# data[].attributes.headline
Power and Borders - Mali: Food Security Vulnerable Groups

# data[].attributes.subject
Power and Borders - Mali: Food Security Vulnerable Groups

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Everything about Mami exudes exhaustion. Her round brown eyes are pools of sadness, and her bulbous body throbs with pain.

"First, armed groups attacked nearby," she explains in a tired voice as we sit on plastic matting, five young children nestled close to their mother in Mali's fabled city in the sand Timbuktu.

"Then the rains came, and did the rest."

The worst rains in 50 years in northern Mali washed away their entire crop.

Those rains poured through the cracks in her mud home caused by an explosion an armed group set off.

The cracks are showing everywhere in a fragile land now doubly cursed by the extremes of conflict and climate change.

The increase in temperatures in the Sahel are projected to be 1.5 times higher than the global average, says the UN.

"It hasn't been on our radar screens," says Peter Maurer, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"We often look at arms and armed actors, and maybe at underdevelopment, but now we see that climate change is leading to conflicts among communities and this is a different kind of violence."

A gathering storm

Mali has a major UN peacekeeping mission as well as a multinational counterterrorism force to combat the rising threat of extremist groups across the Sahel linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State fighters.

Last year also reportedly saw the highest death toll from violence against civilians since the crisis of 2012 when Islamist groups occupied major cities in northern Mali including Timbuktu.

But behind this danger, there is another gathering storm.

The Sahel region - which includes Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania - comprises some of the world's poorest and most fragile states, and is regarded as the most vulnerable to climate change.

On a visit to northern Mali with the ICRC, it was startling to see how the consequences of climate change are woven through the fabric of lives in what has always been a harsh existence on the edge of the encroaching Sahara desert.

"The fragility of Mali stares you in the face," remarks Mr Maurer as we stand, surrounded by a vast crowd, in a cramped camp for families fleeing insecurity and hunger in communities across northern Mali.

"The whole attention of the international community is on high visibility conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, but the fragility here has lasted for decades."

Mali is now lurching between droughts and floods. They are both lasting longer and inflicting a huge cost on crops and livestock.

And that means farmers and nomadic herders, from different ethnic groups, are facing off over shrinking resources.

"There've always been small clashes between cattle herders and cultivators but water levels are decreasing and that's creating a lot of tension," explains Hammadoun Cisse, a herder who heads a reconciliation committee trying to mediate between communities.

And Islamist groups are also fuelling these fires by meddling in this combustible mix.

"They come in as protectors of communities and then try to impose their way of living on us," explains Mr Cisse.

"We don't accept this kind of Islamic culture with jihadi ideas so this creates another conflict."

Every story we heard in northern Mali was a tale of multiple threats, all terribly tangled.

A harsher existence - quantified

Temperatures across the Sahel have increased by nearly 1C since 1970, says the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The increase in temperatures in the Sahel are projected to be 1.5 times higher than the global average, says the UN.

Roughly 80% of the Sahel's farmland is affected by degradation, including soil erosion and deforestation, estimates the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN.

"We lost all our livestock in the drought in the 1970s and had to move to the city," Rabiatou Aguissa says as she crouches on a plastic stool in a dusty walled compound in Timbuktu.

A mother of eight children, she's also lost her husband.

"His little brother joined an armed group and he was so upset, he died of his trauma," she recounts as she readjusts the striking indigo cloth folded around her head.

Next to her, there's another reminder of a life in little pieces.

Thumb-sized packets of salt, onions, dried fish and tomatoes are assembled on a small metal tray, ready for sale on the roadside.

Two knitting needles poke out from the pile - another tool to try to make ends meet.

Animals died one after another

And in her narrow walled compound - and everywhere else we went - the gaggles of giggling children are another signal of what lies ahead.

Populations in the Sahel region are doubling every 20 years, every generation more fragile than the last.

The World Bank says this region is falling behind every other in the global battle against poverty.

We meet 17-year-old Younoussa at the Centre for Transit and Reorientation in Gao, a rehabilitation home for young boys who had been forcibly recruited into armed groups.

Nearly 50 young men, aged 13 to 17, are tucking into breakfast when we arrive.

Younoussa tells us he became a shepherd at the age of 13 but many young boys start tending the herds as early as nine or 10. Like all too many young Malians, he's never been to school, only Koranic classes.

He tells us insecurity forced his family to flee their home but he stayed behind to watch over their livestock.

"But there was no rain, and nothing for the animals to eat. They died, one after the other.

"To survive, I had no other choice but to join a group with guns," he tells us.

He details how he earned the equivalent of $3(£2.33) a month, working in the kitchen and manning checkpoints.

Most boys don't like to admit whether or not they fought.

"I don't want to be with an armed group," Younoussa says, his face visibly saddening. "I want to be with my family again and get a job."

Mali's dangerous mix can seem overpowering, but there are glimmers of hope.

With almost all Malians living off the land, that's where the fight back has to start.

"Farmers are not alone," says Sossou Geraud Houndonougho, who works on water and sanitation for the ICRC in the city of Mopti.

"We have to teach them not to just plant their own garden for their own family, but to work together to plant a forest for their community, for their future," he explains.

And from the mediator Mr Cisse, a plea for dialogue: "We should sit down and talk and see what we can do, not with arms but discussion, to narrow the gaps between us."

We see promising examples, at a local level, which show us peace is possible and there's a lot of energy to respond to climate change," assesses the ICRC's Mr Maurer. "But it's clear to me they won't cope unless there is solid support from the international community which isn't just through a security lens."

And the clear message from Mali is time is running out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The battle on the frontline of climate change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Everything about Mami exudes exhaustion. Her round brown eyes are pools of sadness, and her bulbous body throbs with pain. "First, armed groups attacked nearby," she explains in a tired voice as we sit on plastic matting, five young children nestled close to their mother in Mali's fabled city in the sand Timbuktu.

# data[].attributes.headline
ELSS - Water Cycle as a System: Food Production

# data[].attributes.subject
ELSS - Water Cycle as a System: Food Production

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Matt Barnard's favourite memory of the recent Christmas holiday period was receiving a thank you letter from the 10-year-old daughter of a friend who'd been over for a meal. "I'm stunned you got me to like kale. I never knew I could like salad," she wrote.

The products had come directly from Mr Barnard's South San Francisco farm.

It's a nice anecdote. Of course, food you've grown yourself tends to be fresher and taste nicer than the same stuff from the supermarket.

But Mr Barnard's ambitions are a lot bigger than providing friends and their children with nice lunches. He is the chief executive of Plenty, a high-tech, agricultural start-up that he co-founded six years ago.

He may only have two farms currently, with a third due to open later this year, but they are test pads for a much more ambitious global expansion plan. "Plant science artificial intelligence training centres" is how he describes them.

Pole planting

The crops are grown upwards on vertical poles, enabling them to produce higher yields on much smaller areas of ground, and the farms are indoors, meaning the weather has no impact. LED lights provide the equivalent of sunshine.

The plants don't even need soil, instead they are fed by nutrient-rich water and there's no need for pesticides because there are no pests in this carefully controlled environment.

For Mr Barnard, farming is a return to the family business. He grew up on an orchard but says he never expected to work in the industry because he "didn't enjoy growing up without any control over my livelihood".

On his farms it's now all about control.

The amount of water, ratio of minerals, humidity levels and different types and durations of LED light are all being varied and tested.

"By giving plants different versions of perfect environments, we have the ability to influence the way they taste," he says.

'Bowling balls'

The farms' small size means they can also be close to, or even within, big cities, dramatically reducing the distance produce needs to travel before it is eaten.

He believes that fresh produce "gets a bad rap" because most fruit and veg crops are chosen for their durability, rather than their flavour.

"Look at the iceberg lettuce. It's got no flavour and no nutrition, but it's the largest cash crop in the US because it's like a bowling ball making it resilient in the field and truck. That's what the supply chain dictates," he says.

Local farms like his are able to grow more delicate and varied types of produce because they don't need to be as robust.

"Working to produce food for people not trucks," is how Mr Barnard puts it.

High energy

He is optimistic that people will automatically choose to eat more veg if it tastes better.

Such farms could also be part of the solution to obesity and to feeding a growing global population when we're running out of space to grow crops economically, he believes.

As futuristic as it sounds, this kind of farming isn't new. There are similar companies elsewhere such as Jones Food Company in North Lincolnshire, Intelligent Growth Solutions in Scotland and the Growing Underground project in London. Internationally there are rivals such as Aerofarms in the US.

Plenty of such farms have also failed, with critics saying the high cost of the energy required to run them stops them being commercially viable.

Mr Barnard says it's an industry that is easy to enter with off-the-shelf systems, but argues that Plenty's use of machine learning and data is what makes it different.

He says external changes, including a sharp drop in the cost of LED lighting, has also helped make it viable, with the farms more reliant on light than heat.

Reconnecting

It's easy to be sceptical, but he's been backed by some serious investors, raising $200m (£154m) from some big names, including Japanese media giant SoftBank, Alphabet's Eric Schmidt and Amazon boss Jeff Bezos in 2017.

Prof Tim Benton, an expert in food systems from the University of Leeds, agrees there is a role for companies like Plenty, but says they are unlikely to replace conventional horticulture.

"On average, if you divide global agricultural land by the number of people on the planet, each person uses a football pitch of land to crop the food we eat. Even if vertical farming stacks space high, it would be difficult to replicate even a big chunk of this space within cities. So, whilst part of the solution, it is not THE solution," he says.

But like Mr Barnard, Prof Benton agrees vertical farming is one way to reconnect people with food, "converting it from a commodity that is plastic wrapped, cheap and 'waste-able', into something real, something local, something nurtured during production".

Plenty's farms currently grow leafy green plants including kale, sweet lettuces and salad leaves, which require less energy compared to more substantial crops such as potatoes.

The crops are distributed via online retailers, at special events and given to a small number of consumers to trial.

Shelf life

Mr Barnard says Plenty only sells its produce when it can do so at "median organic pricing or better".

Of course, that is still much higher than rival non-organic produce, but Mr Barnard denies that his farms are simply producing tasty food for the middle class.

Lab tests have shown the produce has a longer shelf life and he says that means people will waste less, which makes it more affordable.

"Our mission is pretty ambitious. We've shown that it is possible at large scale relative to efficiency. Now we have to go about the hard work of building a business."

That's why he's here at Davos to spread the word and secure further investment for his plan.

Mr Barnard expects the business to accelerate after 2020, with expansion "likely to be outside the US".

In the end, he will judge his success on whether he manages to "meaningfully change how people think about fresh produce" as something enjoyable to eat.

So has he persuaded his own children, aged 11 and 13, to take an interest in veg?

"More and more so. Both are eating more over time," he says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The man who thinks he can make us love kale

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Matt Barnard's favourite memory of the recent Christmas holiday period was receiving a thank you letter from the 10-year-old daughter of a friend who'd been over for a meal. "I'm stunned you got me to like kale. I never knew I could like salad," she wrote.

# data[].attributes.body
The way we eat is killing us – and the planet | Felicity Lawrence | Opinion | The Guardian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The way we eat is killing us - and the planet | Felicity Lawrence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The global food system is causing an ecological and health catastrophe, says Guardian special correspondent Felicity Lawrence

# data[].attributes.body
World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of biodiversity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of biodiversity

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/17/rick-stein-new-eatery-falmouth

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/19/brexit-bishy-road-bishopthorpe-york-high-streets-survive-shopkeepers

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/apr/21/feast-from-east-britain-surfing-korean-culture-wave

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/bristol-vegan-capital-world-chefs-pencil-online-searches-uk-australia-a8732796.html

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-40722965