Critical ZonesFood and Agriculture Perspectives

Sonny Ramaswamy

Interstellar, The Movie

• "The world doesn’t need any more engineers. We didn’t run out of planes and television sets… we ran out of food.”

• Starring: Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway

Kepler Habitable Zone Mission

http://tinyurl.com/qgj8tla

Nutritional SecurityAn Existential Threat

Malthusian Necessities of Life

Food, Shelter, Fiber, Fuel > 9 billion

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PopulationClimate

Health

Extreme Weather

Poverty

Hunger

Changing Incomes & Diet

PipelineAnti-ScienceFunding

Anti-Intellectualism

Land & Water ResourcesPerfect Storm

Path Forward• Transformative discoveries

– Critical Zones• 21st Century Extension • Farming systems• Education• Policies, regulation, marketing• Human dimensions• Communications

Critical Zones• Ecosystem in which complex

interactions between rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms affect availability of life sustaining resources

• Connect high-priority research Earth Sciences with hydrology, biology, and oceanography

– Terrestrial carbon cycle and climate change

– Microbial interactions in mineral weathering, soil formation, and mobilization of nutrients and toxins http://tinyurl.com/q9u3rvb

• Benefits of ecosystem services• Impacts on critical zone

• From above: Agriculture• From below: Extractive industries, e.g., fracking

• Need to identify critical thresholds of critical zone so that we sustainably manage our activities

• Conservation tillage approaches: advantages/disadvantages• NIFA’s approach to critical zones: Systems approach,

including biophysical, human, social, and economic perspectives

Food and Agriculture Considerations

NIFA’s Focus• Plant-biotic interactions and rhizosphere/root-soil microbiome • Water and nitrogen use efficiency; drought tolerance

• Improve photosynthesis• Alternative photosynthetic pathways adapted to drier environments• Improve nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiency• Salt tolerance• Integrated Crop, Soil, and Pest Management• Feed use efficiency

• Nutrient cycling• Belowground soil water interface

• Inorganic particle surface interactions with water and air• Release of organic materials• Impacts of colloidal movement and dissolved interfaces

• Critical nutrient loading thresholds– Conundrum: Carbon sequestration accompanied by nitrogen

movement, but we want nitrogen to be transported to the plant

– N overloaded soils: How to return soil conditions to desirable state

• How feasible?– Economics, regulation, and culture regulate human behavior

• Need data to understand how these drive human behavior– Need to incentivize different land management practices

• Reward quality versus yield • If quality rewarded, farmers may be motivated to properly manage their lands

and consequently reduce their nutrient loadings• May require changing how agriculture is marketed

– Compensate farmers/land managers for providing broader ecosystem services—but, expensive

Concluding Remarks

• NIFA supports systems approaches to effectively protect and manage critical zones

• Driver is sustainability• Focused on photosynthesis, nitrogen and water use

efficiency, salt and drought tolerance, management • Help develop market-based solutions, particularly in

regards to regulations, economics, and cultural aspects that drive human behavior

• Develop path forward to ensure critical zone is protected

Opportunities: Big DataOpen Data is a powerful, evidence-based tool for long-term sustainable development by improving economic opportunities for farmers and health of consumers.

Open access to research, meta-analysis, and open publication of data are vital resources for nutritional security.

Iain Chalmers: Cochrane Collaboration

http://www.cochrane.org

Transparent, Collaborative, Participatory

Archibald Cochrane

Big Data: Challenges• Ownership

– Open Ag Technology Systems

• Decision Support Tools– Open Ag Toolkit – NIFA funded

– FarmBot

• Cost• Bandwith• Quality• Curation• Disambiguation• Connectivity • Cybersecurity• Storage

Courtesy: Dennis Buckmaster; https://engineering.purdue.edu/oatsgroup/

Opportunities

• Agriculture and Food Research Initiative

• Nexus of Food, Water, and Energy

• Interagency