alone treat or with a beverage. They may be savoury or sweet. Examples include chin-chin, meat pie, puff-puff (deep fried dough), sausage rolls (gala), suya (grilled meat), akara (bean cake), kilishi (dried beef jerky), roasted corn, plantain and groundnuts.

These are usually available from street vendors, in local markets and from supermarkets. Supermarket snacks usually come pre-packaged from the factories while snacks purchased from street vendors and open markets are packaged in a variety of materials such as newspapers for suya and kilishi, polyethylene bags for chin-chin and puff-puff and reused plastic bottles for groundnuts. This unconventional packaging may increase the risk of contamination with microorganisms.

There are simple and effective ways to make snacks safer for everyone. Choosing ingredients from trusted sources and following proper food preparation and storage methods can make a big difference.

By following the tips I offer here, you can enjoy your snacks and reduce the risk of foodborne diseases. Remember, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

Managing the risks

The source of ingredients: One of the main things that affect the safety of your snack is where its ingredients come from. Raw materials, including fruits, vegetables and animal products, can be contaminated with harmful microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites.

These microorganisms can cause food-borne illnesses if they are not properly handled and cooked.

To reduce the risk of contamination, it is important to buy ingredients from trusted suppliers who have good hygiene practices.

When buying fresh produce, look for signs of spoilage, such as mould, discolouration and foul odours. Avoid buying pre-cut fruits and vegetables, as they are more susceptible to contamination. Always wash fruits and vegetables thoroughly with clean running water before using them.

There are also things to watch out for when buying processed food. Food processing, such as canning and freezing, can kill harmful microorganisms and extend the shelf life of products. But poor processing and handling can lead to contamination and spoilage.

Safe handling and storage: It's important to follow good hygiene practices, such as washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water before handling food and using clean utensils and equipment. To avoid cross-contamination, separate raw and cooked foods and use different cutting boards for different types of food. Cook food to the appropriate temperature to kill any harmful microorganisms present.

Proper storage can prevent the growth of harmful microorganisms and extend the shelf life of products. Store perishable items, such as meats, dairy products and cooked foods, in the refrigerator at temperatures of 40°F (4°C) or below.

Keep dry foods, such as crackers, cookies and chips, in a cool, dry place away from moisture and heat.

Packaging and labelling: The packaging and labelling of snacks provide important and valuable information about their safety. Look out for products with clear, easy-to-read labels that include information about the ingredients, nutritional content and allergens.

Products with damaged or bulging packaging should be avoided as this could be a sign of contamination or spoilage.

Read more: Nigeria's street food adds to the plastic problem - green leaves offer a solution

Symptoms of food-borne diseases

Knowing the most common types of foodborne illnesses and their symptoms is very important. The most common microorganisms that cause food-borne illnesses include salmonella, E. coli, listeria and norovirus.

Symptoms of food-borne illness can range from mild, such as nausea and diarrhoea, to severe, such as kidney failure and paralysis - the inability to move some or all parts of your body.

If you experience or observe any symptoms of food-borne illness after eating a snack, seek medical attention immediately. Food-borne infections can spread quickly, and it is important to take preventive measures to avoid the spread. Wash your hands frequently and avoid food preparation or handling until you fully recover.

In conclusion, ensuring the safety of your snack requires careful consideration of various factors that can affect its quality and safety. These include the source of ingredients, processing and preparation methods, storage, packaging, labelling, and awareness of common food-borne illnesses.

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Your snacks may be delicious, but are they safe?

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Food safety means checking the source and paying attention to hygiene and storage.

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Food safety policy neglects informal markets in developing countries - 3 ways this can change

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Food safety policy neglects informal markets in developing countries - 3 ways this can change

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The informal sector poses great challenges for food safety. Steven Jaffee

The food industry in many low- and middle-income countries is dominated by the informal sector. Numerous micro and small businesses, which are not legally registered and mostly compete on the basis of price, handle much of the food that people eat. This includes meat, fish and fresh fruit and vegetables. Informal businesses also dominate when it comes to out-of-home eating.

Fresh foods are important vectors of food-borne diseases, chemical contaminants and other hazards. But in the informal sector there are widespread deficiencies in food safety awareness and in the way food is stored, prepared and handled. Hygiene is not always good at places where vendors work. Consumers are mainly focused on price and have limited ability to protect themselves from unsafe foods.

The informal sector therefore poses great challenges for food safety.

We recently published a report that looked at food safety risks in the informal sector of developing countries. Our report suggests that food sourced through informal markets accounts for 80% of cases of food-borne disease in low-income countries. In lower middle-income countries, the proportion is 65%.

There has been growing attention on food safety in low- and middle-income countries by governments and international development agencies. Our report shows, however, there's a big policy blind spot in this area. Most food safety initiatives focus on medium or larger food manufacturers, elements of the so-called "modern retail", food exports and commercial farms or better organised smallholder producers. Also, most attention is given to upgrading national food safety regulations.

The informal sector is typically given minimal attention. There are exceptions. But most efforts to upgrade the food handling practices of informal food vendors have had only short-lived impacts and are not scalable. The need for traditional food markets to be upgraded and for the capacity of towns and cities to regulate informal food businesses are glaring omissions.

We conclude in our report that tackling the food safety problem in low- and middle-income countries requires a fundamental shift in thinking and practice. Actions towards improving food safety must be implemented by local governments and municipalities where informal markets are based. There must be synergies with other goals and interventions, for example the provision of safe water and improved sanitation. And government agencies need to balance incentives and deterrents better when trying to get informal food businesses to use better food safety practices.

Informal markets

The continued dominance of the informal sector in low- and middle-income countries might be considered a transitional issue that will naturally go away with time. That is, food will become safer as economic development proceeds, food systems change, and governments become better at food safety regulation.

Certainly, we have seen supermarkets and other "modern" forms of food distribution emerge in the major cities of these countries. However, food system formalisation takes time. In poorer countries, in particular, informal markets and the traditional operators that work there will continue to dominate for many years. Further, diet and demographic changes in these countries are increasing consumer exposure to food safety hazards, especially as they eat more fresh foods.

On top of this, while significant resources have gone into strengthening national food safety agencies in some countries, the impact on the informal sector has been minimal. Central government agencies typically have little regular contact with the informal sector, and even less influence over it.

The informal sector is often an afterthought when low- and middle-income countries look to upgrade their food safety controls. Worse, it is seen as a legacy of the past, not fitting with the national vision of a modern, competitive and resilient food system. Government officials ignore many informal food businesses. Or worse, they do what they can to make them go away, for example by disrupting their commerce or imposing draconian fines.

Tailored solutions

Much of the food safety problem is a natural consequence of the limited capacity and weak incentives of informal food businesses. Sustainable improvements are needed to address both issues simultaneously.

Local circumstances, including market and administrative structures, and the state of physical infrastructure, vary greatly. There are also variations in the risk profile of different types of informal businesses, be they market sellers, micro food processors or street food vendors. A "one size fits all" approach won't do. Solutions need to be customised to local conditions and to the targeted players.

Three fundamental shifts are needed to achieve greater and more sustained progress towards safer food in low- and middle-income countries.

The epicentre of attention needs to shift from central to local governments. It is municipal governments that interact with informal food businesses and influence the conditions in which they operate. These include access to clean water and sanitation and the physical condition of markets. Municipalities lay down most of the controls on the activities of local food businesses. Central governments need to empower local governments to act, giving them the legal authority and resources they need, and laying down frameworks for local action and for sharing experiences.

The focus should be on multisectoral interventions that could combine food safety with attention to animal health, environmental health, nutrition, safe water and sanitation. Stand-alone food safety projects and programmes may not be the best way to mobilise and use resources in the informal sector.

Regulation of the informal sector by government agencies should be reset. It should aim to enable gradual and sustained improvements in food safety practices. Government officials should mainly provide advice and support services, and be rewarded on the basis of incremental food safety improvements. Regulatory enforcement will still be needed, but should be the last resort.

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Food safety policy neglects informal markets in developing countries - 3 ways this can change

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Improving food safety in low- and middle-income countries requires a shift in thinking and practice.

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Pest plants and animals cost Australia around $25 billion a year – and it will get worse

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Pest plants and animals cost Australia around $25 billion a year – and it will get worse

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Pest plants and animals cost Australia around $25 billion a year – and it will get worse

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Without urgent action, Australia will continue to lose billions of dollars every year on invasive species.

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New Zealand needs to up its biosecurity game to protect the country from the next devastating pest threat

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New Zealand needs to up its biosecurity game to protect the country from the next devastating pest threat

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Climate change is increasing the risk of plant-destroying insects, diseases and invasive weeds entering Aotearoa New Zealand. Border security is not enough to protect us from the next biosecurity threat - it's time to be proactive in preventing the risks.

As New Zealanders, our natural world is important for our wellbeing and our sense of identity. It is also important economically and for food production.

With a total economic cost of pests estimated at NZ$9.2 billion in 2020 (2.9% of GDP), biosecurity is a major component of our annual budget.

Most of New Zealand's biosecurity detection is concentrated at the border - monitoring ships and cargo coming into New Zealand. But this approach does not take into account pests that arrive by other ways.

A number of pest species, such as myrtle rust, are wind-blown. We miss their pending arrival because we are typically focused on what is already here.

New Zealand needs to be more proactive to biosecurity threats. This means developing new monitoring tools, and utilising new technologies like environmental DNA (or "eDNA", the DNA that is left behind as organisms pass through an environment) to better inform our baseline data.

We also need to sequence the genomes for species that aren't represented in our databases. This will enable faster identification of dangerous interlopers.

Learning from the fall armyworm

The fall armyworm highlights why we urgently need to develop proactive biosecurity responses and tools.

We knew for some time the fall armyworm was heading to New Zealand (most likely from Australia) - which it did in February 2022. It quickly established and began to decimate crops.

Unfortunately for New Zealand's agricultural sector, the fall armyworm is a highly adaptable pest. The moths fly extremely well and the caterpillars feed on around 350 different plant species, with a preference for crops like maize and sweetcorn.

Read more: What a warmer, wetter world means for insects, and for what they eat

And they're voracious. The caterpillars gather in armies to decimate all plants in their path. Northland growers report picking crop plants and hearing the caterpillars fall from them en masse. The fall armyworm is now widespread in the north of the North Island and has also reached the South Island.

There was a missed opportunity in proactive management before the fall armyworm arrived. This was perhaps due to the prevalent belief that it wouldn't be able to overwinter in New Zealand (it can and did!).

But we also failed to prevent the fall armyworm's arrival because there has been a general reticence to put money towards something that isn't a problem yet. Particularly absent in our response was the use of genomic tools to predict the pest's invasive potential before arrival, and then to rapidly identify its incursion pathway once here.

Carried by the wind

A number of scientists believe the fall armyworm was carried over on the wind from Australia. This theory could be confirmed using genomic data to identify the global population with which the New Zealand samples share most ancestry. It would also be easy to ascertain whether the South Island incursion came from the North Island or via a separate wind event from Australia.

Why is it important to understand where the pest has come from? Origin determines genomic signatures and understanding these in a pest may give us a better idea of how likely it is to survive in certain conditions. We could, for example, see if it carried particular genetic variants that show insecticide resistance or an ability to survive colder temperatures.

Meanwhile, understanding incursion pathways could facilitate the rapid blocking of particular trade routes or the identification of ideal sites for pheromone trapping to intercept flight pathways into the country for wind-blown organisms.

The initial plan to eradicate fall armyworm has now been abandoned. In April 2023, New Zealand moved to management of the pest.

Looking to the next threat

Our reactive response strategy is set to become a bigger issue, with incursions from more pests expected as the country continues to warm as a consequence of climate change.

The next pests likely to infiltrate New Zealand include two Australian insects - the Queensland fruit fly and painted apple moth - as well as the brown marmorated stink bug, a native to Asia.

The Queensland fruit fly and the painted apple moth both pose a risk to fruit crops, with the moth also enjoying native species like kōwhai and karaka. The brown marmorated stink bug infests houses to shelter from the cold and releases a foul scent when disturbed. Each of these three pests is regularly intercepted at the New Zealand border.

Read more: Lessons on how to effectively tackle insect invasions

We learn nothing from failed invasions right now, but we could use genome sequencing to search for signatures in the genome that help us to understand and better predict establishment outcomes.

And, when a pest does arrive - because it can, and it will - we could move more quickly before it gets a foothold with genomics in our biosecurity toolbox. We could more rapidly detect the pest, determine where it came from and understand the genetic arsenal it brings with it. This would help us determine the best approaches to mitigate any environmental damage.

These methods are there for the taking. Similar methods are already applied in conservation contexts. Sometimes we even eventually use them for pests. But almost always, we do this reactively once eradication efforts have already been abandoned.

If we want to prevent the next big pest threat to New Zealand, then it is long past time to invest in the prevention rather than the cure.

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New Zealand needs to up its biosecurity game to protect the country from the next devastating pest threat

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Climate change is increasing the risk of plant-destroying insects, diseases and invasive weeds entering Aotearoa New Zealand. Border security is not enough to protect us from the next biosecurity threat - it's time to be proactive in preventing the risks. As New Zealanders, our natural world is important for our wellbeing and our sense of identity.

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Our current methods of food production are unsustainable – in his latest book, George Monbiot considers the alternatives

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Our current methods of food production are unsustainable – in his latest book, George Monbiot considers the alternatives

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Our current methods of food production are unsustainable – in his latest book, George Monbiot considers the alternatives

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Finding radical new ways to feed the world is essential for our survival. A prominent environmental activist has considered the alternatives.

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HECS for farmers? Nature repair loans could help biodiversity recover – and boost farm productivity

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HECS for farmers? Nature repair loans could help biodiversity recover – and boost farm productivity

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Almost three billion hectares of farmland is in poor condition worldwide - an area the size of Russia. Biodiversity is in freefall. Extinctions are rising. Wild animal populations have fallen almost 70% since 1970.

Restoring damaged land and bringing back ecosystems is phenomenally expensive, estimated at A$21 trillion globally.

The sheer scale of the problem is beyond the capacity of traditional approaches to funding repair. That's one reason why the Australian government is looking to alternatives such as a nature repair market. This, the government hopes, would boost biodiversity - especially on private land such as farms.

To make this market work, the government might consider creating a new version of Australia's well-known HECS higher education loans. Call it FECS - Farm Environment Contribution Scheme.

The lead author of this article, Bruce Chapman, helped create HECS - the world's first national income-contingent loan for higher education. Co-author David Lindemayer, ecologist and conservation biologist, has spent decades exploring ways to preserve biodiversity on farmland.

We have shown how farmers could access loans similar to HECS but based on annual revenue, not income to undertake work helping both their business and restoration of nature. This work will boost farm productivity and biodiversity with farmers repaying the loan when their revenues permit.

Why is this needed?

Australia has large swathes of degraded land and at least 100 species have gone extinct since European colonisation. To prevent further extinctions, the government announced it would introduce a new nature repair market.

This market could, if done well, tackle some of the drivers of biodiversity loss and land degradation - particularly on our farmland. Protecting habitat and waterways, preventing erosion and improving drought resilience would all be eligible.

Take farm dams. The vast majority of the 650,000 dams in the Murray-Darling Basin are in poor condition. To renovate one by fencing and re-vegetating around it costs about $9000.

Read more: We must look past short-term drought solutions and improve the land itself

But farmers can make this money back. Livestock with access to better quality drinking water gains weight more quickly, giving farmers more cow to sell. There's a climate benefit too, as renovated dams change rapidly from carbon sources to carbon sinks. Plus, healthier dams provide habitat for more birds, frogs and dragonflies.

The question is - how do you fund this market? Creating tradeable certificates is one way but could be complicated. Another option is to create a rolling fund, where biodiversity loans are given to farmers to do nature repair work such as dam upgrades which help their bottom line - and wildlife.

How would this work with the nature repair scheme?

The federal government has pitched its planned nature repair market as an offset scheme: farmers and landholders do repair work and get biodiversity certificates which can be bought by, say, another farmer wanting to clear land.

But there's a complementary, parallel approach. All farms experience large swings in annual revenues from forces outside a farmer's control, such as rain, drought, floods and commodity price shocks. The best financial tool to help farmers undertake nature repair is the type which smooths their income. That's where revenue-dependent loans could work.

Farmers would get the money needed for work on restoration and biodiversity recovery, and incur a debt to be repaid only when future revenue makes it possible. During bad years when farm income is low, repayments would be low or zero. During good years, more debt would be repaid to the government.

This isn't wholly new. We already have policies allowing farmers to draw on savings from good years to help cope with poor years, coupled with associated tax benefits. By and large, this works well.

Loans like HECS have this vital income-smoothing feature - you only pay it back when you are in a position to do so. This scheme has worked well to share the cost of university education between the recipient, who will benefit directly from it, and society more broadly, which benefits from highly educated doctors, lawyers, business owners and so on.

With this type of loan, you don't risk losing your farm if you can't repay the debt. They're better than extending your bank loan, because they don't add to repayments until you're in a position to make them.

If these loans were added to our nature market, it could get much more traction than a grant scheme. This is because most of the money outlaid by government would be returned as the loans are repaid. It creates a revolving fund, allowing the government to finance many more projects with many more farms than with a grant which, when spent, is gone.

What about the transparency problem?

Government schemes can attract people trying to game the system for their own financial benefit.

To avoid this, projects tied to a FECS loan would have ensure plantings, shelterbelts and dam renovations are effective and meet standards.

We could borrow from decades of monitoring hundreds of sustainable farms in endangered temperate woodlands to create robust standards.

These will be crucial to avoid perverse effects, such as the risk of promoting populations of the wrong species. Replanting along narrow strips can simply create habitat for damaging hyper-aggressive native birds like the noisy miner while introduced trees can harbour pests such as starlings. Robust monitoring will be needed to ensure restoration projects actually do produce more biodiversity.

We'll need three types of monitoring:

Compliance monitoring - did a landowner do what they said they would?

Inputs monitoring - how much of the loan or grant was actually invested in fencing, planting trees or improving dams?

Outcomes monitoring - what was the end result? Did we get more species of native animals and invertebrates (including species of conservation concern)?

As we wrestle with the best way forward for Australia's first nature repair market, we should seriously consider rolling out revenue-dependent loans for farmers.

It could make life easier for farmers at little cost to the government - and get the ball rolling on the ever more urgent issue of restoring land and the species that rely on it.

Read more: Can a 'nature repair market' really save Australia's environment? It's not perfect, but it's worth a shot

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HECS for farmers? Nature repair loans could help biodiversity recover - and boost farm productivity

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Almost three billion hectares of farmland is in poor condition worldwide - an area the size of Russia. Biodiversity is in freefall. Extinctions are rising. Wild animal populations have fallen almost 70% since 1970. Restoring damaged land and bringing back ecosystems is phenomenally expensive, estimated at A$21 trillion globally.

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Land of opportunity: more sustainable Australian farming would protect our lucrative exports (and the planet)

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Land of opportunity: more sustainable Australian farming would protect our lucrative exports (and the planet)

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The European Union is pressing ahead with carbon border levies - charges on carbon-intensive goods from countries such as Australia that haven't taken strong action to reduce emissions. The EU will impose such measures on a range of imported industrial materials including aluminium, steel and cement.

But what if these tariffs are one day applied to another key Australian export industry: agriculture? As National Farmers' Federation chief executive Tony Mahar said last month:

Business and governments across the world are embedding carbon abatement considerations into their trade negotiations and relationships. As an industry dependent on exporting, Australian agriculture must be ready to adjust to a more carbon-conscious trading future.

In addition to a substantial greenhouse gas footprint from agriculture, Australia also has a truly terrible record on biodiversity loss. The argument for farmers to adopt more sustainable practices - and for governments to help the shift - is growing ever more compelling. Not only would it safeguard our exports, it would cut emissions and help protect nature.

Looming carbon tariffs

The EU policy, known formally as the Carbon Border Adjustment Measure, aims to shield local industries operating under the EU's emissions trading scheme and other similar policies.

From 2026, EU importers of some commodities must buy carbon certificates equivalent to the cost that would have been incurred had the goods been produced under the EU's emissions trading scheme.

The measure is meant to level the playing field - protecting EU companies from competition by producers in countries that don't have carbon price regimes. The policy also pressures exporting countries to implement their own effective emissions policies.

Read more: No point complaining about it, Australia will face carbon levies unless it changes course

Australia does not export large volumes of industrial commodities to Europe, so the immediate effect of the carbon tariff will be small. However, in 2026 the EU will consider extending the measure's scope to other products.

Carbon tariffs could also be imposed by other countries Australia exports to, as they increasingly demand cleaner production of goods, and as the principle of free trade seemingly diminishes in importance. These tariffs could also apply to goods subject to regulation, in addition to emissions trading schemes.

There is no immediate prospect of a carbon tariff on agriculture. But as many countries toughen their emissions targets to 2030 and adopt or strengthen net-zero targets, agriculture could become part of the mix.

Carbon levies on agriculture?

Agriculture accounts for about 13% of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions. The main source of emissions is methane from cattle and sheep. Others include rice fields, fertiliser use, agricultural waste and fuel use.

The industry is clearly sensitive to the problem. The National Farmers' Federation has endorsed an economy-wide net-zero "aspiration". It's also calling for investments in carbon-neutral agricultural technologies to, among other goals, develop new export markets. Meat and Livestock Australia has set a 2030 carbon-neutral goal for the red meat industry.

If Australia's major trading partners apply carbon tariffs to agricultural products in future, Australian farmers will have a big incentive to make production less emissions-intensive. Potential ways to achieve this include:

better soil and native vegetation cover management

less fertiliser use

switching to lower-emitting sheep and cattle breeds

feed additives which make livestock emit less methane

moving from ruminant livestock to other sources of meat, such as kangaroo.

Such measures can result in increased agricultural productivity.

There are two ways Australia can avoid a carbon tariff on agriculture exports. First, agriculture can adopt cleaner production methods and have its goods certified as produced with low emissions. Second, the federal government can implement a comprehensive emissions-reduction policy, which in agriculture might mean minimum production standards to avoid high emissions practices or a carbon price where practicable.

The existing Emissions Reductions Fund would not help avoid carbon tariffs. This is because it applies only to businesses that opt in, and it subsidises emission-reduction projects rather that placing obligations on those who generate emissions.

Read more: Carbon pricing works: the largest-ever study puts it beyond doubt

Tariffs on biodiversity loss?

In future, environmental border tariffs could well extend to a broader set of environmental harms, such as biodiversity loss.

Australia's record on species loss is truly appalling - including in agricultural landscapes which have been heavily modified.

Some countries are already using financial incentives to reduce damage to nature. For example, plans by the UK government would require farmers to demonstrate environmental improvements to receive farming subsidies.

A key challenge for the agriculture sector is to simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve biodiversity outcomes. There are proven, science-based ways to do this, such as:

protecting patches of remnant native vegetation which provides habitat for animals and helps draw down and store carbon from the atmosphere

creating healthy farm dams which can provide higher-quality drinking water for livestock, improve farm productivity and create wildlife habitat

planting "shelterbelts" - strips of woody vegetation that shelter livestock from wind and sun, provide wildlife habitat (when well designed and managed), and prevent moisture loss from soil.

This integrated approach to agricultural production, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation is being researched and championed by the Australian National University's Sustainable Farms project.

Future-proofing Australian farming

The Australian government has recognised the need for farming solutions to both climate change and biodiversity loss. For example, it's currently developing a stewardship program to encourage farmers to improve environmental conditions on their land.

A crucial part of this and similar schemes will be establishing reliable systems for estimating and certifying farm emissions and biodiversity outcomes. Indeed, robust long-term monitoring is vital for such schemes to be seen as credible, nationally and internationally.

The opportunities are ripe for Australian farmers to adopt far more environmentally sustainable land management practices, and in the process, safeguard or even expand Australian agricultural exports.

Read more: Australia's farmers want more climate action - and they're starting in their own (huge) backyards

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Land of opportunity: more sustainable Australian farming would protect our lucrative exports (and the planet)

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The European Union is pressing ahead with carbon border levies - charges on carbon-intensive goods from countries such as Australia that haven't taken strong action to reduce emissions. The EU will impose such measures on a range of imported industrial materials including aluminium, steel and cement.

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‘Regenerative agriculture’ is all the rage – but it’s not going to fix our food system

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‘Regenerative agriculture’ is all the rage – but it’s not going to fix our food system

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‘Regenerative agriculture’ is all the rage – but it’s not going to fix our food system

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We know industrial farming needs to change. But regenerative agriculture may not be the transformation our global food system needs.

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Pay dirt: $200 million plan for Australia’s degraded soil is a crucial turning point

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Pay dirt: $200 million plan for Australia’s degraded soil is a crucial turning point

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The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe, the water we drink - it's all underpinned by healthy and productive soils. Since Europeans arrived in Australia, the continent's soil has steadily been degraded. Yet, until now, we've lacked an integrated national approach to managing this valuable and finite resource.

That changed in last night's federal budget, when Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced almost A$200 million for a National Soils Strategy. The 20-year plan recognises the vital role of soils for environmental and human health, the economy, food security, biodiversity and climate resilience.

Our soils face a range of threats, including the loss of prime agricultural land, erosion, acidification, salt accumulation, contamination and carbon loss. Climate change also puts pressure on our soils through through droughts, storms, bushfires and floods.

We contributed expertise as the soil policy was being developed, and believe the final strategy represents a long-needed turning point for this crucial natural asset.

Why soil matters

Soil contains organic matter, minerals, gases, water and living organisms. It is slow to form - the average rate of soil production globally is around 114 millimetres per 1,000 years - and is considered a non-renewable resource.

Soil underpins a myriad of economic activities. In Australia, it directly contributes about A$63 billion each year to the economy through agriculture production alone.

Healthy soil is necessary for:

food and fibre production

filtering water and retaining sediment to ensure healthy landscapes

maintaining air quality by preventing dust storms

carbon storage to help mitigate climate change

environmental functions such as plant growth

human nutrition (soil provides nutrients to plants and animals which are transferred to humans once consumed)

many drugs and vaccines upon which humans rely, such as penicillin

safe infrastructure (acid sulfate soils and salinity can damage structures such as housing, bridges and roads)

resilience to natural disasters such as storms, bushfires, floods and droughts.

However, land degradation, climate change and poor management practices threaten our soil resources.

Read more: Even after the rains, Australia's environment scores a 3 out of 10. These regions are struggling the most

What lies beneath?

Until now, Australia has lacked a nationally consistent approach to monitor soil health, nor a readily accessible means of storing that data. That means at a national level, our understanding of soil condition, and how it's changed, has been limited.

Soil monitoring has largely been conducted through various regional, state and federal programs. These often operate in isolation and have differing aims and objectives. And overall investment has not been large or quick enough to create broad improvements in soil health.

In comparison, well-established standardised national systems exist to monitor terrestrial ecosystems, weather, climate and water. These allow an assessment of longer trends and changes to baseline conditions.

The need for a national soil assessment was recognised as far back as 2008. And there have long been calls for long-term monitoring, consistent information and baseline data collection.

Change from the ground up

Importantly, the strategy takes a long term view of sustainable soil management. It also considers soil beyond its traditional role in agricultural production and explicitly identifies criteria to measure progress.

The strategy has three arms:
1. Prioritise soil health
This goal takes a "soils first" approach in that sustainable soil management is the primary consideration in policy development and management strategies. This recognises how environmental and agricultural problems can start with poor soil management and create further challenges. For example, soil acidification can lead to declines in terrestrial biodiversity, and soil constraints must be addressed first to arrest this.
2. Empower soil stewards and innovation
This approach gives incentives to farmers and other land managers, such as rebates for sampling to determine the soil carbon levels. Carbon is an important measure of soil condition. Gathering such information will help land managers arrest the decline in soil condition, enhancing productivity and soil health.
3. Secure soil science
This approach aims to increase soil knowledge through standardised data collection, management and storage. It will allow for more informed decisions using reliable, up-to-date, accessible information.

Part of this aim involves strengthening training and accreditation programs, and integrating soils into the national school curriculum. This will help create a new generation of soil experts to replace the current crop which is trending to retirement.

Read more: We need more carbon in our soil to help Australian farmers through the drought

On solid ground

Overall, the National Soils Strategy aims to deliver coordinated on-ground action and improve research, education and monitoring. The strategy broadly aligns with the needs of those who had input into its development, including governments, industry, academia, Landcare groups and non-government organisations.

However, while the importance of Indigenous land management practices is clearly acknowledged, the integration and incorporation of these practices should be more clearly defined.

The monitoring program encourages farmers to test their soil and incorporate the de-identified results in to the national database. Care should be taken to ensure sampling is done appropriately for the data to be useful.

The time frame for the initial phase of the strategy is short - pilot programs need to be delivered between two and four years. This will be challenging to deliver.

Separate to the strategy, the budget allocated A$59.6 million to soil carbon initiatives. There is increasing recognition of how improved land use and management can help boost soil carbon stores, which is key to tackling climate change. But storing carbon permanently in soils comes with a number of challenges. This funding may be appropriate only if directed to address those areas where knowledge gaps exist.

But overall, the strategy fills a vital gap - providing a national vision and shared goals for managing precious soils across Australia.

Read more: The Morrison government wants to suck CO₂ out of the atmosphere. Here are 7 ways to do it

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Pay dirt: $200 million plan for Australia's degraded soil is a crucial turning point

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The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe, the water we drink - it's all underpinned by healthy and productive soils. Since Europeans arrived in Australia, the continent's soil has steadily been degraded. Yet, until now, we've lacked an integrated national approach to managing this valuable and finite resource.

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Around 3,000 years ago, farmers settled on the fertile Loess Plateau in western China, a region about the size of France. By the 7th century, the rich soils were feeding about one quarter of the Chinese population. But intense pressure on the land eroded the soil. By the 20th century, desertification had condemned the remaining population to poverty. "It was a desperate place," says Juergen Voegele, an agricultural economist and engineer at the World Bank who first visited the region in the mid-1980s. But that would soon change.

Voegele returned in the 1990s to lead a major 12-year World Bank project to help restore dirt to healthy soils on a vast scale. "This was absolute desert. A few years later the whole thing came back," he says. "We saw birds, butterflies, insects - the whole ecosystem began to recover. Even after hundreds of years of complete devastation, the seeds were still in the ground and things began to happen very quickly. We did not expect that."

By 2009, and the programme's end, approximately 920,000 hectares had been restored of the 65,000,000-hectare region in western China. But elsewhere in China and around the world, soils are still suffering.

In 2015 a landmark report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that one third of the planet's soils are in bad shape due to erosion, salinisation, chemical pollution, and more.

Since then things have not improved. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which has released summaries of its soon-to-be-published 2018 comprehensive report, concludes that land degradation affects approximately 3.2 billion people around the world. Unsustainable agriculture expansion, urban expansion, and climate change are among the top causes. According to the IPBES findings, investing in avoiding degradation and restoring degraded land makes financial sense - the short-term gains from activities that lead to degradation are small in comparison to the value of what is lost in the degradation.

The loss of fully functional soils is critical in many ways. Perhaps most obviously soils are useful for growing food, but they also alleviate floods and droughts; support plant, insect, and animal biodiversity; and more. And beyond these basic services, soils will be important for capturing carbon in a fast-changing climate.

At the COP 21 negotiations in 2015 the 4 Per 1000 Initiative was launched. The initiative is a voluntary undertaking, which seeks to spur on actions that target a 0,4% rise of soil carbon content annually and throughout the world. The aim is to sequester carbon to meet the Paris Accord's goal of limiting temperature rise to a 1.5-2.0C rise, in comparison with pre-industrial times.

Many soil scientists are sceptical about sustaining that high increase in soil carbon content, but they agree that soils can retain much more carbon than at present, especially in the developing world. Increasing soil's organic carbon also greatly fosters soil fertility and soil health and would lead to many benefits for farmers throughout the world.

With these local and global considerations, soil experts are making connections between building resilience in healthy soils and agricultural considerations such as soil fertility, while adding new focuses, such as climate change, to their management investigations.

Building resilience in healthy and restored soils is essential to help them retain functions in a world of global environmental change, in which disturbances, such as drought and flooding, are expected. "The fundamental idea of resilience is how the system can respond to a shock," says Johan Six, an agroecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). "A shock causes a disturbance, but a healthy and resilient soil will be able to recover, rather than deteriorate."

A diversity of fungi, bacteria, and other organisms such as nematodes, mites, termites, and earthworms live in soils and keep the soils healthy. But agricultural practices, changes in land use, climate change, and other soil-degrading processes harm these organisms. Important soil functions disappear with them.

"It is the fauna, the fungi, and microbes that are in the communities of these food webs below ground that make terrestrial ecosystems work," says Diana Wall, a soil ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who also chairs the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative, an international scientific collaboration. "If they were just soil and carbon and no life, we'd be on Mars, where you have soil, but not life in it. It's the life in soil that benefits us."

Making soils work again

Richard Bardgett, a soil ecologist at the UK's University of Manchester, has explored soil health and fertility for decades. Soil health, Bardgett says, derives from "a strong interaction between the physical, chemical, and biological components of the soils".

Geology, topography, climate, vegetation, human activity, and time shape these factors and, in turn, determine soil fertility, biodiversity, nutrient recycling, physical structure, carbon retention, and other ecological functions that make for soil health.

Building resilience in healthy soils means managing this complexity: from the chemical make-up of the soil that allows nutrients to circulate, and the presence of microbes and other organisms to break down organic matter, to how often the soil is disturbed by a plough or compressed by heavy machinery. The structure of the soils - which the soil experts sometimes refer to as soils physics - is also important, and centres around large and small clumps of soil that hold together. Six explains that in healthy soils, it is the way the clumps set in place that protects microbial populations and also traps carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients.

But what most makes soil a living system is biodiversity. Wall notes that "all the different organisms, whether it's different groups of nematodes or the millipedes [and] centipedes, they all have different tasks in soils". She adds that not all species are found everywhere, and particular species serve in particular ecosystems. If they disappear, it is uncertain how their functions will be fulfilled. Wall's recent work on unique nematodes in Antarctic soils that play a key role in carbon cycling underscores the specialisation of soil species in different places.

Soil ecologists are also conducting experiments that explore the key links between biodiversity and resilience. Bardgett and colleagues, for example, have investigated how varied assemblages of species influence soils' potential to cope with disturbance. For example, the researchers inflicted simulated drought impacts on wheat and grasslands in a test area in the United Kingdom. They looked at carbon and nitrogen cycling effects and found that the grasslands' fungal-based soils were better at coping with drought impacts. But once the drought stress ended, the bacteria-based soils with wheat regained their function quicker.

The Loess experience

Soil scientists point to ancient Mesopotamia as a tragic example of soil mismanagement: 5,000 years ago, irrigation with salty water and overworked farm plots devastated food production, eventually leading to population declines in the region.

More recently, the American Dust Bowl of the early 1900s became an iconic example of the devastating effects of mishandling of soils. Yet it led to a successful government response that set down precedents, policies, and science for soils management.

By the 20th century, the Loess Plateau faced similar challenges. The soil of the plateau was sensitive to the changes caused by human activity. In sandy and windblown areas, the soil easily erodes and loses many of its functions if it is deforested. This is precisely what happened in the Loess Plateau, where vegetation cover was reduced over centuries from grazing animals or agriculture, says Voegele.

Fortunately for the people on the Loess Plateau, over millennia enough deep reservoirs of soil remained, even after centuries of erosion, and could serve as a basis for restoration.

When the programme started in 1994, two urgent challenges for Loess Plateau restoration were overgrazing and property rights for farmers and herders, Voegele says. Although land ownership in China was not possible in the 1990s, China had recently declared the new "household responsibility system", which allowed for decades-long property lease rights. The Chinese World Bank team worked to extend those rights, putting together a handbook and a massive outreach programme that addressed land rights, which, according to Voegele, reached hundreds of thousands of farmers.

Secure land rights gave farmers and herders more incentives to care for the land. "Previously you had a plot for your sheep, but that could be taken away at any moment. So you had no incentive to actively sustainably manage the land," Voegele says. "When you know you have a 20- or 30-year lease, you will plant trees and you will actually manage the land and improve its fertility and its resilience." The land rights extension was critical for the maintenance of the programme's newly constructed, wider land terraces, which help retain water and prevent erosion and which quickly led to higher crop yields.

Ultimately, the World Bank and its partners in China invested US$500 million in the Loess Plateau restoration programme, with US$300 million supplied by the World Bank, Voegele says. The World Bank estimates millions of people's lives were improved.

The efforts also reduced sediment deposits that enter the river and elevate water levels. In that way, soil restoration efforts also decreased the effects of natural flooding events in the Yellow River. However, despite the restoration, managing the sediment presents a challenge, according to Voegele.

Post-restoration, high-yield crops such as wheat and corn are new additions that are also planted in the terraces of the Loess Plateau. Diverse orchards have also been planted that produce fruits, especially apples, and nuts. Notably, the Loess has become a lead exporter in China's large apple industry and is China's largest regional exporter of apple juice.

Though much of the restoration work in the Loess Plateau has been successful, some concerns remain. For example, Kathleen Buckingham of the World Resources Institute has raised the issues that the speed and scale of the project was possible only with low crop diversity and a potential lack of consideration of local knowledge and traditions. Single species agriculture is well known to require intensive chemical input, eroding soil health and fertility.

Further to the west, Bardgett and his colleagues have begun another soils investigation in China's Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Supported by the UK's Global Challenge Research Fund and with partners in China at the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology and the Grassland Research Institute, Bardgett's project examines the effect of land degradation in grassland systems.

The project builds from Bardgett's earlier investigation with diverse plants, where his team documented positive effects on soil health, such as soil stability and carbon retention, from mixed groups of plants' fine roots. This spring, Bardgett will set up different combinations of plants in soils that have different levels of degradation. He says that the investigation will explore plant combinations that can improve soil fertility and examine whether other plant mixtures might accelerate degradation.

Africa: challenges and hopes for soils

Africa's diverse soils are another target for management interventions. Limited organic matter - which is made up of dead plants, animals, and microbes and helps circulate nutrients through soils - and soil erosion are leading causes of poor soils, but the major agent of soil degradation in large regions of the continent, especially for small farm holders, is what the FAO calls nutrient depletion.

"When you remove a crop - corn or cassava, for example - you remove nutrients from that field, and without inputs like fertiliser, nutrients go down," explains Bernard Vanlauwe, an agroecologist with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Kenya. "It is like removing money from your bank account: the long-term result, you'll be left with zero."

Vanlauwe has worked intensively on what are called "nonresponsive soils," soils that do not gain in fertility by adding nitrogen- and phosphorus-based fertilisers or other "improvements".

He says reversing nonresponsiveness is difficult - it's a particularly resilient state, even if it is not a desirable one for farmers and food production. But where topsoil has not completely eroded, soils can be made healthy and responsive to inputs again. For example, Vanlauwe and Six are working on a multi-stakeholder experiment in Kenya that applies different treatments to soils, using an approach called Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM).

The goal of ISFM is to both maximise crop yield and limit environmental waste, such as fertiliser run-off. The farmer applies organic matter, careful amounts of fertiliser, and other amendments, and selects best plant varieties all tailored for particular local conditions, which could vary within a single plot. So, understanding soil characteristics such as acidity or micronutrient deficiency are key to ISFM.

Six and Vanlauwe and other researchers will run four field trials using ISFM methods looking particularly at the potential for increasing soil carbon and crop yield. They also want to see how this method affects soils in the face of climate change, which potentially will increase the severity of both drought and floods. Varying rainfall is a particular focus of this study.

Sub-Saharan Africa also has many different ecological areas that experience different rates of rainfall and have soils that vary in acidity or salinisation or sodification, where free sodium abounds, often causing soil structure deterioration.

Zambia, for example, has three agroecological zones, distinguished by rainfall and growing season. Soil microbiologist Alice Mweetwa, deputy director for research and graduate studies at the University of Zambia, works with farmers and students across the country to address low soil fertility, low organic matter content, acidic soils that are highly leached of nutrients, and soil crusting, among other challenges.

In one three-year project supported by the World Bank, Mweetwa focuses on nitrogen and phosphorus needs in soils growing legumes, which poorer households rely on for protein. In particular, in Zambia's "zone 3", acidic soils and high rainfall combine to leach nutrients, particularly phosphorus, out of the soils. Mweetwa and her team are isolating bacteria that thrive in legume root systems, where they live alongside and work together with a type of fungus that expands plant roots' water and nutrient uptake.

"We have already done the reintroduction to see if what we have isolated can reconnect with the beans, and those results are looking pretty good at the moment," Mweetwa says. An additional benefit is that the fungi, through their root-like filaments, the mycelia, penetrate the earth adding organic matter that stabilises the soils.

One central lesson from her work that Mweetwa stresses is that organic matter, which enhances fertility and soil organisms, is key for resilient healthy soils in sub-Saharan Africa. "If we could 'up' soil organic matter levels using different holistic approaches, that could really help soils," she says. Using cover crops, reducing tillage, and direct application of the fungi that expansively grow mycelia are among the agriculture practices Mweetwa suggests for increasing soil organic matter.

Soils for the future: the soil scientists' lessons

Mweetwa stresses that attention to people and their practices is necessary to enhance resilience in healthy soils. "One of the ways [to improve soils] is to go to a place and see what people are already doing and what system are they familiar with, and then simply enhance that particular system rather than introducing a new thing," she says.

A similar conclusion can be drawn from work in China, says Voegele, who gleaned two general lessons from the Loess Plateau restoration experience: "First of all, never think it is impossible," he says, adding that severely degraded systems could still surprise with natural recovery if managed well. "Number two, don't come in with a solution in the back of your head before you know what's going on in the ground."

Pre-existing underground conditions are important. Cutting-edge technologies such as microfertilisation, in which fertiliser is carefully deposited in small amounts, and precision agriculture, which uses advanced GPS, sensors, and other technologies to carefully calibrate management decisions, might significantly help to correct harmful practices such as over-fertilisation, says Bardgett. But they cannot substitute for the information contained in natural systems.

"One of the key things about resilient [healthy] soil systems in terms of nutrients in natural systems is that there is tight coupling of plant-nutrient demands," Bardgett says. Agriculture disrupts that tight coupling.

Looking at natural systems - with healthy soils where plants and microorganisms live for generations without depleting soil nutrients - provides understanding about how the resources plants need can be provided more sustainably. This could reduce the instances of untimely irrigation or application of fertilisers, where water and nutrients simply run off and do not benefit the plants.

Whether in China, Zambia, or elsewhere, people have begun to value soils more, but attaining good soils management has a way to go. "There is growing awareness of the importance of soils, but fundamentally people don't walk around recognising it," Bardgett says. He suggests education and funding is needed to really get "soils at the heart of environmental policy". And within this policy scope, building resilience in healthy soils will be vitally important in order to safeguard the critical functions that soils provide. When soils aren't well managed, as in Mesopotamia, the repercussions can be enormous.

"Soils take thousands of years to form, but they can be lost very quickly," Bardgett warns.

This article was originally published by Rethink under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence

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Soil is not just dirt but a living system with many important functions. Degraded soils impact on food production, erosion, and more, affecting the lives of people around the world. Restoration efforts in China, Zambia and other countries seek to reverse this trend.

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Sub-Saharan Africa’s food security has turned out better than feared. But risks remain

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Sub-Saharan Africa’s food security has turned out better than feared. But risks remain

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An avocado orchard in Tzaneen, South Africa. Food insecurity in the country went up in the wake of COVID-19. Photo by Guillem Sartorio/AFP via Getty Images

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, concern immediately arose that sub-Saharan Africa faced a potential worsening in food insecurity. The concerns were due to the anticipated slowdown in economic activity, job losses accompanied by loss of income, and a ban on grain exports by major exporting countries, including India, Russia, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Sub-Saharan Africa is a net importer of food.

The bans, along with other pandemic-related disruptions to food supply chains, were expected to add to food security challenges in the region. The World Bank was among the first multilateral institutions to sound the alarm. The bank estimated that an additional 26 million people would fall into extreme poverty, defined as those living under US$1.90 per day, in 2020.

The slowdown in economic activity played out as expected, with sub-Saharan Africa's economy contracting by 1.9% in 2020, according to International Monetary Fund estimates. The economic slowdown resulted in job losses.

The widespread job losses in the region subsequently led to a rise in food insecurity. This was most pronounced in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi, the countries for which data is available.

More than a year since the onset of the pandemic, a great many uncertainties about the economic future of the region linger on. However, sub-Saharan Africa's food security situation appears to have, thus far, turned out better than some of the more pessimistic expectations.

The increase in staple grain imports in various African countries, by both governments and private sector players, combined with slightly better domestic grain production conditions in some, such as Zambia, South Africa and Tanzania, to name a few, has slightly shielded the region.

Specific interventions

One positive development was that the G20 discouraged major grain-exporting countries from banning exports. Domestic evaluations of supplies by food-exporting countries also provided comfort for sufficient food supplies in the world market. As a result, India, Russia, Cambodia and Vietnam lifted the ban on exports, enabling a smooth flow of grain to the sub-Saharan Africa region.

Various governments also took action. This was primarily through increasing grain imports. The major importers have been Zimbabwe, Zambia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria and Malawi. Some of these countries also rolled out farmer input support schemes to assist farmers ahead of the 2020/21 production season, which began in October 2020 for most countries. Only South Africa responded with direct income support to vulnerable households, but still household food insecurity rose.

Governments also supported farmers with inputs. This could pay off during the 2021 harvest. There remain concerns though that some of support might have been late in getting to some farmers because of corruption, poor farmer targeting and bureaucratic inefficiencies. This has been the experience with previous farm input subsidies programmes.

That said, another important positive development was that most of the African continent, specifically southern and eastern regions, received higher rainfall during the 2020-21 summer. This allowed for increased plantings and improved crop production conditions. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates already point to prospects of increased maize production in several southern and east Africa countries.

For example:

Zambia's 2020/21 maize production could reach 3.4 million tonnes (up 69% on 2019/20);

Malawi's maize harvest is estimated at 3.8 million tonnes (up 25% y/y),

Mozambique's maize crop is estimated at 2.1 million tonnes (up 8% y/y),

Kenya's maize harvest is forecast at 4.0 million tonnes (up 5% y/y).

Tanzania's maize harvest is estimated at 6.3 million tonnes (up 8% y/y).

There are also prospects of large maize and wheat harvests in Zimbabwe.

These numbers suggest a good harvest, not only for grains but also for other crops and improved livestock conditions in the southern and east Africa region.

These improved agricultural conditions cannot fully compensate for job losses. Nevertheless they might cushion households from severe and long-term food insecurity that the World Bank's economists had feared the sub-Saharan Africa region would face from 2020. It is plausible that as the harvest begins from May 2021 in some African countries, rural households could be in a slightly better position than in 2020 in terms of staple grains availability.

The big question now is whether insights have been gained to make the agricultural sector more resilient in the future, and if the expected large harvest could be stored in good condition to last for longer or reach the market in good quality. A number of sub-Saharan African countries lag behind in this effort.

One idea that's been around for decades revolves around strengthening rural economies through supporting agriculture and improving infrastructure to help link farmers to markets. Had efficient roads and storage infrastructure existed in many African countries, the windfall of expected large grains harvest would find a market place, and income from sales would improve household incomes.

From a policy perspective, I would argue that as various governments begin to craft and some implement the economic recovery strategies from the COVID-19 slump, the improvement in rural infrastructure should be prioritised. Such an approach would have long term economic and food security benefits.

Challenges ahead

Nevertheless, the sub-Saharan Africa region still faces major headwinds.

If the pandemic is prolonged it's plausible that the fear of rising food insecurity could eventually be a reality, especially if the next summers are not as rainy as 2020-21.

In addition, the government-led input support to farmers for the 2021-22 planting season will be constrained by reduced fiscal space that most emerging market governments face. And there's the lurking risk of increasing global bond yields which will make government bonds in developed countries offer more attractive returns for investors, resulting in money being sucked out of emerging and frontier markets.

Essentially, the rural areas of the sub-Saharan Africa region might experience an improvement in food availability in 2021 compared to 2020. However, this is temporary. It is at the mercy of weather conditions and government support going into 2022. Both are highly uncertain and largely not within each country's control.

Perhaps, sub-Saharan African governments might want to ensure continued farmer input support again in the 2021-22 summer crop planting period.

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Sub-Saharan Africa's food security has turned out better than feared. But risks remain

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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, concern immediately arose that sub-Saharan Africa faced a potential worsening in food insecurity. The concerns were due to the anticipated slowdown in economic activity, job losses accompanied by loss of income, and a ban on grain exports by major exporting countries, including India, Russia, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

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The 50 beautiful Australian plants at greatest risk of extinction — and how to save them

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The 50 beautiful Australian plants at greatest risk of extinction — and how to save them

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As far as odds go, things don't look promising for the slender-nerved acacia ( Acacia leptoneura), a spiky plant with classic yellow-ball wattle flowers. With most of its habitat in Western Australia's wheat belt cleared for agriculture, it was considered extinct for more than 160 years.

Now, just two plants are known in the world, and they're not even in the same place. This species is among many Australian plants that have come perilously close to extinction.

To help prevent the loss of any native plant species, we've assembled a massive evidence base for more than 750 plants listed as critically endangered or endangered. Of these, we've identified the 50 at greatest risk of extinction.

The good news is for most of these imperilled plants, we already have the knowledge and techniques needed to conserve them. We've devised an action plan that's relatively easy to implement, but requires long-term funding and commitment.

What's driving the loss?

There are 1,384 plant species and subspecies listed as threatened at a national level. Twelve Australian plant species are considered probably extinct and a further 21 species possibly extinct, while 206 are officially listed as critically endangered.

Australian plants were used, managed and celebrated by Australia's First Nations people for at least 60,000 years, but since European colonisation, they've been beset by a range of threats.

Land clearing, the introduction of alien plants, animals, diseases, and interruptions to ecological processes such as fire patterns and flooding have taken a heavy toll on many species. This is particularly the case in the more densely populated eastern and southern parts of the continent.

Things aren't improving. Scientists recently compiled long-term monitoring of more than 100 threatened plant species at 600 sites nationally. And they found populations had declined on average by 72% between 1995 and 2017.

This is a very steep rate of decline, much greater than for threatened mammal or bird populations.

Read more: Australia-first research reveals staggering loss of threatened plants over 20 years

On the brink

Many species listed as threatened aren't receiving targeted conservation action or even baseline monitoring, so an important first step in preventing extinctions was identifying the species at greatest risk.

To find the top 50, we looked at the evidence: all available published and unpublished information and expert surveys of over 120 botanists and land managers. They're targeted by our Action Plan for Australia's Imperilled Plants.

Thirty of the species in the plan have fewer than 50 mature individual plants remaining.

And 33 are known only from a single location, such as the Grampians pincushion-lily ( Borya mirabilis), which occurs on one rocky outcrop in Victoria. This means the entire population could be destroyed by a single event, such as a major bushfire.

Magali Wright, Author provided

So how can we protect them?

Some of the common management actions we've proposed include:

preventing further loss of species' habitat. This is the most important action required at a national scale

regularly monitoring populations to better understand how species respond to threats and management actions

safely trialling appropriate fire management regimes, such as burning in areas where fires have been suppressed

investing in disease research and management, to combat the threat of phytophthora (root-rot fungus) and myrtle rust, which damages leaves

propagating and moving species to establish plants at new sites, to boost the size of wild populations, or to increase genetic diversity

protecting plants from grazing and browsing animals, such as feral goats and rabbits, and sometimes from native animals such as kangaroos.

Another common issue is lack of recruitment, meaning there's no young plants coming up to replace the old ones when they die. Sometimes this is because the processes that triggered these plants to flower, release seed or germinate are no longer occurring. This can include things like fire of a particular intensity or the right season.

Unfortunately, for some plants we don't yet know what triggers are required, and further research is essential to establish this.

Now we need the political will

Our plan is for anyone involved in threatened flora management, including federal, state, territory and local government groups, First Nations, environment and community conservation groups, and anyone with one of these plants on their land.

Plants make Australian landscapes unique - over 90% of our plant species are found nowhere else in the world. They're also the backbone of our ecosystems, creating the rich and varied habitats for our iconic fauna to live in. Plants underpin and enrich our lives every day.

Now we have an effective plan to conserve the Australian plants at the greatest risk of extinction. What's needed is the political will and resourcing to act in time.

Read more: Undocumented plant extinctions are a big problem in Australia - here's why they go unnoticed

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The 50 beautiful Australian plants at greatest risk of extinction - and how to save them

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As far as odds go, things don't look promising for the slender-nerved acacia ( Acacia leptoneura), a spiky plant with classic yellow-ball wattle flowers. With most of its habitat in Western Australia's wheat belt cleared for agriculture, it was considered extinct for more than 160 years.

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We hear many tales about bees and honey. Even economists may base their theories on fantasy hives. Dieticians can do the same when promoting the imaginary health benefits of honey, and then there's the honey itself. It should be one of the purest products of nature, yet what we find on supermarket shelves can be cut with syrup, tainted by antibiotics, or sourced from China despite a label that claims otherwise.

So let's take a worldwide tour of the honey trade, which oscillates between truth and tall tales, with a few tips for your coming purchases.

Bee theory

The social life of bees has long fired up our imagination. Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) admired their political organisation, with its chiefs and councils. He even thought that moral principles guided their behaviour. Nearly 1,700 years later, the Anglo-Dutch author Bernard Mandeville took the opposite view, describing a vice-ridden hive inhabited by selfish bees. The Fable of Bees, published in 1714, became a work of reference for political economists. A precursor to Adam Smith, whose invisible hand of individual self-interest fed the common good, Mandeville set out to prove that, unlike altruism, selfishness was productive. Hostile to frugality - wealth stolen from a miser will trickle down, after all - he inspired Keynes' critique of excess saving.

Wikimedia

In fairness to Pliny, Mandeville and many others who have fantasised about bees, the hive as we now know it, with its removable wooden frames, had yet to be invented. So it was difficult to observe the life and social mores of bees. There were no glass walls enabling us to watch their busy work or count drones, males whose only purpose in life is to mate with a virgin queen. Nor were there electronic tags to monitor the ceaseless movement of bees and discover that to produce a pound of honey they must cover a distance equivalent to flying around the world, visiting some 5 million flowers on the way.

James Meade, a British economist who was awarded the 1977 Nobel prize for his work on international economic policy, had no such excuse. In the early 1950s he cited the example of apple-growing and beekeeping in the same area to illustrate his theoretical analysis of external economies. Each serves the other: the bees gather nectar from the apple blossom to make honey and in so doing pollinate the flowers which in turn become fruit.

Meade theorised that because these reciprocal services are unpaid, both parties under-invest: Beekeepers set up fewer hives than is economically optimal, because they take no share in the marginal product apple growers obtain from a bigger harvest. Orchard owners plant fewer trees than is economically optimal, taking no share in the marginal product beekeepers derive from extra honey. This example was a big success with economics professors and their students, no doubt on account of its bucolic character and springtime atmosphere.

Unfortunately, Meade was mistaken on two points. First, he did not know that apple blossom contains very little nectar, which is perhaps excusable. Apple-blossom honey, should you find some in a shop, is actually made from the flowers of other plants in the orchard. Second - and this is a real blunder - he overlooked the many arrangements between growers and keepers for their mutual benefit and reward. So there was in fact no sign of free, unpaid production factors, and hence no external economies. Steven Cheung, a specialist in property rights and transaction costs, made this point with a survey of beekeepers and tree-growers, whose deals abide by rules rooted in tradition or are actually framed in full-blown contracts.

Pollinator/Wikimedia, CC BY

Bees sometimes travel by truck

American beekeepers have been charging for their pollination services for years. But the almond boom has massively increased the scale of these operations. Every year millions of hives are trucked to California's almond orchards from other parts of the country. Accounting for almost 80% of global demand, the farms play host to some 30 billion bees for a few weeks. The hives are then taken to Florida or Texas to pollinate other trees.

Bees and beehives travel around other countries, too. In France, they move from one region to another to gather pollen from flowering plants and trees at their best. At different points in the season the same hive may produce honey flavoured by Mediterranean garrigue (scrubland), acacia trees and finally lavender bushes. Unlike their US counterparts, professional beekeepers in Europe countries earn their living from producing honey, and not mainly from pollination services. Nor is there much trade in bees here.

Until recently, the transportation of bees in China was largely for honey production, not pollination. But in provinces such as Sichuan, the balance of earnings is shifting toward pollination. This is indirectly due to a local shortage of bees coupled with an increase in the land given over to orchards. But the root cause is the massive use of pesticides on apple and pear trees. Having lost their bee colonies, beekeepers are reluctant to truck their hives to such places.

Yonat Sharon/Flickr, CC BY

Trade in honey has far greater global reach than any commerce in bees themselves. In Paris, Berlin or London shops - specialist outlets or high-class grocers - you can find honey from as far afield as New Zealand or Cuba. Retailers also sell Chinese honey - but often unknowingly. In Europe, if a honey's label indicates a "blend of non-European Community honeys" or "blend of EC and non-EC honeys" this is very likely the case. China is the main source of honey imported to the EU, followed by Ukraine. (This may change, as new EU labelling rules require each source country and its share be indicated.)

Fraud far afield

As in many other domains, China is the world's leading producer and exporter of honey. But such statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, as it were. The most common way of adulterating honey is to add sugar syrup, which is much cheaper and not easily detected. Either jars are simply not checked - inspection during the production process or on importation is exceptional - or it just goes undetected. Some types of sugar can only be spotted using expensive technology such as nuclear magnetic resonance.

A 2016 article in the American Bee Journal, "A Study of the Causes of Falling Honey Prices in the International Market", makes a compelling case that only adulteration with sugar can explain the recent growth in exports by China, India and even Ukraine. In these countries - as indeed elsewhere - domestic demand has not dropped (which would have released volume for the export market). Nor has hive productivity increased (on the contrary, bees are plagued with increasingly acute health and environmental problems). Lastly, the number of hives has only slightly increased because of the lack of attractive profit margins and extensive training of new beekeepers.

Another form of fraud involves "laundering" honey by concealing its true origin. Countries such as Vietnam and Thailand export more honey than they could realistically produce. The difference is made up with Chinese exports, and the resulting blend is shipped to the United States. China has been targeted by an anti-dumping duty since the early 2000s, but labelling it as coming from the stop-over country gets around that obstacle. Other circumvention schemes include fake shipper bonds and under-evaluation of entries. It is estimated that in 2015 about one-third of the US honey supply came from China.

Pixabay, FAL

A third type of malpractice hinges on non-compliance with health and safety regulations. Honey may contain pesticides or antibiotics that are either prohibited or exceed limits. Hives can be treated with antibiotics (to combat American foulbrood, a disease caused by a spore-borne bacteria), but the drugs may also accumulate in their surroundings. The idea of unwittingly consuming antibiotics along with one's honey is particularly shocking given that it naturally contains defensins, small proteins that help to kill microbes.

The presence of pesticides in honey results from beekeepers treating their hives or similar products used in farming. Whatever the source, most honey contains a few micro- or nano-grams of such chemicals. Japan has recently warned it will stop importing New Zealand honey because it detected glyphosate, a weed killer used in kiwifruit orchards. While the pesticide residues sometimes found in honey are not a risk for our health, some substances, in particular neo-nicotinoids, are deadly for bees. Experimental evidence shows that while neo-nicotinoids don't kill bees outright, they can cause them to become disoriented and prevent them from finding their way back to the hive. In general, pesticides contribute, to a degree as yet difficult to determine precisely, to colony collapse disorder. Many factors play a part in this phenomenon, which has wreaked havoc in bee colonies around the world over the past 20 years.

Much as with other types of fraud, trade is distorted because producers and regions marketing substandard goods are passing them off as decent honey. Adulterated produce costs less, so producers and regions offering high-quality goods must compete at prices that deny them adequate margins and reduce their market share. Consumers also lose out. The medicinal and nutritional value of honey is lost when adulterated with corn or cane sugar, or soiled with chemicals.

Home is where the honey is

You may have gathered by now that I do not recommend buying Chinese honey. This is not to say that there is no good quality produce there, but we would need to know where to find it. The same goes for budget spreadable honey, as its true source is open to speculation.

At the top end of the price range there is New Zealand's sought-after Manuka honey. This is a monofloral honey (predominantly from the nectar of one plant species) derived from the Manuka tree, native to southeast Australia and New Zealand. It boasts exceptional antiseptic and antibacterial properties. Due to the honey's high price, New Zealand is second only to China for the value (as opposed to volume) of its honey exports. But retailing at almost 100 euros a kilogram, the precious honey attracts swarms of smugglers - five times more of (purportedly) Manuka honey is sold worldwide than is actually produced in New Zealand. As a general rule, if you want to buy premium goods from outside your country it's wisest to go to a specialist retailer selling tested, selected produce.

For humbler, less exotic varieties, I would suggest honey sourced locally, which makes a difference in two ways. First, it corresponds to a particular ecosystem - specific plants and flowers as well as agricultural practices that have a significant impact on the flavour and contents of honey. Of course, if you live in an area with intensive farming and pesticide use, you have to be cautious. Do not hesitate to contact directly a local beekeeper and ask about their practices. That's the second difference: getting direct information will tell you far more than a label that simply says English or French honey.

If you're concerned about pesticide and antibiotic residues, you should opt for honey that is certified as organic. If you are concerned about the China contents in your "Born in the USA" honey, there's a labelling program called the True Source Honey that can help you feel confident that the honey you purchase is the real thing.
François Lévêque is author of "Les Entreprises hyperpuissantes Géants et Titans, la fin du modèle global?", Odile Jacob, April 2021.

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We hear many tales about bees and honey. Even economists may base their theories on fantasy hives. Dieticians can do the same when promoting the imaginary health benefits of honey, and then there's the honey itself.

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The 2021 World Food Prize recognizes that fish are key for reducing hunger and malnutrition

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The 2021 World Food Prize recognizes that fish are key for reducing hunger and malnutrition

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Fish and other aquatic foods are integral to diets for more than 1 billion people worldwide. Most of these people live in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, close to rivers, lakes or the sea.

In these regions, foods like fresh and dried fish are central to local cuisines, and are often cheaper or more available than alternatives like eggs, dairy products and fruit. These " aquatic superfoods " pack an outsized punch as rich sources of micronutrients that are essential to human health and cognitive development.

Nonetheless, aquatic foods are often on the margins of mainstream agricultural research, nutrition policies and development strategies. Traditionally, global development thinkers have focused on staple crops and livestock as solutions to hunger.

On May 11, 2021, the World Food Prize Foundation announced that its 2021 laureate is Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted, a nutrition scientist who in my view has done more than anyone to draw attention to the essential but often overlooked role of aquatic foods in sustainable healthy diets. This US$250,000 prize is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture. It was established by Norman Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in global agriculture.

This year's award recognizes Thilsted's four decades of work to improve nutrition and health for millions of malnourished children and their mothers in Asia and Africa. As an aquaculture researcher who works closely with Thilsted, I believe this award spotlights the need to prioritize fish and aquatic foods in nutrition policies and actions, nationally and globally.

A life aquatic

Shakuntala Thilsted was born in Trinidad and Tobago, where she started her pathbreaking career as the only woman employed in the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and Fisheries. After moving to Denmark, she completed a Ph.D. at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, where she later went on to lead the Department of Animal Physiology.

Moving to Bangladesh in the late 1980s, Thilsted worked at the icddr,b, an institute formerly known as the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, which treated more than 6,000 malnourished children annually. As a young mother of two children, she was instinctively concerned about child health and nutrition and began investigating measures to prevent malnutrition using locally available and culturally acceptable foods.

Extensive time in the field designing and implementing a nutrition rehabilitation program allowed Thilsted to understand what foods people were eating and how. Listening to women talk about the importance of eating small fish for good health and eyesight piqued her interest in their nutritional value. This insight provided the catalyst for the next three decades of her research career.

On returning to Denmark, Thilsted began teaching graduate students at the University of Copenhagen to analyze micronutrients in fish from Bangladesh. This research revealed that many species of small fish are rich in nutrients that are important for human health.

One fish in particular, mola ( Amblypharyngodon mola), was found to contain extremely high levels of vitamin A, which is important for vision, the immune system and reproduction. Armed with this growing body of evidence, Thilsted set out to increase consumption of small fish, especially for mothers and children.

Finn Thilsted, CC BY-ND

Scaling up innovations

Aquatic foods are particularly important from conception to a child's second birthday. Not consuming enough micronutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin B12 increases the risk of illness, maternal and infant mortality, stunting and poor cognitive performance. Undernutrition accounts for up to 45% of all preventable child deaths.

In 2010, Thilsted joined the international research institute WorldFish. She returned to Bangladesh to work at scaling up " nutrition-sensitive approaches " to fish production, building on insights from her earlier research.

Her previous work showed that small fish like mola grow well in farm ponds alongside larger fish such as carp. Simple changes to the way small fish were harvested from ponds, such as using different types of fishing net, increased women's role in their production. Raising small fish in this way proved be a highly cost-effective way of reducing the burden of malnutrition.

Thilsted also began investigating ways to deliver micronutrients to mothers and children using fish-based products such as powders, chutneys and wafers as a culturally appropriate way to enhance their diets. WorldFish has promoted these innovations widely to countries including Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

Flo Lim/WorldFish, CC BY-ND

From research to policy

Thilsted has worked tirelessly to translate key insights from her research into public policy. This has included partnering closely with governments, such as the State Government of Odisha, India, which recently began including dried fish in food rations that it provides to vulnerable groups.

She also has advised an array of high-profile international organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and UNICEF. Her efforts have raised awareness of the value of aquatic foods in healthy food systems and fostered broader commitments to supporting this transformative role.

Thilsted has lived for many years in the countries where she seeks to create positive change. She is passionate about spending time in the field, observing carefully and asking the right questions.

This spirit of inquiry and extensive hands-on experience, combined with high standards of academic rigor, have given rise to many of her most important insights. For example, she found that wild capture fisheries and fish farming can both make highly complementary contributions to food and nutrition security.

As I have seen firsthand, Thilsted also has a unique ability to connect with people irrespective of their social status, from women farmers in rural Bangladesh to high officials at the United Nations. Generations of young scientists, myself included, have flourished under her mentorship and have been inspired by her remarkable vision, persistence, generosity and commitment to nourishing people and the planet.

[ Get our best science, health and technology stories. Sign up for The Conversation's science newsletter.]

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The 2021 World Food Prize recognizes that fish are key for reducing hunger and malnutrition

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Fish and other aquatic foods are integral to diets for more than 1 billion people worldwide. Most of these people live in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, close to rivers, lakes or the sea.

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The future of agriculture: why unis must prepare students to secure both our food and our planet

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The future of agriculture: why unis must prepare students to secure both our food and our planet

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Agriculture will soon be worth A$100 billion a year to Australia. The industry employs more than 250,000 people, stewards 80% of our land area and drives world-class agribusiness and food sectors. In an uncertain employment market, every new agriculture graduate has a choice of six job opportunities.

Read more: Don't panic: Australia has truly excellent food security

Agriculture today is fast-paced, global, diverse, reliant on high-end scientific discovery and increasingly responsive to consumers' concerns about provenance, ethics and health. Despite all this, agriculture still fails to grip the imagination of many of our brightest students.

In Australia about 300 to 400 students graduate with some form of agriculture degree each year. With 17 universities offering significant agriculture studies, this would amount to only 23 students per university each year. And the numbers are declining.

As a growth sector with many jobs on offer, why does it lack appeal for students? Do we have the right model to attract the school leavers agriculture needs?

Part of the problem is social: agriculture doesn't attract much attention apart from when Australia is on fire, covered in dust, flooded by water or when crops are dying of thirst. Parents and students associate agriculture with rural parched landscapes and struggling farmers, not high-technology science and genetics to produce the best meat or crops.

Read more: Technology is changing the face of northern Australian cattle farming

What do students need to know?

The world of agriculture may start in a rural town far from Sydney Harbour, but it ends up in the commodity markets of London, Paris and New York and underpins some of the world's most successful companies. And it does this with the help of some of our most innovative scientists.

To attract the best school leavers, it is vital that what we offer students is as exciting, diverse and challenging as the sector is becoming. To borrow a federal government term, the job-ready (agriculture) graduate of tomorrow needs to experience and understand best-practice regional farming systems. This is agriculture that's in sync with a diverse landscape and resilient to climate change.

Read more: New study: changes in climate since 2000 have cut Australian farm profits 22%

Students' knowledge needs to be across the many ways to practise agriculture. These range from organic and regenerative agricultural practices, focused on replicating natural processes, through to technology-driven precision farming and the emerging trend of using locally sourced inputs in circular farming systems.

The days of simply shearing and shipping are over. The importance of provenance now goes right through the supply chain - we need to be able to trace food from paddock to plate.

Graduates will also need strong statistical and experimental design skills to manage the science and economics of agriculture. Since the emergence of precision agriculture the quantitative skills graduates need have been totally transformed. They'll have to manage big data sets to make informed decisions and optimise farm production.

The curriculum has had to expand beyond its historical focus on experimental design to include teaching spatial and temporal data combined with ecological statistics. Farmers want data in real time and mapped across their farm to optimise management and make spatially mapped yield predictions.

A rising awareness of ethics

The impact of producing food is under increasing scrutiny, too, exemplified by recent films Kiss the Ground and David Attenborough's A Life on Our Planet.

Consumers are demanding more of food producers. They are represented by groups concerned with better health and nutrition, more diverse diets, or advocates for differing ethical opinions.

The current student cohort is also the most socially aware we have had in decades. The new agriculture curriculum must give them the tools to address these diverse agendas.

Read more: Australia's farmers want more climate action - and they're starting in their own (huge) backyards

The rise of digital agriculture will further increase use of technology and data for decision-making along the entire supply chain from farm to consumer. Graduates must be aware of how digital technologies can be used to decommoditise - presenting products as unique that are strongly linked to priorities such as sustainability - and add value to farm outputs. Complex value-added products will allow producers to take advantage of rapidly expanding world markets, particularly on our doorstep in Asia.

Farmers continue to strive to protect the land. This is being recognised with calls for payments for ecosystem services that support biodiversity.

Future graduates will be armed with greater understanding of what makes a resilient landscape. They will be able to draw on scientific evidence to support on-farm management decisions and ensure their ecosystem service payments. They will be able to tailor land-management strategies to each farm.

Read more: Climate explained: regenerative farming can help grow food with less impact

Wanted: a visionary curriculum

A renewed agriculture curriculum will open up tremendous opportunities for students. Data science, bioinformatics and genetics now form the basis of much of the activity in agriculture. This is dramatically extending the skill set of graduates.

While animal husbandry and crop cultivation remain central to our sector, the ag students of the future must strive to be the best geneticists, pathologists and ecologists. Sometimes all rolled into one.

A visionary new curriculum must also include a focus on entrepreneurship and market prospecting - leading to innovative start-ups - and ensure graduates have a global outlook.

They should be able to build agribusinesses that are responsive to the increasing risks, such as climate change, and agile enough to respond to volatility or to restructure to take advantage of new markets. Entrepreneurial skills will be needed too, to meet consumers' expectations.

Universities must continue to listen and work with industry and consumers and be responsive to global trends and concerns. Agriculture will remain a growth industry. Careful management and investment in preparing students for the future of agriculture will ensure they can be tomorrow's leaders of positive change and opportunity for the planet.

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The future of agriculture: why unis must prepare students to secure both our food and our planet

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Agriculture will soon be worth A$100 billion a year to Australia. The industry employs more than 250,000 people, stewards 80% of our land area and drives world-class agribusiness and food sectors. In an uncertain employment market, every new agriculture graduate has a choice of six job opportunities.

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Lessons on how to effectively tackle insect invasions

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Lessons on how to effectively tackle insect invasions

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Article

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Flying desert locust. Holger Kirk/Shutterstock

Kenyan food production and grazing land is under threat from a huge desert locust invasion. The insects are currently in two counties in northern Kenya and are now spreading to other Kenyan regions including Meru, Laikipia, and Rift Valley. The government has yet to quantify losses but past attacks have caused harvest losses of up to 70%.

Desert locusts are considered to be the most dangerous of all migratory pests because they can eventually develop wings and form a cohesive swarm which can cross continents and seas. They have the ability to devour crops from entire farm fields in a single morning. Studies show that large swarms form because of factors including changes to the environment, population structure and behaviour.

These desert locusts migrated from Yemen - a traditional breeding area - through Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia. The region has had more rainfall than usual which can could have led to this situation. After periods of drought, when vegetation flushes occur in major desert locust breeding areas, rapid population build ups and competition for food can lead to a swarm developing.

To fight these voracious pests, the government of Kenya is using chemical pesticides, often the usual immediate response of African governments to these outbreaks. This was the approach used to curb the spread of the invasive fall armyworm in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana, for instance. But they don't work in the long run.

Pesticides are chemicals used to kill pests - from animal pests to weeds. Their use is growing in many countries in general, including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. In 2017, Nigeria alone spent over US$400 million on these chemicals.

While there are benefits of using pesticides - including directly reducing the incidence of the invading pests - the benefits are short-term: insects can quickly become resistant to them.

Pesticides are also bad for the environment and the health of consumers and farmers. Many European countries have banned some of them for those reasons. In 2017, a United Nations report showed that about 200,000 people, mostly from developing countries, die every year from pesticide poisoning.

Countries must therefore promote alternatives or look more carefully at how to prevent insect invasions in the first place.

Integrated pest management

There are alternatives to pesticides including integrated pest management. This is an approach that doesn't rule out the use of pesticides, but uses them as little as possible.

Integrated pest management also promotes the use of safer alternatives, like biocontrol, which uses natural enemies to control pests, biopesticides and cultural control practices, which modify the growing environment to reduce unwanted pests.

Biopesticides have been used to manage the invasive fall armyworm control locust, but they're not popular because they take time to kill the pest.

Countries also need to be proactive in dealing with potential invasions - reactive measures aren't enough. With warming temperatures in many parts of the continent, some insects will grow and mature faster, meaning more pest invasions. Sub-Saharan African countries will be greatly affected. Recent examples include the fall armyworm invasions that caused billions of dollars in losses on the continent while contributing to food insecurity for millions of farmers.

Governments must work to prevent insect invasions from happening in the first place.

Preventing invasions

It's possible for African countries to anticipate and prepare for invasions. They can tap into existing support tools to identify potential invasive pests. The Horizon Scanning Tool, for example, is a tool with which countries can generate a list of insect species that might invade from neighbouring countries - particularly important if they share similar climates or are linked by transport and trade routes. Because countries know about potential invaders ahead of time, they can prepare action plans to be rolled out when predicted invasions happen.

African countries must also strengthen their own pest surveillance efforts. Most African countries don't have good systems - such as border screening - in place to control the introduction of plants and plant products, which could have pests or diseases. Many governments also don't carry out routine pest surveillance.

Countries should also learn from others that have successfully tackled invasions. For instance, the US has invasive insect species task forces, councils, committees and advisory groups to provide expertise and guidance on how to prepare for and tackle insect invasions when they happen.

As with the fall armyworm, and through meetings organised by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, African countries were able to learn from countries like Brazil that have successfully tackled fall armyworm invasion. For instance, they learned how to accurately identify the pests and how to use the right biological control agents.

Finally, countries must have emergency funds at their disposal to support citizens who become food insecure because of the invading insects. In dealing with recent fall armyworm, this was sorely lacking.

By anticipating pest outbreaks and invasions and having multi-pronged and comprehensive efforts laid out, African countries can effectively deal with pest outbreaks and invasions. Key to this is being proactive, rather than reactive.

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Lessons on how to effectively tackle insect invasions

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Kenyan food production and grazing land is under threat from a huge desert locust invasion. The insects are currently in two counties in northern Kenya and are now spreading to other Kenyan regions including Meru, Laikipia, and Rift Valley. The government has yet to quantify losses but past attacks have caused harvest losses of up to 70%.

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Invasive species are Australia’s number-one extinction threat

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Invasive species are Australia’s number-one extinction threat

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This week many people across the world stopped and stared as extreme headlines announced that one eighth of the world's species - more than a million - are threatened with extinction.

According to the UN report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) which brought this situation to public attention, this startling number is a consequence of five direct causes: changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution; and invasion of alien species.

Read more: 'Revolutionary change' needed to stop unprecedented global extinction crisis

It's the last, invasive species, that threatens Australian animals and plants more than any other single factor.

Australia's number one threat

Australia has an estimated 600,000 species of flora and fauna. Of these, about 100 are known to have gone extinct in the last 200 years. Currently, more than 1,770 are listed as threatened or endangered.

While the IPBES report ranks invasive alien species as the fifth most significant cause of global decline, in Australia it is a very different story.

Australia has the highest rate of vertebrate mammal extinction in the world, and invasive species are our number one threat.

Cats and foxes have driven 22 native mammals to extinction across central Australia and a new wave of decline - largely from cats - is taking place across northern Australia. Research has estimated 270 more threatened and endangered vertebrates are being affected by invasive species.

Introduced vertebrates have also driven several bird species on Norfolk Island extinct.

The effects of invasive species are getting worse

Although Australia's stringent biosecurity measures have dramatically slowed the number of new invasive species arriving, those already here have continued to spread and their cumulative effect is growing.

Recent research highlights that 1,257 of Australia's threatened and endangered species are directly affected by 207 invasive plants, 57 animals and three pathogens.

These affect our unique biodiversity, as well as the clean water and oxygen we breath - not to mention our cultural values.

When it comes to biodiversity, Australia is globally quite distinct. More than 70% of our species (69% of mammals, 46% of birds and 93% of reptiles) are found nowhere else on earth. A loss to Australia is therefore a loss to the world.

Some of these are ancient species like the Wollemi Pine, may have inhabited Australia for up to 200 million years, well before the dinosaurs.

Read more: Wollemi pines are dinosaur trees

But invasive species are found in almost every part of Australia, from our rainforests, to our deserts, our farms, to our cities, our national parks and our rivers.

The cost to Australia

The cost of invasive species in Australia continue to grow with every new assessment.

The most recent estimates found the cost of controlling invasive species and economic losses to farmers in 2011-12 was A$13.6 billion. However this doesn't include harm to biodiversity and the essential role native species play in our ecosystems, which - based on the conclusions of the IPBES report - is likely to cost at least as much, and probably far more.

Rabbits, goats and camels prevent native desert plant community regeneration; rabbits alone impacting over 100 threatened species. Rye grass on its own costs cereal farmers A$93M a year.

Aquaculture diseases have affected oysters and cost the prawn industry $43M.

From island to savannah

Globally, invasive species have a disproportionately higher effect on offshore islands - and in Australia we have more than 8,000 of these. One of the most notable cases is the case of the yellow crazy ants, which killed 15,000,000 red land crabs on Christmas Island.

Read more: A tiny wasp could save Christmas Island's spectacular red crabs from crazy ants

Nor are our deserts immune. Most native vertebrate extinctions caused by cats have occurred in our dry inland deserts and savannas, while exotic buffel and gamba grass are creating permanent transformation through changing fire regimes.

Australia's forests, particularly rainforests, are also under siege on a number of fronts. The battle continues to contain Miconia weed in Australia - the same weed responsible for taking over 70% of Tahiti's native forests. Chytrid fungus, thought to be present in Australia since 1970, has caused the extinction of at least four frog species and dramatic decline of at least ten others in our sensitive rainforest ecosystems.

Myrtle rust is pushing already threatened native Australian Myrtaceae closer to extinction, notably Gossia gonoclada, and Rhodamnia angustifolia and changing species composition of rainforest understories, and Richmond birdwing butterfly numbers are under threat from an invasive flower known as the Dutchman's pipe.

Australia's rivers and lakes are also under increasing domination from invasive species. Some 90% of fish biomass in the Murray Darling Basin are European carp, and tilapia are invading many far north Queensland river systems pushing out native species .

Invasive alien species are not only a serious threat to biodiversity and the economy, but also to human health. The Aedes aegypti mosquito found in parts of Queensland is capable of spreading infectious disease such as dengue, zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.

And it's not just Queensland that is under threat from diseases spread by invasive mosquitoes, with many researchers and authorities planning for when, not if, the disease carrying Aedes albopictus establishes itself in cooler and southern parts of Australia.

Read more: Stowaway mozzies enter Australia from Asian holiday spots - and they're resistant to insecticides

What solutions do we have?

Despite this grim inventory, it's not all bad news. Australia actually has a long history of effectively managing invasive species.

Targeting viruses as options for controlling rabbits, carp and tilapia; we have successfully suppressed rabbit populations by 70% in this way for 50 years.

Weeds too are successful targets for weed biological control, with over a 65% success rate controlling more than 25 targets.

The IPBES report calls for "transformative action". Here too Australia is at the forefront, looking into the potential of gene-technologies to suppress pet hates such as cane toads.

Read more: We've cracked the cane toad genome, and that could help put the brakes on its invasion

Past and current invasive species programs have been supported by governments and industry. This has provided the type of investment we need for long-term solutions and effective policies.

Australia is better placed now, with effective biosecurity policies and strong biosecurity investment, than many countries. We will continue the battle against invasive species to stem biodiversity and ecosystem loss.

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Invasive species are Australia's number-one extinction threat

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This week many people across the world stopped and stared as extreme headlines announced that one eighth of the world's species - more than a million - are threatened with extinction.

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Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill

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Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill

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Article

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They're one of the most damaging environmental forces on Earth. They've colonised pretty much every place humans have set foot on the planet. Yet you might not even know they exist.

We're talking about alien species. Not little green extraterrestrials, but invasive plants and animals not native to an ecosystem and which become pests. They might be plants from South America, starfish from Africa, insects from Europe or birds from Asia.

These species can threaten the health of plants and animals, including humans. And they cause huge economic harm. Our research, recently published in the journal Nature, puts a figure on that damage. We found that globally, invasive species cost US$1.3 trillion (A$1.7 trillion) in money lost or spent between 1970 and 2017.

The cost is increasing exponentially over time. And troublingly, most of the cost relates to the damage and losses invasive species cause. Meanwhile, far cheaper control and prevention measures are often ignored.

Dinakarr, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

An expansive toll

Invasive species have been invading foreign territories for centuries. They hail from habitats as diverse as tropical forests, dry savannas, temperate lakes and cold oceans.

They arrived because we brought them - as pets, ornamental plants or as stowaways on our holidays or via commercial trade.

The problems they cause can be:

ecological, such as causing the extinction of native species

human health-related, such as causing allergies and spreading disease

economic, such as reducing crop yields or destroying human-built infrastructure.

In Australia, invasive species are one of our most serious environmental problems - and the biggest cause of extinctions.

Feral animals such as rabbits, goats, cattle, pigs and horses can degrade grazing areas and compact soil, damaging farm production. Feral rabbits take over the burrows of native animals, while feral cats and foxes hunt and kill native animals.

Read more: Invasive species are Australia's number-one extinction threat

Warren White

Introduced insects, such as yellow crazy ants on Christmas Island, pose a serious threat to a native species. Across Australia, feral honeybees compete with native animals for nectar, pollen and habitat.

Invasive fish compete with native species, disturb aquatic vegetation and introduce disease. Some, such as plague minnows, prey on the eggs and tadpoles of frogs and attack native fish.

Environmental weeds and invasive fungi and parasites also cause major damage.

Of course, the problem is global - and examples abound. In Africa's Lake Victoria, the huge, carnivorous Nile perch - introduced to boost fisheries - has wiped out more than 200 of the 300 known species of cichlid fish - prized by aquarium enthusiasts the world over.

And in the Florida Everglades, thousands of five metre-long Burmese pythons have gobbled up small, native mammals at alarming rates.

Read more: Invasive predators are eating the world's animals to extinction - and the worst is close to home

Shutterstock

Money talks

Despite the serious threat biological invasions pose, the problem receives little political, media or public attention.

Our research sought to reframe the problem of invasive species in terms of economic cost. But this was not an easy task.

The costs are diverse and not easily compared. Our analysis involved thousands of cost estimates, compiled and analysed over several years in our still-growing database. Economists and ecologists helped fine-tune the data.

The results were staggering. We discovered invasive species have cost the world US$1.3 trillion (A$1.7 trillion) lost or spent between 1970 and 2017. The cost largely involves damages and losses; the cost of preventing or controlling the invasions were ten to 100 times lower.

Clearly, getting on top of control and prevention would have helped avoid the massive damage bill.

Read more: Global agriculture study finds developing countries most threatened by invasive pest species

Average costs have been increasing exponentially over time - trebling each decade since 1970. For 2017 alone, the estimated cost of invasive species was more than US$163 billion. That's more than 20 times higher than the combined budgets of the World Health Organisation and the United Nations in the same year.

Perhaps more alarming, this massive cost is a conservative estimate and likely represents only the tip of the iceberg, for several reasons:

we analysed only the most robust available data; had we included all published data, the cost figure would have been 33 times higher for the estimate in 2017

some damage caused by invasive species cannot be measured in dollars, such as carbon uptake and the loss of ecosystem services such as pollination

most of the impacts have not been properly estimated

most countries have little to no relevant data.

Shutterstock

Prevention is better than cure

National regulations for dealing with invasive species are patently insufficient. And because alien species do not respect borders, the problem also requires a global approach.

International cooperation must include financial assistance for developing countries where invasions are expected to increase substantially in the coming decades, and where regulations and management are most lacking.

Proactive measures to prevent invasion must become a priority. As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. And this must happen early - if we miss the start of an invasion, control in many cases is impossible.

More and better research on the economic costs of biological invasions is essential. Our current knowledge is fragmented, hampering our understanding of patterns and trends, and our capacity to manage the problem efficiently.

We hope quantifying the economic impacts of invasive species will mean political leaders start to take notice. Certainly, confirmation of a A$1.7 trillion bill should be enough to get the ball rolling.

Read more: Worried about Earth's future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp

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Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion bill

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They're one of the most damaging environmental forces on Earth. They've colonised pretty much every place humans have set foot on the planet. Yet you might not even know they exist. We're talking about alien species. Not little green extraterrestrials, but invasive plants and animals not native to an ecosystem and which become pests.

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New bugs, found in Kenya, can help to control major maize pests

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New bugs, found in Kenya, can help to control major maize pests

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Article

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Insect pests, such as maize stemborers and fall armyworm, increasingly challenge food production around the world.

Huge demands for crops have meant agricultural systems have simplified and frequently focused on single crops. When fields are full of a single crop they can easily be found by their insect pests, as opposed to when the crop is mixed in with others. Because of this higher yield losses have more chance to occur.

Climate change - mostly increased temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns - and wild habitat reduction by farmers has added to this by increasing pest pressure and resurgence.

The rapid evolution of pest resistance to chemicals, an increasing organic food market and the negative effects of chemicals on the health of people and the environment, has increased the need to control insect pests biologically.

Biological control uses live organisms to kill or eat the pest insects. These organisms - called natural enemies or antagonists - are predators, parasites or micro-organisms which can bring disease and death.

Insect parasitoids are one form of biological control. These are insects which develop as parasites on other arthropods, mostly insects, causing their death or sterility. They can target each developmental stage of the insect: eggs, larvae or pupae. They've received increased attention because they are efficient, cheaper and offer a management strategy that safeguards human health and the environment.

Two species of these parasitoids have been discovered by us and our colleagues in Kenya. They have found to be efficient biological control agents against two major maize pests: the Cotesia typhae to control the maize stemborer, Sesamia nonagrioides, which has invaded France. And Cotesia icipe to control the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda, in Africa.

Sesamia nonagrioides is an African cereal stemborer that invaded Europe and the near and middle East about 100 000 years ago. It's become a major pest for maize and, due to global warming, it's spreading.

The other major maize pest is the fall armyworm. This invasive species, originally from tropical areas in the Americas, invaded sub-Saharan Africa in 2016. It has now spread to Asia and Australia and has the potential to soon spread in Europe. African countries have faced major maize shortages and billions of dollars worth of damage due to the devastation caused by the fall armyworm and the increased cost of pesticide applied.

There are other parasitoids that can kill these pests. But they are not always present in nature. Understanding the prevalence and effectiveness of these other parasitoids is important. We must ensure that the parasitoids that we will introduce won't interfere with non-target Lepidoptera species and other natural enemies present in nature that can already parasitise the targeted pest.

We hope that, within the next two to three years, the discovery of these new parasitoids will be an effective way to control these devastating insect pests.

Cotesia typhae

The French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) started conducting studies in Kenya with the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) to evaluate the diversity, abundance and distribution of stemborers and their natural enemies, particularly parasitoids, in wild habitats around cultivated grasses in East Africa.

After about ten years of study, a new species of parasitoid, Cotesia typhae, was discovered. It lays its eggs inside the Sesamia nonagrioides stemborer larvae which are then killed as the parasitoid feeds on them.

Dr. Robert Copeland, Biosystematics Unit, icipe [left] and Laure Kaiser, EGCE, CNRS, France [right]

About 100 000 years ago Sesamia nonagrioides from Africa invaded the Mediterranean zones of Europe and then France. The insect became a major pest as it didn't come from Africa with any of its natural enemies.

So far, chemical control is the only method that's been used to reduce infestations in France. But this is a strategy that can negatively affect the health of people and the environment, and so maize growers and professionals are in demand for an efficient biocontrol agent.

After having described this new parasitoid species, the next phase of the study will consist in developing biological control of Sesamia nonagrioides using this parasitoid, Cotesia typhae. We will first need to determine how to ensure it successfully parasitises the French population of the stemborer and to evaluate how introducing this new species might affect non-target stemborers.

Cotesia icipe

The second parasitoid, discovered by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya is Cotesia icipe. It was found to be an effective natural enemy of the Fall Armyworm in Africa.

Dr. Subramanian Sevgan, Plant health theme, icipe

The recent "invasion" of Fall Armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda, in Africa seriously limit maize yields by infesting the crop throughout its growth stages from, seedling to maturity. The use of chemical pesticides seems to be most common practice used to control the pest, but these can be harmful, particularly to the environment as they can affect non-targeted organisms, like bees.

Through extensive field surveys in East Africa, several indigenous parasitoids which attack the armyworm at its larval stage, were found. This included a new species of parasitoid named Cotesia icipe. It successfully parasitised 45% of Fall Armyworm.

Dr. Robert Copeland, Biosystematics Unit, icipe

The next phase will focus on developing biological control of the Fall Armyworm in East Africa using Cotesia icipe and other parasitoids.

These studies aim to propose a solution to the lack of full control methods against two major maize pests. It provides good biological control solutions which should fulfil environmental safety regulations while being efficient and economically sound.

We are now putting together feasibility studies for governments, on introducing these parasitoids into their new environments.

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New bugs, found in Kenya, can help to control major maize pests

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Insect pests, such as maize stemborers and fall armyworm, increasingly challenge food production around the world. Huge demands for crops have meant agricultural systems have simplified and frequently focused on single crops. When fields are full of a single crop they can easily be found by their insect pests, as opposed to when the crop is mixed in with others.

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Why it’s so critical to continuously monitor and manage plant diseases

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Why it’s so critical to continuously monitor and manage plant diseases

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Article

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Hands-on monitoring is key to fighting many plant diseases. Edwin Remsberg/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Most of us understand the critical importance of monitoring the spread of diseases. And it is as important for plant diseases as it is for humans.

Plant disease epidemics are often hidden from view, unlike human viral disease outbreaks. Yet food and forest production systems, as well as native environments around the world, are just as threatened by emerging epidemics. That is why the UN has made 2020 the International Year of Plant Health.

It is estimated that pests and pathogens destroy between 10% and 40% of food production globally.

There are ways to deal with this problem, starting with biosecurity and plant health management systems. But this is yet another system that's been put under tremendous pressure by the emergence of COVID-19. Under restrictions on human movement - necessary to curb the virus' spread - the field and laboratory work that are crucial for surveillance and management of plant diseases has been severely curtailed.

Research and specialist services delivered by universities, for example, have in many cases temporarily closed or are operating at minimal levels. Missing even a few months could mean missing a key moment in a pest's life cycle and a chance to intervene and slow its further spread. The pressure on government funding that is required to sustain these systems is also threatening to bring these programmes to a standstill.

Plant diseases require as much attention now as ever to ensure that food systems are in place in the next season. There are also serious implications for forestry and the environment more broadly.

Under threat

Plant health epidemics can be caused by viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes or insects. Many of these organisms originate in one part of the world and rapidly spread to threaten food crops or trees globally. They often jump from a host plant on which they do not cause significant epidemics, to a different plant that does not have resistance to them.

Global biosecurity systems are under pressure to deal with the scale of the problem. For example, trade in plants and plant parts is known to be a major pathway of spread of pests and pathogens. But even well-resourced systems in the US cannot cope with the inspection of billions of plants traded annually. The problem is bigger in developing economies, including many in Africa, because of a lack of capacity.

Biosecurity relies on four things: prevention (at port of entry); preparedness (early detection, diagnostics and control); response (to contain and eradicate or manage plant pests and diseases); and recovery (systems for regulating eradication, management or restoration).

Unfortunately, insect and fungal pests can spread naturally across borders. Once a pest is introduced into one country a whole continent's food, forestry and native systems could be threatened. An example is the fall armyworm, which was first reported in West Africa in 2016 and spread across the continent, reaching South Africa one year later.

SIMON MAINA/AFP via Getty Images

Estimates in 2017 put potential losses in maize production in Africa to this pest at between US$ 2.4-6.2 billion. Such production losses could lead to food insecurity in many African countries.

Read more: Alien animals and plants are on the rise in Africa, exacting a growing toll

Plant health crisis examples

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pests and pathogens threatening African countries already. Here are just three examples:

On a main food crop: Maize lethal necrosis disease is caused by the joint infection of more than one virus and can completely devastate a maize crop. The disease first emerged in Kenya in 2011; it has since spread to surrounding countries with devastating yield losses. It is critically important to track its spread, identify outbreaks and attempt to eradicate or restrict its movement. Identification requires highly specialised laboratory analysis to confirm the identity of the viruses.

In plantation forestry: The Sirex woodwasp is native to Europe, but has caused billions of US Dollars damage since it was introduced in New Zealand around 1900 and eventually around the world. A biological control programme that uses a parasitic nematode to sterilise the wasp is widely applied, and has saved the South African forestry industry hundreds of millions of Rand. This programme depends on thorough national monitoring of the wasp infestation levels and the timely release of the biological control nematode.

On native, urban and agricultural trees: The Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer is a tiny ambrosia beetle that introduces a fungal symbiont into trees on which its offspring will feed. The beetle originates from South East Asia, but is spreading around the world. In South Africa it has been recorded from more than a 100 different tree species, and fruit crops such as Avocado. It can kill some mature trees in a matter of months.

Tracking of spread, physical removal of infested trees and the development of biological control are all urgent needs and require specialist knowledge and laboratory support for identification. Monitoring also includes citizen science initiatives in urban areas, and requires researchers to travel to confirm new infestations.

All of this has been set back by restrictions on human movement designed to contain the spread of COVID-19. Researchers must now work out how to catch up, and plan for the coming years in which the virus is likely to continue being a global concern.

What should be done?

Firstly, an assessment is needed of the impact of the original COVID-19 responses on plant health biosecurity systems, so as to plan for coming months and years. We would argue that in future, existing biosecurity systems must remain in full operation. Field surveillance and management of potential biological threats to plant production systems and ecosystems cannot be relaxed or restricted. This can be done safely, in line with global guidelines around protection from the virus.

Secondly, it is critical to recognise that the future of food security is linked across borders. Weak biosecurity in one country threatens neighbouring countries and whole continents. It is important to review regulations and their implementation to secure food supply, industries and the environment. Countries also need strong research funding and capacity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why it's so critical to continuously monitor and manage plant diseases

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Most of us understand the critical importance of monitoring the spread of diseases. And it is as important for plant diseases as it is for humans. Plant disease epidemics are often hidden from view, unlike human viral disease outbreaks. Yet food and forest production systems, as well as native environments around the world, are just as threatened by emerging epidemics.