 and I'm sure everybody enjoyed the other so moving on and we know that Atma Gandhi's teaching were not limited to about independence and civil rights but he was visionary about environment also and he predicted at that time also that if businesses will continue probably will face some environmental problem and also the you know world is facing the biggest challenge of food and nutrition security as well as maintaining environment and in this election he is doing all the work and to give some perspective what he is doing now I invite Dr. Sudeel Yadav our research team leader for environmental sustainability to deliver a seminar on feeding the world while protecting the planet. Good morning. It's my great pleasure to be here to talk on this great occasion on June 5th while we were talking here about World Environment Day at the same time we also told that Indian Embassy has been you know agreed to do this celebration together so it's a it's a great pleasure for us and we are thankful for that one and then when we were discussing about the World Environment Day so we thought when we get this opportunity to discuss with you some of the thoughts what could be the the topic and the topic which is top of our mind is of course first is feeding this world but then how why feeding the world what we can do for the planet so that's that's where we thought that probably we can share some thoughts and kind of leave you with that message and working together in that direction. I mean I already talked about this great quote of Mahatma Gandhi from my perspective I see positivity to start with this call that when Mahatma Gandhi said that this earth has enough resources for our need so there's a lot of positivity in that one so it's not about like we are at the end of the earth there is sufficient resources but there's a word of question here that we need to careful what is need and what is greed and that's where I think there is a great lesson which can be taken and the first one of the big challenge which is in front of us is this far growing world the world is growing so fast much faster than a solution which we can think of to appeal the world so that's a big big challenge in front of us to address the challenge this agriculture revolution started you know with a with the first phase of what they call intensification what what the what farmers were doing at that time were basically cutting the trees burning the forest and doing agriculture there and then shifting somewhere else so that was the first phase in terms of agriculture revolution where basically the the the forest are replaced with the agriculture land and if you look at in terms of the expansion in 1600 it was around 1 billion hectare agricultural land and we are about 5 billion hectare by now so we are keep expanding the agriculture area and most of these this area is under cereal crops so that's where again the perspective of food that as we were clearing the land we were growing food mainly here but the question comes how far we can go with this expansion or whether we are reached to the peak of agricultural land expansion looking at the data different scenarios some of the scenarios is saying that we are almost there in terms of reaching the threshold of expanding land we don't have much further to expand the land to grow food for for feeding this growing world thought we reach to the second phase of agriculture revolution which was intensification and intensification is basically growing more per unit area so with the same piece of land you you grow more food because we don't have now much privilege to expand the land so we are focusing on growing more food per unit area and this started and we all know around green revolution with three three major things major activities first one was talking about high link soil duration variety so that was kind of a big boost to the world when when we were able to do this research and finding these these varieties which which can produce much more than what the tradition value were producing but then it it also added with a lot of fertilizer inputs for producing more at the same time there was significant investment on irrigation these three steps of these three initiative lead to increasing the production of food in the world so why we talk about I just a revolution basically the center of talk so open is rice and we talk about whether it's about what environment day or one food security day we talk about rice and the question is why we talk about rice why rice and if you look at the facts that what what I mean I was saying that rice is not a crop rice is a life rice is a culture it feed 4 million people in the world 56% of the world population is dependent on rice it cover 10% of the problem in the world so it has a significant contribution or part in the land use it's also grown by 144 million family which is 25% of work families so one fourth of work family is dependent on rice and it's also basically contribute to 40% of the world's poor along with that it's in terms of economy had the 6 billion annual value to the world and that's take us the point why why rice is center of talk when we talk about whether feeding the world or protecting the planet so that's that's what we would like to discuss further the third phase we talk about intensification we talk about intensification and then basically the consequences without this agricultural definitely the research which was done the progress which was done in terms of intensification and intensification help us to feed the world so the hunger in the world has been decreased significantly and this was done basically by three major cereal crops maize wheat and rice which basically produce about 60% of world food energy intake so these three crops really help in terms of handling the undernourishment of the world's population but while while we were focusing on feeding the world we kept bias towards the food looking at the ecosystem service wheel which which is basically important to keep this balance you know in terms of sustainability we did a lot of efforts which indeed were important to our food and and that imbalance this ecosystem service wheel which basically not only look at the provisioning of food but it also played a lot of role in regulating sporting and the cultural aspect again it's the the whole system level thinking rather than looking at one component of food and then we get the when we get biased towards food we felt these consequences there are big news concerning news the wetlands in the world are relying at a very sharp rate what that mean in terms of sustainability of food system recently in time there was news that you will report that one billion species could go extinct again the question arise what it mean for the sustainability of the food which we are producing and I was about this news the nice time that a baby born today the climate and their future and that's kind of a feeling that the the climate change last night I was watching news of you in the UK and one thing which talks me that he had here he talked with the star and the music that was asking how was the meeting and there was debate about what what he feel about climate change but one common agreement that he said this Charlie talk about future the reason that can be hand over a safe planet to future the reason and Trump said I agree with that so that was the point is no matter what you call it we need to protect the planet that's the key and talking about climate change global warming as we know is a top of our head our researcher the development partner the investor the country are talking about it so global warming basically what happened that when we see the sunlight some of this is absorbed by by our by different gases and and that one of the earth and some of these gases which contribute in absorbing this heat are called a greenhouse gases or in other way greenhouse gas effect which which result in heating of our surface there have been debate whether the warming is taking place or not data is saying yes there is a significant increase in in the temperature in fact the news which are coming from my country is that in some of the some of the state the temperature already hit 50 degree 50.4 yesterday one of the one of the district so it's turning like a whole you know so this is really a concern that the temperature is increasing and when we talk about greenhouse gases there are two major gases one is methane another is nitrous oxide which contribute a load to this greenhouse gas effect so global warming and if you look at both methane emission as well as nitrous oxide emission agriculture sector play a major role in terms of emission of these gases and that's where again we need to look at how we do over practices versus protecting the environment so again talking about methane talking about nitrous oxide all a sudden the rise is again center of the talk that rice play important role in global warming and if you look at the facts the data which is available that rice consume or how it is said that rice consume 50% of world's total fertilizer it takes 35% of world fresh water used in agriculture and also it contributes 1.5% of greenhouse gas emission as a single drop 1.5 is a load but then I as a researcher I I I slowly argue with the point of facts versus perception and some of the example you might have read many times that rice consume 2,500 to 5,000 liter of water to produce one kilogram of grain so that's a common kind of new which I I hear that's a perception the fact is farmer supply 2,500 to 5,000 liter of water to produce one kilogram of water these are two very different things and that's that's where the opportunity lies that it's not the plant requirement it's the practice the second thing is there is a lot of news that you know rice contribute a load towards methane emission again it's a perception the fact is the methane is emitted by a bacteria which only survive under flooded condition so if you flood the rice it will emit if you will not flood the rice it will not emit or it will be reduced so the point which I want to make here is the problems are associated with production practices and that's where sometimes we don't look at the root cause of the problem we look at what we can kind of see so we had to really look at what is causing the problem and coming together to solve that one and that's where Amina was mentioning some of the innovation which it is doing our focus is on these root cause that how we can help farmers to change their practices and so do we have solution to reduce environment footprint when we come talk about rice yes we do have Amina mention about some technology we have a bunch of technologies which are good to review these environment footprint but the important point which we need to be very careful that all these technology has trade off and we need to understand those trade off it's not about that here's the problem and we solution this is nature of what we call the basic nature that if you are gaining somewhere you are losing somewhere we need to understand that spin off with different technologies the other topic which I would like to touch and this is kind of again quite hot topic is air pollution and we are getting different news from India from Delhi from Beijing that the air quality is deteriorating very fast and interestingly it's not about what things are happening in that particular particular state or particular province I was in South Korea in Seoul last week and I saw this smoke and I was surprised with nice weather I said how and they said it's coming from China and same thing is in Delhi it's not like the smoke is from Delhi it's also coming from nearby state the point is the natural resources for everybody it's not about what you are doing we need to do collective action otherwise if somebody will not join that collective action because of their practice we may also be affected so it's a great point of coming together and this again I found this very interesting you know this new line that there is more power here came from India's farming revolution so that the last part is very interesting the farmer farming revolution and again linking back to the point of intensification and life stroke so what is happening that because of intensification the turning around period between two groups is very small and from what power that we do that they use one net stake and that's all so we need to look at from practice perspective that what how we can empower farmers that they can still go with that small turn around period and grow more food while we can avoid this burning of rice stroke this is that the NASA is from the north India from one of the state Punjab all these red points are indicating where the burning is happening so it's a quite concerning concerning area which we are again we need to do collective action so what can be done if you don't burn the straw what are the options and Asia produce about 300 tons of straw it's a huge amount of straw and if you look from positivity this is a big big asset which we have with us and it can be used there are different options India is progressing very well we use it as a mulch again protecting the the water and also protecting the building the soil it can be incorporated it can be removed the bailers a lot of work is going on using the bailers and I get more more excited about this ultimately use of the straw and it is quite active in that area to find out what what can be done we can use it as a compost we can use it as a field for life so there is some upstream work now it is doing in terms of using it for biofuel that's another energy kind of green energy which we can use and more interestingly for different biodegradable products so there are packaging material packaging boards with the right straw there are utensils you know party utensils with the right straw there are ports with the right straw and it's all about thinking out of the box rather leaving that burning is the only option there are many other options which can be which can be explored in terms of sustainable use of this again what we call that it's a it's a golden asset if you want to use it but it's all about from our perspective we focus alone on understanding the trade-off whatever options you offer as I said there's a spin-off and so looking at when you burn when you remove whether parsley or fully or complete there's a trade-off you may use the toxicity of air but you may add in house gas so how we can reduce the overall trade-off so we need to look at that spin-off and pick that options where the trade-off is minimal I have to touch a bit about when we are talking about consequences start talking a bit about solution called problems in my opinion you know they did a great job coming up with such a number of development goal it's a big big move which is very appreciated however what happened that while we explored become up with excellence sustainable development goal there has been major focus towards to FDG which is basically zero hunger and no poverty indeed these are very important very important but again that balancing the ecosystem here we missed that trick so we are looking these such development goal in silos that I have seen different agencies they are saying we are working on this goal this goal and that goal and from my perspective that's where the problem start that's where the trade-off start that focus on too much on one side you leave a lot of negative impact on other side how we can come together again it cannot be done by one institute one agency the new collective action that we move we take this sustaining the ecosystem as the backbone as the driving factor for feeding the world and this basically instead of picking one or two we need to link it with ecosystem service wheel and if we use the sustainable development goal towards strengthening the ecosystem that will take us to a point where we can feed the world and we can protect the planet and that's what the United Nations has declared that the next decade will be I mean the focus will be on ecosystem storing the ecosystem and I think we need or need to to support that move we all need to think from that perspective so I would like to I mean this is this was an attempt to share the broad overview about about our direction to our producing food and protecting the world and I would like to finish my talk with again this great call by Mahatma Gandhi that be the change you want to see in the world don't ask other you know to do it be part of it and if we will be part of it and I'm sure that we can address we can what Mahatma Gandhi said that we have the resources to feed ourselves but also protecting the world thank you very much okay we have some time for some question if anybody have any comments any perspective you want to add on this so for the top thanks every time I listen to a talk of yours I learn many new things life is a big discovery city I wonder if you could home in a little bit on on India and issues around diversification of crops and how that fits into your overall vision of feeding the world and conserving the planet and and I would like to go back John he always is one of the person who has to look like a team from a very different perspective a very big picture at that again looking at technology and I can see that it's very very important going back to the point of we don't look at technology perspective looking at the bigger picture so when it comes to the top diversity case and it's all about that country level we need to think what are the best places to grow food in terms of again quantity but also the environmental footprint and there's a lot of initiative going going on now in the country that how we make the the eastern India the football of the country so we know that the rise has again the practice how they grow rising in North India had a large so how we will see that needs again I believe collective actions in terms of how different organization come together a in terms of research good options but also the policy environment that how the country come forward with those kind of strong decisions that if we had to do it we had to do it otherwise we will keep talking about environment footprint food security and we will continue with the same pace so that's a very very important topic in the direction of the protecting the environment depicted as part of the problem, and what are you using actually addressing these additional trade-offs, making sure that we produce enough rice, that rice becomes the backbone of healthy diets, but still produce under sustainable practices. What are you using that for? Thank you. This is a very, very good question, and again, a very common question, and I like to cite an example of iodine, that when there was a big deficiency of iodine, there was a lot of talk going on how we will make it sure that iodine leads to people, and they looked at different mediums and they finally landed on salt, and the point was because salt is consumed by everybody, and that's where when there's a talk about nutrition, there's a lot of discussion going on, changing the diet, which is definitely one of the options, but then how to reach this about 7 billion people. So one common kind of agreement is why don't we use a medium which is already reaching to 4 billion people, which is rice. So I think we have an opportunity to increase the nutritional value of rice. Rice, I would like to strongly say rice is not a part of the problem. The part of the problem is how you look at the rice. So there are practices which can be changed. With our partners, we are working to improve the iron content in the rice, the gene content in the rice, the overall main quality of the rice, and if for some of the aspects like zinc or so, we already have increased, you know, double the amount which is used to be. So think about it that as soon as you will get success, you only need to 4 billion people. There cannot be more strong channel to reach that number of people, but at the same time, I mean, it's not down only. I mean, still don't forget we have other, you know, 50% population, where comes the crop diversification. So most of Asia and Africa, it's a rice-based system because of agroenvironment. So once I was talking to the farmer and I asked, hey, can you grow something other than rice? And he said, yes, I can grow water lily because the only water lily will survive in rainy season. So the agroenvironment, you know, give us that opportunity that will look solution around rice. So I think that's where we used to, for 4 billion is, we see kind of low hanging fruits about increasing the nutritional value of rice, but with rice-based system, crop diversification, probably we can answer that further. Any more questions? So thank you for an excellent talk. Once again, I learned a lot from your perspective. My question to you is, I mean, it is obvious to a lot of us that adding organic carbon content to the soil is one of the key ways of achieving nitrogen use efficiency. I mean, IR8 actually performed very well because it has the capacity to use nitrogen very efficiently in a very effective manner. So how can breeders, from a breeders perspective, keep on focusing on this use? I mean, we seem to have been adding more and more nitrogen, which is making soil into cement. But how do we focus on adding more carbon into the soil and also breeders also? How do you see yourselves giving the message to the breeders to improve the nitrogen use efficiency as a character in the variety itself? Thanks, so this is again an excellent question with more research focused. I used to present one slide, which is one of my favorite about nitrogen use efficiency. And I think sometime now speaking as a researcher, we use this parameter kind of for the benefit of our own publication or so. For example, high nitrogen use efficiency doesn't mean that it's a good indicator. We have faced problems of soil mining. While on low nitrogen use efficiency, we have faced problems of water pollution like in what is happening in eutrophication in China. And that's where we need to see the balance that it's not about, that's the message which probably I'll give to breeders. It's not about targeting that your target is improving the nitrogen use efficiency to a certain level. We need to look at from uptake perspective that how much uptake plant is taking and using it in terms of translocation to the grain. So reducing the uptake from the soil and having the more efficiency to converting into the grain. That's the part. It's not only improving the, in the part we have a lot of focus on like less uptake or more uptake from the soil. So now I think we need to look at the plant process that how within the plant things happen that we get more grain without mining or washing of nutrient to the water bodies. So that's on nitrogen side. For soil health side, I think that's an interesting discussion going back to the rice straw management. And that's something where we need to look at in terms of decomposition of straw where we can really, really help. Use of straw where again we can really, really help. The silicon content in the straw where we can help. So we need to really look at the whole value chain that where we want to use the straw and I think that message can go to Greta in terms of improving the plant rate that that straw can be used for the soil health perspective. So broadly in that aspect. I can still take a couple of more questions. Congratulations Dr. Yadav. It was a very, very informative lecture that you gave. Just a comment first that we all have vegetarian food for lunch today keeping with the theme being environmentally sustainable and to help ameliorate climate change. You mentioned briefly about the activities that Ivi is focusing on alternate uses of straw. Can you elaborate a little bit about that? Thank you very much sir. We have in fact a whole wing which is focusing on the use of straw. So basically what we are looking at is when we incorporate straw there's a lot of greenhouse gas at me sir. So we thought let's look at if we collect it. So first thing it is working on these balers like what are the different way to collect. There's a lot of portion involved. So how we will reduce that cost. That's number one. Second area where we are looking at is when the straw is collected how to improve the value of the quality of feed for livestock. So as it is the quality of rice straw is not so good. So how we can further improve the quality of the straw so that it can be used for livestock. So there's a lot of work going on which in fact is a very very important topic. Areas like Eastern India, Uri Saab Bihar, there is a large fellow in the dry season. So you have rice followed by fellow and livestock we have seen that in some of the area livestock were grazing and they basically injured their nose because it's a salty soil and they don't have anything to eat. So how we can improve again the feed value. But then there's a lot of focus going on other use. There's a whole attempt going towards the Muslim industries that how rice straw can be used. But more recently we are working on the biofuel that how we can use to convert it in the biofuel. We also have you know some research going on but I presented about the ultimate product. But the major focus is animal feed, improving the quality of animal feed, biofuel composting. These three are the major where it is thinking that this large amount of straw about 300 metric is here can be used for that. Just to add on what Sudhir has mentioned is about straw management. One of the important technologies we showed about the happy seeding machine for that going to burn the residue you keep the residue in the fields as an in situ residue management or straw management. So instead of even checking out because time window is very very less. That's why the challenge is even collecting straw waiting to the beeler and everything takes time and transporting that huge amount of straw to other uses takes time. So one of the you know potential is to use that machines in situ straw management and planting the next crop in the full rice straw. In that way we are addressing the issue of burning as well as we are addressing the issue of soil health which is also concerning particular Punjab Hyena. So if you maintain the straw in the field it will decompose it out of the crop. And that comes to the point of understanding the agro environment. So in Punjab Hyena northern part of India where we have only one rice straw the second season is kind of dry season and they go wheat. In that scenario it's much much better to keep straw on the soil surface while talking about south east Asia where there are full rice. So then there's a trade-off with the greenhouse gas emission. So if you keep that straw and then you basically add water that increase the as I said the bacteria which result in emission of greenhouse gases. So that's where we are looking at kind of the the bacteria of opsoons and picking it depending on where it fit very well rather than saying this is the one which will like one side fit also. Can I have one more question? Asadir, another challenge that we have in agriculture is you know our farmers are getting older there's people young people are no longer interested in agriculture. So what do you think we can do to engage the youth in agriculture? Thanks June that's that's a very good question and I think to see it as kind of business with dirt it's no longer that kind of business and that's where the direction we need to move. We need to look from a perspective of youth see it as a as a business like other sectors and there has been a lot of development where basically different agencies are involved including Erie. Looking at the modern technologies looking at kind of you know all high-purpose technology which can come to agriculture and change the pace of the debate is done now. So Rinder just mentioned about HEPIS either. So before you were thinking how to handle that show now we have machines, we have billers, we have talking about advanced technology there is a lot of development going on using drones for agriculture your half of the work can be done by drones for the for the community and I think that's the direction we need to do we need to go that instead of thinking about a business with dirt this is a business for food business for planet and that's the message which we need to give the youth and not only the message but also the the options to do it efficiently. It's not a question it's really a comment I love seeing threads in talks and having done a lot of Indian history at university. It's interesting we're here celebrating 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi and you were talking about iodine and salt and it reminded me of course that one of the earliest non-violent protests by Mahatma Gandhi it was the salt march so they're very nice to see all these connections run through this morning comment not question Good morning and thank you for your very informative talk. My question is I'm Krista Deva from the ASEAN Center for Violators. Thank you for the invitation here because we are also celebrating World Environment Day my question relates to what you said about how collective effort is very important and how all these moving parts would have to come together towards concerted action. I'd like to ask how much biodiversity is being taken into account when innovations are being developed when trade-offs are being considered because we can't move one toward and try to discuss climate change for example without taking into consideration biodiversity and there is an important connection between biodiversity and agriculture. Thank you. Thank you very much for the question but also bringing this dimension of biodiversity. Talking broadly not about it broadly this is a concerning area and you have seen that the news which is coming about one million species which will be extinct it's really concerning and the bitter reality is that we are not taking biodiversity seriously that's that's that's the really challenging question which we need to a first thing we need to accept it that we are not taking it very seriously and then we need to take actions. I think you would be here yesterday we had a talk and that was focused on biodiversity and in an area basically we have this research program on environmental sustainability and we have different domains it has five domain climate, water, energy, soil health and biodiversity and it's very very interesting that rice fields are called as human made wetlands and we are looking at the biodiversity in in in this human made wetland and it's amazing but then our concern is that as we are moving towards intensification what that means to that biodiversity and that was like yesterday talk but going back to your point that I think it's an essential part of ecosystem service we cannot take risk to to to ignore it it's it's must and I think we need to again be collective collective action that how we think about human their food but also about other species. Thank you. All right, let's thank Stakli Yadav for his inspiring seminar. Thank you. All right before moving to the next program may I request all the guests from Messi as well as Peter Brothers and Tika Stav.