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