 very much. Welcome everybody to this international technical webinar. Today we will be talking about climate smart agriculture and in particular we will be talking about the challenges of climate change and the importance of biodiversity. I wanted to mention that this is one of a series of international technical webinars that the FL E Learning Academy is organizing together with UNESCO which is the United Nations Economic, Social Economic Commission for Asia and Pacific together with Agrinium which is a network of 20 agricultural based universities. So we will be having a series of these webinars throughout 2020 and the idea of these webinars really is to have a common space where we can share experiences, where we can share lessons learned, where we can share innovation and where we invite the different actors throughout the world to participate and to contribute. So let me introduce myself. My name is Christina Petracchi. I am the leader of the FL E Learning Academy and today I have the pleasure to have with me, with us, Federica Matteoli who is an FL Natural Resources Officer who will be also delivering a presentation together with Damiano Lucchetti who is an expert in sustainability and sustainable development and biodiversity and also we have the pleasure of having with us today Philippe Lenonso who is a senior scientist in Raë which is a French institution. So without no further due Federica and Damiano you have the floor. You have about 20 minutes and we will then give the floor to Philippe. Thank you. Damiano can you share the presentation? Hi to everybody. My name is Federica Matteoli. I am introducing this presentation. Today we will with Damiano Lucchetti will introduce you on the fantastic board of Clemens Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity. Damiano will explain to you the link between biodiversity and agriculture, the risk for agriculture if we don't take care of biodiversity and what we can do. In the second part of the presentation I will share with you the concept related to Clemens Smart Agriculture and the link between biodiversity with some examples of projects and the practices and what we can do to work on Clemens Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity. I leave the floor to Damiano for the first part of the presentation. Thank you Federica. Okay just very quickly brief overview on what is biodiversity, what it means for agriculture. Just for the beginning when we say agriculture we mean agriculture in terms of crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture. So if we don't specify it normally agriculture includes all of this. So what is biodiversity? Biodiversity is a term that has been created to indicate the variety and the variability of life on earth. It has three levels, the genetic level which refers to the diversity within each species. It's very important because it gives the opportunity to adapt to different conditions. Then there is the species level which are the different species that we know are on the planet and then there is the ecosystem level which is the area, the physical place where living organisms interact with the non-living let's say part of the environment like water, climate, temperature, soil and whatever. So what is biodiversity for food and agriculture? We use this term to indicate the variety of life at genetic species and ecosystem levels that contribute to agriculture and food production. So for instance the genetic level we call it normally genetic resources is the diversity of all crops and breeds that farmers use in their farms and in the pastoral systems. While the species are the wild species usually harvested like for the fisheries or even the trees for forest trees and the ecosystem level includes two levels. One is the agroecosystem which is the area where an agricultural system is implemented and the wild part of the ecosystem that is outside the farm that has an impact on the farm. Let's say pollinators that come from outside soil, microorganisms that are important for production and my colleague Cilipe will speak about this in the next presentation or the invertebrates and the vertebrates that are useful for integrated pest management so that they eat the pest and the insects that can ruin the crops and so on. So Feo does a number of periodic assessments. In this case I wanted to highlight the work of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. They produce the state of the world's on genetic resources to assess the state of genetic resources for food and agriculture in the world. And we realize that the Commission tells us that genetic resources are under threat. So one point on genetic resources that is very interesting is that we need to use genetic resources otherwise we lose them. So we say use it or lose it. And why we need to use them? We need to use them because they are useful for a number of reasons. Let's look for instance at animal genetic resources. It refers to more than 38 species and almost 9,000 breeds of domesticated birds and mammals that are used in agriculture and food production throughout the world. They produce products like meat, milk, eggs, fibers, but they also produce like manure for fertilizer and they produce power for transportation. They have a social and cultural value. The value of animals in a farm is really invaluable. It's not only meat from cows and it's really very broad and different breeds provide different products and especially they adapt to different conditions. So we can say that diversity of breeds but diversity in general is a key element to increase resilience in the phase of climate change. Okay, what the commission has identified is that about 17 percent of breeds of animals are at risk of extinction. And even worst that 58 percent of these breeds are still under an unknown risk status. Okay, another assessment which was very recently done is that on biodiversity for food and agriculture. So it's fully inclusive of all biodiversity and they also realized from country reports. Countries have reported that there biodiversity is declining. You can see from these images here summarized the synthesis of the results. From the first line you can see how all the genetic resources in the different fields, crop, livestock, fisheries, they're all declining. But also the different natural, let's say, biodiversity that has a positive impact on production is declining. So soil biodiversity, pollinators, wild food species and so on, they're all declining. And an additional third line, you can see that ecosystems that are useful for food production like coral reefs, which are important for fisheries, forest areas and so on, they're also either declining or under degradation status. Okay, now we want to briefly go through another global assessment, the IPBES, the assessment of the intergovernmental panel on biodiversity and ecosystem services. And they identified among the different things the main drivers of biodiversity loss. And these are changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, invasive alien species. And it's easy to see here how unsustainable agricultural practices contribute to most of these drivers. And in fact, several of these drivers are interrelated amongst themselves. Okay, now we have seen what is the problem for biodiversity, but what are the risks for agriculture? Through the different assessment and of course also after FAO experience in several projects around the world, we have seen that the loss of genetic diversity, loss of crop and wild relatives, loss of species, loss of habitats, degradation of ecosystems, they all cause a negative impact to agriculture because they cause a loss of ability to adapt to a changing condition, they increase vulnerability to pests and disease and they conduce to loss of productivity and so on. So there is a direct link from the loss of biodiversity to food insecurity. So loss of biodiversity has an important impact on agriculture and food security. Having said that, what can we do? And my colleague Federica will continue the presentation and we will tell you more about this. But let me say a few very general things. We spoke about the animal genetic resources. So the commission also produced a plan of action on animal genetic resources where countries identified five main things that need to be done to address the loss of animal genetic resources. So we need to improve knowledge of the characteristics and trends of the different breeds, strengthen institutional frameworks for the protection, improve awareness, education, training and research and strengthen breeding strategies and programs and expand and diversify conservation programs. And also from the assessment on biodiversity for food and agriculture, we have seen how countries have reacted to the loss of biodiversity for food and agriculture. So several countries reported that biodiversity friendly practices were increased to let's say to react to the loss of biodiversity. In this and in the next slide you can see a compilation of replies from countries where they indicate what management practices and approach they have used in the different production systems to cope with the loss of biodiversity. It's very interesting that they say that they had the impression that these practices improved biodiversity and production although they need to improve knowledge of these practices and they would like to have more research on these topics. Having said that I would like to move the presentation to Federica who will tell you more on the climate smart agriculture practices. Federica you can take over. Thank you. Thank you Damiano. Let me share with you my desktop. Okay, as Damiano said, the countries have already identified some practices that can be used to work on biodiversity but we can say also that FAU is already working on these practices and many of them are considered also climate smart agriculture. Let me introduce this approach that was created by FAU after many consultations inside the house and outside with external institutions in 2010 and climate smart agriculture is an approach to guide the transformation and orientation of agricultural systems to work on food security and to ensure food security in a changing climate. It's not a set of practices that are universally applicable because the concept is the approach is a context and location specific. What does it mean? This means that a practice that can be considered climate smart is not, we can use in a specific context in a specific situation and not everywhere. But what is in general climate smart agriculture? Climate smart agriculture is based on three pillars. The first one is sustainable incrementation of agricultural productivities and incomes and linked with adaptation and resilience of people. So the idea is to build the resilience of people and food system to climate change and where is possible to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. So the three pillars are the base of climate smart agriculture. An example on these is the climate smart agroforestry systems is a project in the Central American dry corridor and is a typical example of integrated systems. You can see at the top of the presentation, I used the icons on the three pillars of climate smart agriculture to indicate that in this context, in this project in agroforestry, you can see results for the first pillar, so increase productivity in a sustainable way, adapt to climate change and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, I used this icon to graphically focus on the fact that this project is also working and has a positive effect on biodiversity. You can see in the first column that the first pillar, the project can increase soil fertility and increase biodiversity, increase crop yields, land productivity and increase biodiversity of the farming system. In the second pillar, you can see that the project increased the resilience to draw increasing soil moisture content and the idea was to higher water infiltration rates and water retention capacity of soils so and reduce the loss of water to surface runoff and reduce erosion and the loss of top soil and reduce crop damage. For the third pillar, the idea is that the project reduced the depression of forest and reduced the emission of greenhouse gas to avoid the burning forest burning and the other result was to remove a greenhouse gas emission from the atmosphere to carbon sequestration by soils and stored as a soil organic carbon. In general, agroforestry is considered a climate-smart practice and agroforestry has also a very good impact on biodiversity. Trees can also provide a habitat for wild species which increases the local biodiversity and in some cases in some projects using of native tree species should be selected to contribute to the conservation of local local biodiversity and create habitats for beneficial species such as pollinators and natural predators of pests. There is another project that I couldn't share with you because the presentation is too long at the moment but we are working also in Ecuador on coca production and we are increasing also using the chakra system is an agroforestry traditional system where we are increasing using the native trees of cocoa to increase the productivity of traditional cocoa like the white cocoa. The next slide is you can see at the top that these practices can announce on the form of biodiversity. The practices are intercropping, crop rotations and can have a very good impact on diversification of farm income so the first pillar is is to come to consideration and greater resilience to pests and disease also under changing climate conditions and announce ecosystem services and production factor pollutions. The other practices that are considered climate-smart agriculture are for livestock production. In this case the example is on crazing management, rotational crazing. You can improve grassland productivity and the practice avoid the land degradation and restoration of degraded pastures and there is a greater resilience to weather, extreme and climate variability and there is also the higher quality digestibility of forage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from enteric fermentation. We know that posture intensification is generally a threat to biodiversity but also the grassland abandonment is also a threat to biodiversity and the highest diversity of wild species is often found in pastures with intermediate level of management intensity. Certain grassland management practices setting up buffers to protect wild habitats can introduce supplementary feeding or nutrition management can provide multiple co-benefits for carbon sequestration and land restoration and so the well-managed livestock also provide a service to the environment shaping and maintaining specific habitats. Another practice that is considered climate-smart and has a very good impact on biodiversity is the well-managed mangroves and their biodiversity. The results of this practice is when we have a healthy coral reef and mangrove systems which provide habitat to the wealth of biodiversity so we can have a high capacity for sequestering and storing carbon. So the third pillar is considered is one of the results. Acting as natural barrier the mangrove scan acting has natural barriers to physical impact of climate change, for example for extreme events such as typhoons, tsunamis, floods and can contribute to the sustainable supply of fish, can improve resilience, contribute to stabilizing the availability of nutrition for food and increase income for people and can have all the development of stronger social systems and create livelihood options. So the ideal habitat for again the mangrove can be also ideal habitat for many fish species. So the link between well-managed mangroves and climate change is very clear. We can see in this presentation I want to to raise also another problem that is very important in when we talk about climate change agriculture and biodiversity. We know that is water. Water is for agriculture is an important element but is also an important element for biodiversity and water scarcity unfortunately is expected to intensify as a result of a climate change and the link between water and biodiversity is on more frequent and severe draw are having an impact on agriculture production and as well as on biodiversity and ecosystems. So we can see that after projects that are developing in several countries, landscape management strategies can be used and can and include buffer strips along water bodies and can and has a often and are often used to reduce the run-off in nutrients, chemicals and sediments from farming helping to improve water quality. Also the ecosystem degradation is a contribution of in several major water related disasters. Healthy ecosystems are increasing and is recognized as a means of disaster reduction. The ecosystems are also being used to increase or replace built disaster reduction infrastructure such as daikis and often with significant economic gains resulting from reduced operational and capital cost. Yes we will have to come to an end because now Philippe will have otherwise we're running late so okay yes so the climate smart agriculture far wise identify five actions to to achieve implement climate smart agriculture and achieve CSA results and here you have the five actions the first one is expanding the evidence base so the assessing the situation is absolutely important but this is also important not only for climate smart agriculture but also support biodiversity and identifying evaluating potential climate smart and options including biodiversity approaches and the second step is supporting enabling policy frameworks so according to national development priorities we can prioritize biodiversity and climate smart agriculture options the other step is to strengthen national local institutions on climate smart agriculture and biodiversity and announcing financial options so to include the financial options in the national strategies and implement projects at the field level projects that can include CSA and biodiversity practices what do we have to do to achieve this goal first integrate biodiversity in agriculture and climate change policies projects and activities reeducate the field to a more various sustainable and traditional practices with the support of government and technologies because moving from a traditional moving from and business as a usual agriculture to a more sustainable and climate change and and taking consideration by diversities is a could be a problem for farmers especially because they have to rebuild and reeducate the agriculture and the support from government and technologies at the financial and at the technical level is absolutely important economic and political framework need to be strengthened to help decision makers and also we need to review harmonize and adapt existing policies related to climate change inserting climate change in agriculture and inserting CSA and biodiversity approaches to reduce to address inconsistencies and gaps thank you very much thank you very much Federica and I would like now to give the floor to Philippe meanwhile maybe Federica and Damiano could have a look at the questions in the Q&A section so that we we answer those questions just after Philippe has finished his presentation Philippe the floor is yours you have 20 minutes thank you okay thanks Christina I am just trying to share the screen can you see it yes okay thanks a lot so very happy to share with you some views on soil biodiversity as a major challenge for for agroecological practices in relationship with the multi-performance as we are all aware of the current intensive agricultural agriculture systems are not sustainable and there is at the same time a major expectation for agricultural systems not only to provide food of adequate quantity on quality but also to contribute to climate mitigation to preserve resources and there is a urge to move from intensive conventional agriculture to ecological intensification with agroecology this transfer from a conventional agricultural agricultural systems which rely mostly on mechanization and inputs on which minimize biotic interactions on biodiversity have to move to agroecological systems which in close trust value biotic interactions biodiversity and harness this biodiversity to intensify ecological processes talking about biodiversity soil are major one of the major reservoirs of biodiversity soils are full full of life as it is indicated on this figure and there are more there is a biomass which is higher on the feet than above ground and that biomass is not only huge it's also very diverse with animals with microorganisms today we will focus mostly on microorganisms that's to say bacteria, archaea and fungi so by diversity deliver a range of ecosystem services today we will focus on the services which are related to crop production and to climate regulation through geochemical cycles despite the importance of a the biodiversity for ecosystem services as indicated previously uh this diversity is submitted to threats due to the intensity intensive agricultural practices loss of above ground biodiversity of grazing soil erosion on some maps have predicted the the potential threats to soil biodiversity across the world according to the soil types to the climate and to the land use if we wanted to preserve our value on value soil biodiversity in agroecology of course it is necessary in first place to better know that biodiversity and this requires in first place to know the genetic potential of this biodiversity and see all this genetic potential translate in activities and finally in ecosystem services of course it's it's absolutely crucial to see our environmental filters that sees the soil the climate but also human activities all the impact the biodiversity but also the relationship between biodiversity and functioning characterizing soil biodiversity is a very difficult task because microbes are very small they are hidden in the soil matrix and across the years we have moved from the study of specific organisms isolated from the soil and cultivated on petri dishes to meta communities the the pioneer studies aimed at developing growing media to be able to grow those organisms to then be able to isolate population on communities but then we realized that we were only able to cultivate a small fraction of the total biodiversity and the the development of the the DNA extraction directly from the soil has been a major step forward which has allowed us which allow us now to characterize the polymorphism of DNA and then theoretically the total genetic diversity of soil that has been also possible because of the very sharp decrease of the DNA sequencing thanks to major sequencing program human genome human gut metagenome it is now possible then to characterize the systematically the soil biodiversity across a large scale like for example on those map in France but also in Europe on all over the world if you look at the map on the right you see that the biodiversity is not evenly distributed and we have identified that has been checked in all kind of situation that the major driver of the soil biodiversity is in first place the soil type and then in second place the type of land use the fact that the diversity is not the same everywhere of course called for the use of referential to make diagnoses of the soil biodiversity on those referential now allow to compare the actual value which is recorded on the given soil to a referential for the type of soil where this analysis has been made with the kind of land use that it's done on this soil okay so of course now if we want to look at relationship between biodiversity and functioning the major question is obviously what is the relation between a decrease of possible decrease of the biodiversity on impact of the soil functioning and here you have a classic experiment which has been made by Marcel van der Aiden where he has increased progressively the diversity of our muscular macarons on the left inside and then you see that when this focal diversity was increased the plant diversity was also increased in such a way that the total productivity as indicated on the figure on the right has increased this was possible because of a better exploitation of the environmental resources especially make a better phosphorus uptake on nutrition yet it's interesting to see that in agriculture there is a negative relation between the level of the intensification of agriculture on the level of microisol colonization which suggests that in very intensive agricultural systems we do not value properly microization and then the beneficial value of that plant micro interactions another example of the relationship between the biodiversity on the soil functioning is related to the carbon cycle involved as we will see in a minute in the climate regulation Pierre Alain Marron has diluted the biodiversity of the soil keeping at the same time the total biomass equivalent and as he decreased the soil biodiversity as you see on this figure he decreased also the soil mineralization of the carbon which means mineralization of organic matter is directly related to the level level of the soil biodiversity agriculture contributed to climate change but also agriculture is submitted to agricultural change and we are experiencing extreme event in such a way that one may wonder what's going to happen in those extreme conditions in terms of a process that we look at and when we have a high diversity represented here in green we have a wide distribution of a given functional gene in a broad diversity of microbial population in such a way that even if the biodiversity is decreased in extreme conditions there is still population are burying this functional gene and the process is still being expressed in contrast when the initial biodiversity is low the functional gene is only distributed in population which only occur in normal conditions or not in extreme condition in which the process is not being expressed also since we are talking today about multifunctionality it has been clearly showed that the multifunctionality which is expected from agricultural systems is directly related to soil biodiversity so in summary yes soil biodiversity is required for the stability of the agro ecosystem in a context of climate change and the biodiversity is required also for the expression of the multifunctionality expected from agro ecosystems so now what can we do in agroecology we want to steer microbial communities to increase productivity on food quality plant release a major part of their photosynthetics around the roots under what's called rhizodeposite this carbon source sustain a abundant and very active microbiota which is recruited by the plant from the soil this recruitment is specific of the plant and the cost for the plant of this carbon release is balanced by the benefit for the plant for its nutrition on earth that's what we call the feedback loop if we go a little deeper in the root we will see like for legumes that some bacteria rhizobia are able to make some new organs with the plants like nodules in which nitrogen is being fixed and being made available to the plant and there are also fungi that we've been referring before are muscular macarons which contribute also to the plant nutrition we will not go in that in detail because we don't have time but if you have questions you are very welcome there is a all a range of research now which try to identify plant threats which would favor beneficial populations of microorganisms on which could be including in plant breeding program just to illustrate this feedback loop with iron iron is a very important element because many people across the world are suffering from anemia and then the food product should have a high enough content in iron plants require iron also and plants support all the range of microorganisms which themselves need iron so that means in the rhizosphere we are in situation of iron stress conditions then the plant select population which are adapted to these iron stress conditions because of the synthesis of the cydrophore which show very high affinity for iron this cydrophore with a very high affinity for iron decrease the availability of iron for a phytopathogenic fungi reducing then the frequencies of root infection and then promoting plant health and this ferricidurophore also promote iron nutrition and then promote plant growth on us and then here you see again that the investment of the plant is being balanced by beneficial effect on the plant while we have been referring to the nitrogen fixation by legumes it's a major issue for agroecology because it allows to decrease the use of chemical nitrogen fertilizer we want to value the plant biodiversity on the microbial biodiversity here on this figure on the top you have all a range of different plant genotype which have been inoculated with varieties of different genotype of rhizopia and you can clearly see that the performance for the nodal formulation vary greatly among the plant genotype but also according to the combination of the plant genotype on the microbial genotype and then his research are running to find the more performant couple of the plant genotype on microbial phenotype because as it's indicated on the figure below the productivity of the crop will be related directly to the total nodule which are established between the bacteria on the plant agroecology is not only managing soil biodiversity on plant microbe interaction it's also managing plant plant interaction in relationship with their associated microbiota plant legumes have the ability to fix nitrogen or promote the nitrogen nutrition of krameinaseus which in return promote iron nutrition of the legumes because with their microbiota they have a very efficient iron uptake system in such a way that this iron contributes also to an announcement of the nitrogen fixation and contribute infinitely on the top of the productivity to a better quality of the grain amino acid essential amino acid content and iron content which are major issue for world nutrition just a short illustration of the pathogen regulation thanks to a soil microbiota and rhizosphere microbiota it's a classic example where it has been shown all over the world that when you grow wheat in a monoculture in the presence of the phytopathogen gaenomyces graministritici during the first year you have an increase of the very severe disease called decoll but then after three to four years you have a decline of the disease on this decline called take our decline is related to a building up of antibiotic producer what is interesting is the fact that the corresponding functional genes are distributed in different genetic background of fluorescent pseudomonade in such a way that even when the soil biodiversity differ from one soil to the other the selection of this antibiotic producer always occur on this phenomenon always take place of course in agroecology we are not going to promote monoculture of wheat but the output of this experiment allowed for example in ancient to do some intercropping to suppress rhizotonia diseases which were impairing the representation of apple tree okay well that was very brief but i'm sure you will have questions if we move on to climate regulation we have seen that the plant by the photo photosynthetic activity fix nitro fix co2 when the the crop is is indeed the crop residue go to the soil that contribute to building up the stock of soil organic matter and then to decrease the co2 content of the atmosphere however microorganisms may also mineralize this soil organic matter this mineralization by the way is stimulated by the root exudate which brings some fresh organic matter to the microorganisms which become more active that's what we call the primate the priming ethic however this mineralization release some minerals for the plant which are useful so it's a kind of trade-off and between the storing and the mineralization of the carbon we will have a chance to to see that a little later okay so in term of carbon cycle it's not only biodiversity which is important it's also we have to come to an end very soon and start with the with the question and answer session so try to conclude the i was at 21 minutes okay so we discussed 25 minutes that's going to be if i stop now okay okay okay but other five minutes that will be fine no worry so it's so a question of the network of between organisms and according to the land use as you see on on the right the network can be a lot more tight and when the network is more tight the transfer of carbon from above to below ground is higher and of course that through fungi and of course that consequences on the carbon storage and it's interesting to to notice that this network is becoming a lot more tight in organic farming than in conventional farming so about the trade-off i've been referring before what is important to notice is when the plant grow then it's going to take up mineral nitrogen and then by default that's going to be the destroying microorganisms which are going to be promoted which are going to degrade the soil organic matter stock releasing nitrogen but at the same time releasing co2 in contrast when the plant does not grow then there is a lot of mineral nitrogen available and then the storing is promoted and then of course from that we need to promote agricultural action which only allow let's say organic matter mineralization when the plant need those minerals to have a balance of this trade-off of this disservice which is the emission of co2 so there is a connection as you have understood between the carbon cycle on the nitrogen cycle you have seen here that the mineralization of organic matter will release ammonia afterwards the nitrification some microorganism of the ability to reduce nitrogen until n2o which is a major class of gas whereas other can reduce until n2 which is a full fiscal because most of the gas we breathe is made of that gas so i will skip that slide to keep in time i will just i will just try to to make those two last slides about how to deal with multi-performance of agroecology in practice there has been a major initiative launched by France which is strongly supported by FAO which is how can we manage the cropping systems in such a way that we could increase by four per thousand the organic stock of soil in order to balance the co2 concentration related to human activities and in France there has been a modeling work based on land use climate clay content and initial stock value to see how we could gain in terms of carbon in the soil by appropriate cropping systems expansion of cover crop which means the soil is always covered in order not to promote the mineralization new carbon input expansion of temporary grass agroforestry edges and you see in those arable cropping systems it will be possible to increase by 5.2 per thousand the stock of organic carbon so that will be one of the last slides just one after and let's finish to Christina so no worry we have to deal also with possible trade-off because we want the multifunctionality of the cropping systems here it's a long-term experiment at in high close to Dijon where we're trying to develop cropping systems which rely very little on pesticide with killer and one of the system has to which hardly does not use a tillage or no mechanical reading that's where we have the highest emission of N2O whereas we have the lowest we have also the highest carbon storage so there is a trade-off between the two and then we need to find the best compromise and in term of the climate regulation the best compromise is S3 because we have very little mechanical work which means we have a good carbon storage and at the same time we have a very small emission of N2O in Dijon we have a local program of the transition agroecological transition in which we make with the agriculture with the farmers a shared diagnosis on shared decision in order to manage the soil in agroecological systems we are looking at how to promote the legumes cultivation all through transformation distribution consumption for example the local cooperative has made two units to transform the plant proteins we are promoting the consumption of plant proteins in the canteens and the the carbon footprint footprint is being decreased all over the food chain including by short food chain supply okay sorry to have been a little long I will be happy to answer the questions excellent thank you thank you very much to the three speakers which actually have delivered the three very complimentary presentations which at the end show how basically we can reach sustainability only through ensuring and protecting biodiversity in all its forms from from microorganisms to plant to livestock to animals so it was extremely interesting thank you very much now I would give the I would like to give the floor to Federica and to Damiano to respond to some of the questions that were asked you have about 10 minutes and then we will give the floor to Philippe to also answer some of the questions that on on his on his presentation so please Federica and Damiano you can you can start responding to the questions okay thank you okay so I think let me say that it was very difficult to to follow all of your questions there are many many questions very very very interested interesting interested for me um so the the first one is from million erbez sorry for the pronunciation and the question is on on what are the reactions of farmers when we suggest them to plant more trees and they're you know at their land how they react especially if they are limited by land surface all right first we need I need to to explain a little bit better the process that we in how we use when we try to to answer some issues and the problems first we don't say we don't suggest something without involve the stakeholders from the beginning this is why in for example in clements marta greek algema this is a very important and a usual way to work in feo first we we have an assessment of the situation first we cannot go to a country and say you have to do that we we receive a request from the government because file work with government and we analyze with the government and with the stakeholders um the situation the possible um uh solutions and with people in this case also with farmers especially with um the farmer organizations we work with them to um to solve and to find the best solutions so we cannot say we we cannot suggest something they cannot accept is it the first uh something that I want to raise because it's important to understand this point uh another question uh very important is a related food uh waste uh we are working in feo on food loss and waste and and there is a one of the important uh topic that we are working on and also we uh has a clements mart agriculture team we are working with nutrition and we have our colleagues to identify solutions for these uh very big uh problem and I am available to to is a long uh discussion regarding that uh we have also um a project ongoing many projects ongoing and uh assessments in different countries to solve this problem I don't think it is now the moment to to explain details uh the solutions um Damiana do you want to answer some questions I have another question I think we cannot hear you Damiano please unmute yes thank you apologies and no I was saying I'm really impressed by the number and the quality of the questions and in fact I spent some time uh replying to some of them unfortunately I'm not uh expert on all topics otherwise I would spend the rest of the day replying here so I had to choose the ones where I know a little bit um and I have selected two to respond now uh one is on the trade-off from mr mr I believe mr Komanga Damar Jaya um on the trade-off between the hybrid varieties the use of hybrid varieties for food security and the need to conserve genetic resources um it's a difficult question and and a very difficult answer but and I think maybe I haven't understood it completely but um it's since ancient times that we start hybridizing crops and animals for for the use so we we have continued to do that for centuries and and millennia and we will continue still this has an impact on the environment we know but that's the impact of humans and there is very little we can do on that um I suggest everybody who is interested on these topics to look at the work of the commission on genetic resources for food and agriculture they have done a lot of work on all sorts of genetic resources and it's really very much um very interesting and very clear work that they have done the second is from Maurizio Freire Jr from brazil he says on how the how we see the the integrated systems approach that integrates crops livestock and forest and this is something very very important that also hefeo has started working on since the last years we have a hefeo has a program on integrated landscape and territorial approach that exactly deals with these how to integrate ecosystem benefits and ecosystem services in agriculture production and how to integrate production systems among themselves so that they can have the co-benefits so that whatever is left over from crops is used for feed for feeding animals and whatever the manure is used back for the crop and the forest provides again shelter and food for animals and so all these is very useful to conserve ecosystems to have a more sustainable agriculture and in fact in many cases increases the the revenues of farmers so it also has an increased economic perspective let's say of course thank you thank you very much Philippe would you like to answer I just wanted to mention to all participants that we will be preparing a document with the the most frequently asked questions and the responses and that will be published and will be made available for everyone together with the recording of this session so you will always be able to have access through to the responses to the presentations to the recording through the feo e-learning center and we will be giving you the link just very soon now Philippe would you like to answer to some of the questions yeah sure thanks Christina again also yes a very wide range of questions very interesting maybe I would start with replying to Armand Richter which is raising a question on the education of small older farmers uh through extension officer um that was what I wanted to raise in in the last slide I was uh urging a little because Christina was putting the pressure on me but I think it's a major issue I think it's a major issue what I wanted to share with you is that here we have experiences where farmers share experiences together with the scientist so it's not a top-down relationship it's more a participative science approach so we share together the diagnosis the farmers trust each other and we go in the field together we look at the biodiversity together and we look together at the multi-performance of the different form and then when we share that different decisions are being made by the different farmers and the next year we see together what are the different results of the action which have been taken by the different farmers and from that we build up together for the specific area different option which will promote more or less such or such multi-performance taking in account also the constraint that each farmer may have so I think it's it's a very very important issue okay that's one there was a question on on iron I remember not where it is because there are so many so I don't remember who raised the question oh yeah Anne-Marie Meyer asked me if I was aware of any research that showed the relationship between iron content of a deep old plant on soil biodiversity why I have chosen this example is not just for the fun it's first of all because iron deficiency is a very important issue in developing country but more generally worldwide and especially in the country which people do not have access to meat and it's a major issue to be able to bring with the with the plant food enough iron to the nutrition and in our group we are working on plant microbe interactions especially the relation with iron so how can we promote iron by proper plant plant microbe interaction and indeed we have published all the series of papers on that topic and if Anne-Marie Meyer want to send me a mail I will be very happy to send her some pdf maybe it would be ideal to add this in the question and answer document that we will be sharing with all participants it would be good to also add the links to the main publications that were presented also in Federica and Damiano's presentation all the main the main publications the flagship publications and the articles that you were mentioning Philippe that could be useful so that would be good okay maybe can I ask can I answer last one or yes yes of course you still yeah okay okay so a question by caca Nadiradz about the fact that soil microbial diversity should be conserved and protected uh what do you think our gene banking of soil micro flora could be important taking in account of the soil types soil diversity on rhizosphere and microbiome and on the last very last slide that maybe I didn't show because of the lack of time I shared with you a slide with all different kind of international organization and initiative to characterize soil biodiversity worldwide and also uh soil micro soil crop microbiome so there is a world initiative on the characterization of the soil biodiversity it's called the global biodiversity assessment which is run by the global soil biodiversity initiative you have got the information on my last slide and there is also another initiative called the global soil microbiome initiative and their aim is to systematically characterize the soil biodiversity at the world level there are european initiative it's a luca soil initiative by g rc at the european commission and there are there are also national initiatives I can also send you additional information if you wish on that it's a very important topic also for diagnosis on action okay well there is there is a question by bair argy well thanks for the for the nice comment she or he thanks me for the the great point always it's nice to to read on great presentation and he or she asked me what would be the effect on the ecology on food security as well as human arts so it's a very broad question but for sure the the paradigm change with agroecology compared to intensive uh conventional agricultural systems is to consider the resident organisms not us or enemies but rather are or allies it's it's it's a major charge of panic maybe of course in these resident organisms some of them are parasite on pathogens but from the experience we have in extreme conditions where at the time it was advised to sterilize the soil to get rid of plant pathogens on when that was done then the pathogen recolonized even stronger the soil so the general idea is to consider as the agroecosystem biodiversity as a buffer as a regulation and higher will be this biodiversity higher will be the buffer so it takes some time it takes some years so when we are discussing about food security as well as human arts of course uh agroecology is not a question of getting rid of all pesticide in some situation we still may need uh to apply pesticide and food security is also a question of conservation of the food product but in term of human health of course if we decrease the use of pesticide it's not only a question of the quality of the food but it's a question also of the quality of the environment in the initiative that we have we are developing at the territorial level in Dijon we want to the citizen of the consumer to understand that if we promote agroecology we promote for them the quality of the environment and the quality of the food and we have a better reconsideration of the social role of the farmers and a better rewarding including financially excellent thank you very much well that concludes very well this session i just wanted to mention a few things before we we uh we close this this session the webinar so the first thing i wanted to mention is that i would like to invite you all to visit the FL e-learning academy all the thematic areas that were covered and all the ones that are covered in the next webinars and in the previous ones are area our thematic areas that are covered in the FL e-learning courses which are offered through the academy for free to anyone anywhere in the world as a global public good so we also i wanted to mention that on specifically on climate change and on climate smart agriculture we have a series of courses which are very relevant to this webinar so i would invite you to go and have a look it's very easy the link is just here it's e-learning.phile.org and you can directly access the courses what i wanted to mention is that you will be receiving a certificate of attendance of the webinar but if you wish to to receive a certificate a specific formal certificate of the acquisition of competences of some of the technical areas i would like to invite you to do the courses and then to do the final test which are which which is associated to the courses because FAO has now started this new digital badge certification system which allows you to get a digital badge that certifies the acquisition of competences not only of knowledge but mainly of competences and so these badges are associated to the courses that are on the FL e-learning academy that we invite you to go and visit i also wanted to mention that on the 12th of june you will be receiving an announcement because we will be officially launching the new multilingual FL e-learning academy and you are invited to that webinar too and on the 24th of june we will be having a specific webinar on soil restoration soil on sustainable soil management and on soil restoration so this is soil mitigation soil soil degradation how to prevent it how to how to actually restore soil so this is going to be the the next webinar on the 24th of june and on the 12th of june we will be officially launching where we will have a series of testimonials and partners throughout the world that explain to us how they have been using the FL e-learning courses in their policy reform in their capacity development interventions in university masters because our courses are also used within university masters and university postgraduate programs so we are now concluding this webinar and I would like to start by thanking very much our three lecturers our three presenters so Federica Matteoli Damiano Damiano and wait just a second Cilu Ketti and Fili Plunonso I would also like to thank our partners in this in this initiative which are Agrinium and UNS cap and I also want to thank the people who are behind the scenes who always with us ensuring that everything flows well which is and thank you very much and then I would really like to thank you all for your participation and for the excellent questions that you have shared with us we will be preparing a document that we will share with all of you with all the with the responses and the recordings will also be available through the FL e-learning academy thank you all very very much see you to see you in the next webinar bye bye bye bye to all of you and see you in the next webinar as Christina said bye bye bye bye bye bye bye