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Comments from the SCAR Working Group on the
2nd Foresight Report
Conference on Sustainable Development - a
challenge for Europe research Session 10
Foresight and public goods - A new framing for
agricultural research
Uno Svedin The Swedish Research Council Formas
Wolfgang Ritter Federal Ministry of Food,
Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Germany
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• Structure seven issues are highlighted
• The complexity of the new challenges
• The underestimation of the rate of climate
  change
• The vulnerabilty of the food system
• The sustainable development challenge of
  agriculture and food systems
• The research and innovation needs
• The adequacy of the Agricultural Knowledge
  System
• The governance design
• Key messages

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1. The complexity of the new challenges

• many interconnections between agricultural
  systems and other systems influencing each
  other
• a number of resource pressures building up
  affecting food security in the North and the
  South
• urgent need for more resilient and sustainable
  food systems to reduce their vulnerability to
  expected shocks
• a better understanding of the functioning of
  (agro-) ecosystems and their criticality are
  urgent research tasks

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2. The underestimation of the rate of climate
change

• GHG emission accelerating three times faster
  then expected by IPCC4

• emission must be cut quickly to prevent the
  crossing of critical thresholds that could lead
  to a runaway climate change
• agriculture and land use change are significant
  contributors to GHG emissions and agriculture is
  one of the first sectors to be affected
• essential to reduce the agricultural
  contribution to climate change and start
  adapting to unaviodable warming already in the
  pipeline

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3. The vulnerabilty of the food system

• not sufficient to look at the various facets of
  food security (availability, access and
  utilization) alone
• food security is also endangered by an
  increasing number of environmental and economic
  constraints
• vulnerability will become a key challenge to the
  policy agenda in coming years
• vulnerability research has to take a systems
  perspective to pay full attention to the
  complexity of the underlying processes
• key question how to reduce vulnerability of
  social, economic and ecological systems?

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4. The sustainable development challenge of
agriculture and food systems

• steady decline of natural resource base is
  undermining ecosystem services and the
  resilience of agro-ecosystems
• our food base is extremely narrow with only 4
  crops providing about 60 of our food making
  food systems extremely vulnerable to shocks
• world food supply is also heavily dependent on
  fossil fuel at all stages, from planting,
  fertilizing, harvesting through to processing
  retailing
• urgent need for research to deliver more
  resilient and sustainable food and farming
  systems
• public research has to take a wider perspective
  than market-oriented private research

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5. The research and innovation needs

• importance or research activities and innovation
  in the domain of public goods
• more research needed into the development of
  food systems that are feasible, sustainable and
  profitable
• size of the research challenge requires the
  involvement of both, public and private sectors
  including public-private partnerships
• necessary productivity increases and efficiency
  gains badly require technological breakthroughs
  to produce more with less input

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6. The adequacy of the Agricultural Knowledge
System (AKS)

• Are AKS in Europe adequately equipped and
  prepared to deal effectively with these highly
  dynamic changes that demand solutions now?
• the new challenges, the speed of change and the
  complexity of systems require to widen the field
  of competences
• important for AKS to focus more on
  interrelations and the understanding of
  complexity as well the criticality of systems
• therefore the institutional embedding of the AKS
  has to become much broader to make them more
  responsive in providing integrated answers to
  societal and hence political concerns

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7. The governance design

• the complexity of the inter-related issues seems
  to increase the vulnerability of food systems
  as well as political and economic systems
• therefore the necessary adaptations to the AKS
  will need to be rapid to be able to cope with
  the expected faster changes in the future
• priority setting for research and innovation has
  to include consultation and involvement of
  stakeholder community including civil society
• improvements in the connection between research
  and policy are essential as well

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Key messages

• conventional agriculture has been successful in
  increasing productivity, but this has come with
  an environmental cost!
• in the light of expected climate change plus the
  pressures on natural and other resources we
  need to rethink the way we produce, process,
  retail and purchase food!
• in order to make progress on a sustainable
  development path innovative research is
  essential to meet the challenge of growing more
  food on limited land for a still growing global
  population, with less energy and other scarce
  inputs while improving ecosystems resilience
  capacity and exploring all possibilities to adapt
  to and to control climate change!

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2.4
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Non-linear effects Yield loss caused by a short
high temperature event in a cool-season crop
(wheat) and a tropical crop (peanut)
Walker Institute (Osborne and Wheeler)
hppt//www.rdg.ac.uk/pel/cropsandclimate/CCG-poste
r.pdf
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