Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

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Patrick Binns

Miembro desde
Organización: Westbrook Associates LLC
País: Estados Unidos de América
I am working on:

Assessments of sustainable agriculture practices; supply chain innovations for improved food security; and public policy initiatives that advance agricultural productivity in balance with local and global ecosystems.

Este miembro contribuyó a:

    • Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Global Soil Partnership’s draft Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management.  I applaud the breadth of expertise and effort that has gone into its preparation.  The ITPS has produced a useful set of guiding principles to inform and encourage farmers, public policy makers and private stakeholders to restore and steward our planet’s soils.

      However, as the major objective of the VGSSM is “to promote and support the global adoption of sustainable soil practices”; I believe these Guidelines should be much more direct in advocating actionable practices appropriate to local conditions and circumstances that enable field-to-landscape scaled soil stewardship.  Although the draft VGSSM presents an extensive list of soil functions and processes; it fails to provide cohesive propositions and integrated practice examples that could guide decision making by farmers, input suppliers and public policy makers.

      More discussion is needed of the soil building benefits of diversified crop rotations that deliver organic carbon inputs; biological nitrogen fixation; weed management; root penetration of compacted soils; pest pressure disruption; and other supportive functions.  Attention should be given to advancing private sector and public policy initiatives that would develop local, regional and national capacities for producing varietal seeds; reduced tillage and direct seeding mechanical equipment; large volume organic composting; and supplying other farming system resources and technical support services.

      While beneficial soil microbes and fungi are briefly mentioned in the draft VGSSM; there should be much more discussion of the importance of establishing healthy soil biota through crop residue retention; inoculating seed and soil with beneficial microbial and fungal treatments; and measures that promote the production of Glomalin and other exudates that enrich soil tilth and structure.  The Guidelines should also draw attention to the value of increased research in the fields of beneficial soil biota and their symbiotic interrelationships that promote plant growth and improved resilience.  Global agricultural research efforts significantly focus on developing improved commodity crops; with extremely limited research underway to discover and leverage the biological dynamics of soil fertility and microfauna biodiversity.  This research imbalance must be corrected.

      The GSP aspires to promote soil management practices that contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals concerning food security, ecological balance and improved social and economic equity.  These important additional dimensions of beneficial outcomes of soil management would be advanced if the Guidelines acknowledged and recommended practices and implementation strategies that are particularly applicable to smallholder farmers; promote rural development; and advance reliance on sustainably sourced soil nutrients and other agronomic resources.

      The VGSSM should explicitly promote soil management actions that encourage formation of rural enterprises that supply sustainably sourced inputs or convert and recycle organic wastes into restorative soil amendments and nutrients.  It would also be useful to recognize and advocate innovative agricultural and land use policies that provide incentives to invest in improved soil management; or that regulate practices that damage or degrade soils or diminish fresh water availability and quality.

      The Guidelines should also more clearly describe and encourage practices and technologies that enable soil carbon and biochar sequestration to be implemented as high potential measures for reducing Greenhouse Gas levels (e.g. see Dr. Pete Smith’s recent paper in Global Change Biology, 2016).  As nations struggle to adapt to climate change and reduce their GHG emissions; it is critically important that the global community develop and implement agricultural practices that reduce emissions while increasing productivity and resiliency.  Sustainable soil management and organic carbon sequestration pathways should be included in national climate action plans.  The Guidelines should help increase public awareness of these cost effective GHG mitigation opportunities.

      I hope that my comments are useful to further strengthen and improve the utility and impact of the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management. 

      With best regards,

      Patrick Binns

      Westbrook Associates LLC

      Seattle, WA   USA

    • Dear FAO Moderator,
      The primary driver of sustainable development in Vietnam will be expanded higher education of young women and men focusing on the managerial and scientific skills needed to implement environmentally integrated private enterprise solutions to future challenges. It will be critically important to develop new generations of entreprenurial and technological leaders who will balance the pursuit of Return on Investment objectives with the imperative to restore and steward the nation's 'natural capital assets' of fertile agricultural land; fresh water resources; productive fisheries; and healthy ecosystem habitats that provide important environmental services to the common welfare.
       
      With a particular focus on enabling long term food security under impending climate change stresses; Vietnam would greatly benefit from an increased priority to develop and use biofertilizers and biopesticides that are produced by domestic suppliers. These environmentally benign, yet highly productive agricultural input technologies would support increased crop yields while reducing the costs and pollution associated with intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. There is mounting field evidence of the positive impacts of biofertilizers on a wide variety of crops and produce; and their potential to help Vietnam reduce its costs of importing synthetic inputs from foreign sources. The development of indigenous beneficial soil biota with plant growth promotion properties is well established in Vietnam and elsewhere throughout the world. What is urgently needed now is progressive and innovative private and public capital support to energize wide spread commercialization.
       
      There is also an urgent need to address the serious threats to fresh water fisheries in the Mekong River Basin. A significant portion of Vietnam's protein food sources are harvested from the Mekong River and downstream coastal areas. However, there are major hydroelectric dam projects now under construction in Laos and China and many more in the planning stages that could seriously impair the survival of hundreds of fish species that migrate and spawn along the length of the river and its tributaries. The technical capabilities to build fish ladders and other fish migration waterways that could support the wide variety of fish in the Mekong Basin are largely unknown at this time. There should be an international, multilateral agreement to avoid disrupting the ecological habitats and migration processes of the Mekong's rich fishery resources; and an immediate consideration of more appropriately scaled and sited hydropower dams that could operate in a more healthy co-existence and balance with fisheries and the livelihoods and food security they provide to Vietnam and the entire SE Asian region.

    • I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments and suggestions for improving the current draft of the Biofuels and Food Security report.  The team has done a good job of drawing attention to many of the critical issues and trade-offs that are involved with increased development of bioenergy resources.

      However, I believe that the draft report would be significantly improved by addressing the potential benefit and contribution that locally produced, smaller scale bioenergy resources could provide to enhance overall food production and achieve sustainable food security.  Although the report mentions “the potential … to supply meaningful quantities of bioenergy for local consumption without greatly taxing the world’s land use.” (p 42); there is little discussion of this critically important observation!  One of the most severe limitations to improving agricultural productivity in the Developing World is the lack of modern energy fuels and electric power that are needed for farm mechanization, irrigation, production of inputs, post harvest storage and delivering food to markets.

      There is a significant opportunity to increase smallholder farmer productivity through access to appropriate farming technologies and affordable biofuels that are produced in village-to-watershed scaled “biorefineries.”  The potential to increase crop yields per hectare through the judicious use of locally produced biofuels warrants discussion and endorsement in this report.  I am disappointed that the local production of biofuels to power farm and non-farm rural enterprises is often ignored in most assessments of the bioenergy versus food security question.

      When considering options for local production of biofuels, the most feasible near term technologies tend to rely on converting 1st generation biomass feedstocks (e.g. sugar cane, starch crops, oilseed or palm oil, etc.) into energy dense liquid fuels.  While it is true that these feedstocks are also used for food or fodder; ethanol and biodiesel conversion technologies are relatively mature and within reach of being economically viable.   What we urgently need is greater attention to improving the design and engineering of smaller capacity systems and the adoption of sustainable, appropriately scaled feedstock cultivation practices.  It is also critically important to recognize that most of these processes produce by-products (e.g. oilseed meals, bagasse, etc.) that have substantial value as livestock feed, organic compost fertilizer and other uses.   A strategy to build distributed, rural biorefineries could effectively supply farmers with both fuel and by-product agricultural inputs that could increase farm productivity.

      The report also ignores the bioenergy resources produced by anaerobic digestion or thermo-catalytic processes that convert livestock manure and organic wastes into biogas for use in process heat, mechanical power or electric power generation applications.   Rural biogas power generation and thermal energy value-added processing facilities would contribute to greater economic output and improved social services within rural communities.  These systems also produce valuable by-products in the form of organic fertilizers, livestock bedding materials and biochar soil amendments.  Organic composts and biochar can stimulate the ‘below ground biodiversity’ of beneficial microbes and fungi that are integral to soil fertility and promote plant growth and resiliency.  As with the local production of liquid biofuels, decentralized biogas facilities in rural areas would also provide farmers with economical access to energy services and valuable agricultural inputs.

      I encourage the authors to provide greater discussion in the report of the fundamental role of retained crop residues in reducing soil erosion, contributing to soil organic carbon sequestration and recycling organic nutrients for continued soil fertility.  Far too often proponents of 2nd generation biofuels argue that crop residues (e.g. corn stover, etc.) are essentially ‘waste’ resources that have limited utility in food production systems.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The beneficial use of crop residues to protect and nourish arable topsoils (as well as to feed livestock) must be noted and accounted for in any assessment of the availability and ‘best use’ of such biomass resources for 2nd generation biofuels production.    If we fail to focus on the need for long term stewardship of our soils, humanity will not be able to achieve sustainable food security.

      The authors have correctly emphasized that any assessment of the benefits and detriments of expanded production of biofuels must include consideration for how such development would impact humanity’s capability to achieve sustainable food security.  As this report notes, the production of all biomass resources, whether food or non-food, will require inputs of land, water and nutrients (and of course inputs of labor, capital and energy as well).  All of these inputs have competing uses; whether to produce food, feed and fiber; to convert to biofuels; or to recycle as organic nutrients and carbon to the agricultural or forest ecosystems from which they were sourced.  Even inedible cellulosic crop and forest residues, non-food crops and algae feedstocks must be considered within the context of finding optimum balances between the opportunity costs and benefits for these renewable, but still relatively limited photosynthetically generated resources.

      Finally, I applaud the report’s attention given to the issues of social equity and ethical treatment of the rural poor whose livelihoods and survival are dependent upon access to land, water and other productive resources.   Far too often the rights and needs of these important members of our society are overlooked and ignored in pursuit of grand visions of industrial development and wealth creation.  The report’s discussion of social responsibility and its recommendation for objective certification of equitable and sustainable development of biofuels is an important contribution to improving global attitudes, policies and practices with regards to bioenergy development.

      Patrick Binns

      Westbrook Associates LLC

      Seattle, WA   USA