 Welcome to this special event on re-inventing agriculture in the 21st century. This is a real passionate interest of Dr. Swaminatha, and there he is. He is actually going to be a bit delayed this evening. I just got a word that he is going to be arriving at about 10 o'clock tonight from Rome, where he was chairing and being on food security over the weekend. And so although he won't be here physically, he'll be here in spirit. And I will share a few thoughts from him to also ground us. My name is Dennis Garity, and we, Dr. Swaminatha and I, have in fact worked and interacted intensively in this area for about 28 years now, since I worked with him at the International Rice Research Institute. This is actually the first time that I've had the pleasure of visiting Des Moines, Iowa. And although I studied for my doctorate next door in the University of Nebraska, I do feel like I have been before. After reading one of Bill Bryson's books that dwelt on his life in the city, the first sentence of which was a particularly memorable observation, Bill Bryson, I'm from Des Moines, Iowa. Somebody had to be. Well, with that preface, let's examine the 21st century conundrum. In the 21st century, we know we have to double food production, particularly to forestall food crises in Africa as well as around the world, while making agriculture more resilient to climate change and reducing, rather than increasing, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Now that is a very tall order when you really think about it. The realization is sinking in that it has to be a transformation in how agriculture is practiced. The doubling of food production again in the next few decades can't be done on the same model as in the past with the same thinking and the same practices. For doubling food production, once again by doubling fertilizer use, fuel use, pesticide use just can't happen. The explosion of greenhouse gases alone would create a matter of hurtling our small planet down the path of climatic change disaster. So it is dawning on many people that truly fresh out of the box thinking and solutions are not simply an option, they're an absolute necessity. Dr. Swaminathan himself has been sounding the imperative to come up with creative solutions for this conundrum for many years. As far back as 1982, he said that about 80% of food production comes from small holdings. For them, agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system. Hence, higher productivity per unit of arable land and irrigation water is essential. But this should be achieved without harm to the ecological foundations essential for sustainable agriculture. The Green Revolution should become an evergreen revolution leading to an enhancement in productivity and perpetuity without ecological harm. And I'm sure if he were here, he would further expand on that sentiment that frames our discussions this evening. But agriculture is a very practical art that is founded on many harsh realities particularly for small older farmers. What are the options that can set us on such a path while bringing millions out of poverty? Well, tonight's program, a rundown is that we'll have three brief presentations grounding the discussions. First, myself talking about how to create an evergreen agriculture. And then my colleagues, Collard Hanusimbi from the Zambian Farmers Union will be speaking on the potential of conservation farming, the Zambian success story. And then my colleague Carlos Cervé from the International Livestock Research Center will be speaking on the future of livestock systems. In addition, we have a distinguished panel of discussions, some of which have actually shown up this evening. And they will be actually giving us some biting provocative remarks to react to what the speakers will be saying. And they include Sam Dryden, Dan Gustafsson, Mahapu Hussein, and Monty Jones will be coming in a little bit later in the program. Well, how do we create an evergreen agriculture that can address the 21st century conundrum? Imagine for a moment that we're practicing much of our food crop production agriculture under a canopy of trees, such as you see happening in this photo that is taken of a maize production system in the bread basket maize growing area of Tanzania. Imagine that these trees are not competing with the food crops growing underneath, but rather quite the opposite. They are dramatically enhancing the yields of these crops due to their striking effects on soil fertility. They are nitrogen-fixing trees acting as fertilizer factories in the field providing tons of nutrient-rich biomass each year with no investment cost. Imagine that producing crops like maize, sorghum, millets, wheat, teff, and other cereals under these agroforests actually increases their drought resilience in dry years. And imagine that these systems increase carbon sequestration above and below ground by an order of magnitude greater than the best conservation farming practices. I said an order of magnitude of 10 times higher carbon sequestration. This is not a dream. This is not imaginary. This is actually a system of agriculture that is today being practiced by, in fact, millions of farmers across the continent of Africa. And I'd like to open up our discussions this evening by looking at a system that is so radically different than anything that western agriculture has conceived for the future, that it gives us some biting ideas about what we might be able to do in terms of out-of-the-box thinking and science. Well, indeed, not only in Tanzania, but here in Malawi, we estimate there are about a half a million farmers practicing this system of agriculture using the species of trees, among others, but particularly phyterbia albida or acacia albida, an indigenous species to Africa that forms the backbone of this agricultural system. The ladies that farm this particular field in Malawi, I interviewed them last year, and they claim definitely that their yields are triple what they were before they planted these trees in their mace fields. And they have been getting these benefits year after year in a situation where they, along with 80% of other African farmers, cannot use or do not use fertilizers to enhance their crop production. The situation is like this. When you look at the growth of cereal crops like mace, millet, sorghum, etc., under the canopy of these trees, you find these striking dramatic effects on crop growth in yield. And you'll see under the tree, the mace growing and outside, same variety, same agronomy, however no fertilizer application, and dramatic differences in yield. We now have a literature of scores and scores of scientific articles published on the effects of these trees in countries across the continent with results similar to what you see here. And in fact, we just got the most recent data from the trials in Zambia, which Koilaar will be talking much more about in the context of conservation agriculture, that show the kind of results that are experienced with mace production systems in association with a cassia albida or phytherbia. And in fact, typically, yields are double or triple from what you know. And if you are using, if you're getting 5.6 tons of mace in Africa, that is a very respectable yield. Because as you know, the yields of cereal crops in Africa have been largely stagnant at one ton per hectare, stuck flat-lined for the last 40, 50 years. So when you're talking about obtaining yields like this without the application of fertilizer, this is pretty interesting stuff. Well, such systems are traditional in Africa, and that's why millions of farmers are already practicing them. But as Koilaar will emphasize, we're now showing how modern agronomic practices using these trees can be combined with the best of the traditional systems of their use in farming, and come up with a situation where as we have the national recommendations for Malawi and Zambia of 100 trees per hectare or 10 by 10 meter spacing. So this is the kind of situation that you'll see in which you can, in fact, grow your crops between the trees using modern motorized equipment, animal power, or small older home cultivation. The distribution of this tree is quite wide across the continent. In fact, from elevations, sea level up to about 2,800 meters and across a wide range of soil types, the map here shows where the tree has been collected and observed throughout the continent. And I'd like to point particularly to the span of the tree's distribution across the Sahelian area, just south of the Sahara Desert. It is the most common tree in the Sahel across that entire zone, and it's banks up what is known as the agroforestry parklands of the Sahel. But one particular part of the Sahel gives us a vision for the future that could be the basis for what we think of when we talk about the Great Green Wall to protect the Sahel from the Sahara Desert encroachment. And that is an area of 5 million hectares in central and southern Niger, the poorest country in the world, where farmers have mobilized to, in fact, regenerate these trees at dense populations across their agricultural landscapes. And this is what it looks like at ground level. In the dry season, the millets have been harvested, but this is all millet production area covered by as many as 150 to 300 stems of these trees per hectare. And Carlos will want me to emphasize that it's not only for the fertility effect, which farmers claim is dramatic even at these populations, it's for the fodder production because these systems dramatically increase the net primary productivity, producing dry season fodder of high quality from the leaves and the pods for livestock in these agro-pastoral systems. So when you look across the landscape, you see something that would look like a forest. Surely that is a forest, but it's not. That is all agricultural landscape covered by a dense canopy of trees. Now, one thing I didn't mention that is crucial to our discussion is that this particular species of tree, a fertilizer tree, has reverse phenology. It has a physiological trait that triggers dormancy when the rains begin. So it is dormant and it is bare of leaves during the wet season. The previous pictures that I've showed you would indicate that is the case during the time that the crops are growing. So you have no competition for like nutrients or water during the crop growing season. What imaginable possibilities could be used with a genetic trait like this, not only in this species, but in other species to be able to make trees and crops compatible in the future?