 First the guests, dear colleagues, good morning. So we'll only welcome you all to join us for this important discussion on how nuclear and climate smart agriculture solutions contribute to contributing to the soil salinity which have been exacerbated by climate change. So as you know that in fact more than 900 hectares of agricultural land have already been affected by soil salinity and in fact it's about 20 percent of the world's total and this puts our agro food system in immense pressure and this also affects threatened the food security. So we must take action. In this case science innovation and technology can play an important role including nuclear science and technology play an important role in fighting in fact climate change and soil salinity. So that's why the major objective of this event today is to showcase how partnerships in using science and innovation and technology to doing so. So this event today will include two sessions. So in the first session we will invite representatives from a diverse of stakeholders to share their good practices in climate smart agriculture and we will have our second session. The event will focus on signing practical arrangement agreements between the AEA and International Center of Biosaline Agriculture and Aglo-America Crop Nutrients. So with further delay please allow me to introduce our specialist and the partners and the panels today. So the first of all is Mr. Niget Mokhtar, Deputy Director General and the head of Department of Nuclear Science and you know and the application. And the second panel today is Mr. Shabal Tairaf, Chief Operations and Development at Ekbar. And next one is my colleague Mohamed Zaman. He's the second head of the Joint FAO AEA Center. And the next one is Ms. Karen Bartlett. She is the soil scientist from the Anglo-America Crop Nutrients. And the next one is Joe Avenue. He's the Vice President Environment Business of Piccolo. And the next one is Mr. Christoph Mühlen. He's the Director of Eustace Liebig University Germany. So warmly welcome you again to join us. Thank you. So let me just say you might DDD Niget Mokhtar to provide us opening remarks for the whole session. Thank you. Thank you, Dongxin. Very good morning to all of you this morning. And welcome to this session on soil, an important topic. But before we start I would like to reiterate what you Dongxin have just said. Welcome in my colleagues here from Ekbar, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture. Really welcome and happy to continue this collaboration with you from Piccolo. Welcome. And from Anglo-American, from the university. I always remember Justice Liebig, Justice Liebig University. And really we are very happy with this setting because we have several voices here because soil is not only about farmers and agriculture specialists, it's about everybody. We need to be all together thinking about this part of our planet which is soil and thinking about that half of it is already in bad shape. So we need to preserve at least the other half because if we don't do so we don't have any more food. And whatever happened in our planet we are going to continue adding to this 800 million of people that they are already going to bed without food. So it's very serious. It's really serious to take care of our soil and it's really serious to work together. On one hand as a human organization, I don't know about how much the attendees know about IAAA, but we're a technical organization. So we are looking at how we can harness science and particularly nuclear science to provide support to our member states with data, with technology to have more food, and particularly in this context of climate crisis, how we can use really a smart agriculture to ensure that everybody goes to bed fed and while also making sure that we are not contributing to using CO2 emissions, we are not contributing to polluted water, polluted oceans, etc. So I think our role is really to work with everyone to provide this platform and help at the end of the day out there in the countries. Now coming for example to IAAA is really a very focused institution on biosaline agriculture and this is the topic of this session here is about how much salinity affects where we are in this and I think we'll hear from colleagues about where we are in how how really serious is the problem and what can we do about it and I think we don't have better colleagues to talk about it than IAAA. Now talking about the university colleagues from Germany, from just to Slipk University and I heard yesterday about why we have this name because the founder of the university was caring about fertilizer, was caring about soil and promoting research and it continues and we are working with them so you would like to hear more about it and with IAAA we have joined center with FAO and we are promoting technology to harness soil and water and here where my colleague Zaman will talk about is what exactly we are doing since six decades and maybe in that context I want to bring this initiative that we just launched with FAO, Atoms for Food and when the component of that initiative is really providing Atoms technology to harness the soil science and I'm also happy to have colleagues from Beijing and for Anglo-American because we need a private sector, a private sector that's providing tools for science, provides sectors that also sell in fertilizers and what about that, because when we hear all fertilizers are contributing to CO2 emissions we want to hear more about how responsible are those companies and how and what are efforts they are doing to really contribute to the CO2 emissions activities. I'm really, very happy to be here and listen to the discussion and I stop here and maybe I'll have other comments later on. Thank you. Thank you very much Nadat for reminding us the key challenges we are facing and also you mentioned why the partnerships is important for us to work together to tackle those challenges and also thank you for informing us the joint FAO-AEA flagship initiative Atoms for Food. Thank you so very much Nadat. So now let's move directly to our panel discussion today. So let me in fact we as a moderator I will ask each of you two questions distinguished panelists. So my first question is to Sabal from Akbar. So my question to you Sabal is that would you please highlight some of the major climate change related challenges affecting agriculture production under marginal environments? Please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me start just maybe at the very beginning by defining how do we see marginal lands? You know I mean for us I mean for everybody I think marginal land would be a land that which would have little or no use for agriculture. Many people maybe they don't like this word marginal you know I mean they prefer maybe degraded land or idle land I don't know so but if we look at some of the statistics I just got like 21% of the land is marginal where so contributes to this marginality you know I mean so yes we cannot use it for for agriculture it could be because of of the soil quality salinity water scarcity I mean there are so many so many aspects that can lead that can lead to this marginality we at the center we focus on those things the salinity water scarcity and definitely soil quality in in general. Now I just want to give you one example of those the marginal land and how would you know I mean even humans you know I mean can lead to this marginality our practices we are currently I'm probably you are aware of the RALSI problem you know I mean we have a project now in Karakal Pakistan in Uzbekistan where literally the land is the soil is saline so we are trying there to introduce some technologies that we have worked on at Iqba in order to really help the people there in order to overcome those problems of this marginality so if we just again if we can give some numbers here like globally estimate that 1.128 hectare of land is affected by salinity okay so here we are talking about almost in terms of of dollars just just to think about dollars you know I mean so 310 million hectares of irrigated areas of 27 billion U.S. dollars because of lost crop production only so this is this is regarding the salinity only now if we look at other things how would the climate change is making things worse you know I mean again talking about some numbers here a study in 2017 argues that each degree Celsius increase in global mean temperature would on average reduce global yields of wheat by 6 percent rice by 3.2 percent maize by 7.4 percent and soybean by 3.1 percent okay so this is this is just a hint okay of of the problems that we are that we are facing regarding marginal climate change definitely and marginal lands lands in general I think at Iqba so I mean I will talk probably later what we can the the technologies that are introduced at Iqba so this is I am I'm sitting here for our DG Dr. Tarifa so she was to be in it's supposed to be in my place you know but I mean again so so again at Iqba we are a center which was founded in 1999 our focus is on as the name implies international center for bioselene agriculture however like in 2013 our focus shifted not only from salinity shifted to marginality in general okay so as I said earlier our focus is on salinity our focus is on water scarcity and soil equality so says this is basically my bit here in this in this regard thank you very much Shambhal for providing us some figures on the serious problem brought by soil salinity and also of course you highlighted the role of Iqba to fight the soil salinity and the environment thank you so my next question is to Christoph so considering that climate change is the biggest threat that community is currently facing so do you think the science and the technology address climate change impacts including the ones suffered in a marginal environment please all right thank you very much first of all for inviting me here you already mentioned that I'm coming from the Justus Liebig University and Justus Liebig was the chemist in the 19th century in the first half of the 19th century where he was facing exactly the same issues as we are facing today I mean human beings always faced food insecurity nowadays of course we are dealing with climate change in the old days they were dealing with other catastrophes like big volcano eruptions things like this the key of all of this what he was doing he was trying to understand how plants are growing we know that for instance here in this area Mesopotamia crops have grown for thousands of years and of course we are creating then issues of salinity if you start irrigating we all know this and all of this one has been now activated by climate change and you say well do we find solutions to this one I think first of all we need to understand how plants are growing I mean plants are special you know they are quite different to human beings they pick up the carbon dioxide the food from the atmosphere but all the rest like nutrients and water as you all know they pick it up from the soil that means soils are absolutely crucial for this one absolutely crucial and what we know that fertile soils will actually decrease per capita with increasing world population and on top of it we have soil degradation land use change for instance the area of land use change over the last 200 years that is as much as the united states and canada together that is exactly the kind of area of land use change and if you do not start managing this one properly we are in trouble and we already see this just one figure you know to see the importance of soil to create two centimeters of soil the fertile soil it takes 500 years you know there she shows you we can destroy soils in a minute right but to get it back it is a resource we cannot easily get back right okay now we are facing these kind of issues with climate change I mean how are we going about doing this I think it's very important to understand that we do not can that we cannot change things from one day to the next biological systems agricultural systems are slow moving changing systems that means if we really would like to see a change in let's say 30 40 50 years time we probably have to start now and that is why we are having this industry partner sitting here because they are working on some of those solutions which she's going to explain to us very soon what we are doing from the scientific point of view is that we have climate change platforms where we are mimicking this one for the middle of this century for instance we're setting the carbon dioxide concentration precipitation events elevated temperature to exactly that what we know is going to happen and then we see the reaction of plants and how we can target this one in terms of targeted mitigation options you know that is also where nuclear techniques come in he's going to talk about this one but I think from the scientific point of view we have technology where we can actually get an idea what's going to happen how we have to react now to actually have food security in the future and nuclear techniques will play a very essential role on this one and I'm pretty sure we're coming back to this one in the next round of questions right so positively let us know we do have solutions right to fight soil salinity thank you so very much and the next question is to Catherine so my question to you Catherine is that how should the private sector step up on climate change specifically in agriculture sector and could you please just share with us how Anglo-america crop neutrons is doing so thank you thank you um so as a soil scientist I will say I'm delighted to hear that that Christoph has already sung soil's card for me um I think really we have to focus here and it is a mutual focus between all of the people here on the farmer and on solutions that we can put in farmer's hands to make that technology available understandable and usable in terms of addressing soil issues globally be that salinity or be that general degradation uh just to add to some of Christoph's figures here we see that we have an area of um roughly the size of the United States of America which has already affected globally by salinity and not all of these soils are agricultural soils there are ecosystems which have developed to adapt to salinity I would like to focus on the portion of these which are under agricultural management as I'm here representing crop nutrients however it should be understood that we have a world which is diverse and diversity and salinity in in saline systems isn't necessarily by default a bad thing it is its own ecosystem however we also need to realize that when we have an agricultural system we need to support the the development of products and solutions to prevent soils becoming saline and also to help soils which are already in a degraded condition so 40 percent of our agricultural lands are affected by salinity issues in some areas where that can be transient salinity and in other areas that can be um a more permanent salinity some of that's caused by natural conditions within the soil much of that's caused by irrigation water issues so when we as the private sector sit here we really have to consider stakeholders across that entire food spectrum so I sit here for for crop nutrients but we also have to consider from the farmer right through the food chain to delivery because ultimately what we're looking to produce is good quality food which meets our global needs now the population is expected to expand at a phenomenal rate since the 1950s we've seen a three fold increase in food production in the world and that our population is expanding exponentially so by 2050 we are going to require more food we have less land to do it on because we have so much degraded lands now and we are seeing a yield decline of 17 percent this is what we in Anglo-American crop nutrients think of as our trilemma of problems we have the degradation and our need to address soils and soil health we have environmental issues we need to do this within an environmentally sustainable way and we need to consider options for carbon economies and climate change mitigation within that sphere and we also have a problem of reducing crop and yields which meets our rising population this is our trilemma of challenges our biggest issue is that not only do we have these challenges but we have to find solutions for them now and all of them all at the same time and this is not possible without the input of all angles into those agricultural systems but we must put the farmer in the centre of this and provide them with the technology the products the intervention and the ability to manage their lands with the knowledge that they have they are our climate change champions absolutely they are the climate change champions of this story and in order to develop as a world we need to value that in the system I can also talk a little bit for Anglo-American slightly wider business so outside of the crop nutrients business Anglo-American is a global commodities mining company and we have 56 operations in 16 countries and we employ 100,000 people globally so we are a large mineral mining company and the reason that that I'm here is because we have a project that we're developing in the North Yorkshire Moors in the United Kingdom and that is mining for polyhalite polyhalite is a natural mineral which is new in the agricultural space as a as an organisation we have committed to carbon neutrality by 2040 and eight of our operations will be carbon neutral by 2030 so we are putting a lot of development and a lot of finance into becoming a sustainable solution thank you thank you very much Katherine for introducing us how Anglo-American crop nutrients as a private sector can really make a contribution to this solidarity and other new crop nutrition related solutions and you talk about the farmer should be in the centre that's completely correct so okay so let's move to the next question to Zhao so my question to you from Piccaro so my question to you is that how the private sector engage directly with farmers to support agriculture in salt affected soil and could you please share with us how Piccaro is doing so great thank you and you know I struck when you mentioned marginal soils earlier and one of the key aspects of a marginal soil you mentioned was water scarcity and you mentioned the issues of irrigation what Piccaro does is manufacture instrumentation for making precision measurements and we're engaged with these farmers and helping to improve the practices related to irrigation one of the comments that Fristof made that I appreciate is he said you can see some of these impacts 30 40 50 years what we want to do is create relevant actionable data that you can work with today so these farmers can see from their immediate actions what can they do to improve things such as crop irrigation they want to reduce water usage get better usage out of the water that they're applying to the crops you put down water it can be lost in many different ways any of that water that evaporates into the air that's not useful right that's just water that's going to be lost measuring the water that actually gets into the plant that gets lost through transpiration that's a challenging that's a that's a challenging measurement to do um typically it's going to require complex equations or it's going to require um equipment that might not be available outside of major laboratories something like a mass spectrometer um Epikaro what we do is we make instrumentation that allows you to actually measure the atomic structure of the water and use it as a tracer to tell how the water is flowing through an ecosystem by looking at that structure we're able to see if that water has evaporated we can look in the soil see how much water is in the soil at the stems of the plants at the leaves and at the air around the plants to trace the entire process of the water as it goes through the process of agriculture this can allow you to maybe change tillage change when you're applying the water to get a much better use of the water as it goes through the system uh and we're you know proud to partner with IAEA and helping to deploy these solutions um really to take something which is a more ESO for many years was a maybe a more esoteric lab measurement and allow farmers to see the immediate impacts of the choices they make in crop irrigation thank you thank you so very much Joe of course uh I mean we have our labs in in the joint FAO area center in the AEA we know how much how important of the equipments and the instrument play for our research thank you so very much to share this information so my next question is to my colleagues that mom so of course as you know not many people know how the how about the role of nuclear techniques in dealing with climate change and especially soil senility can you just uh describe to us what is the role of nuclear and isotope techniques in developing climate smart agriculture uh yeah based on your experience in the past years please hello oh okay so it's working um thank you very much Dongxin and you know um their colleagues um at nuclear techniques and not many people are aware of the role of the nuclear science and technology in food security in mitigating the negative impact of climate change water scarcity building the fertility of the soil but let me just tell you that you know the air which we are breathing contain 1015 carbon 13 the water which we are drinking is containing oxygen 18 deuterium and also carbon 13 so that means nuclear science and technology is part of our daily life and you know we are well uh connected we cannot separate life our culture you know ourselves from the nuclear science and technology and let me just give you an example that okay why nuclear technology are so important because they provide precise information and that precise information is crucial are critical for better management suppose when you get sick you go to the doctor and you said okay I have a chest pain or I have this or that only by carrying out you know x-rays or the ECG or MRI the doctors can diagnose the problem so once you diagnose the problem properly then treatment is is not difficult and that's where you know the role of the nuclear science and technologies in the joint FAO IE center we have a range of nuclear technology for example the N15 so the N15 can tell you that okay how we can capitalize how we can enhance the nitrogen use efficiency why nitrogen use efficiency because nitrogen is the most used and abused nutrient properly you will enhance the production but if you abuse it then you end up in polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emission or the water with nitrate pollution similarly you know we are cooking the marginal land so under marginal land the biggest issue is the soil the low soil fertility quality as well as you know the water scarcity and to capitalize on all those those good food always come from good soil and if the soil is affected by salinity or by any other type of land radiation like acidity or erosion then we cannot meet you know the growing demand of the of the of the exposed the human beings like by 2050 my colleague mentioned that okay we will have one billion extra people and that one billion extra people means that some agriculture system or some country has to increase their crop production by 70 or even 100 percent so in that case what can we do farming is not only sowing and harvesting the sub business and to capitalize in this on this business and to remain competitive in this business we need to be smart and to be smart we need to adapt to the climate smart agriculture practices and here nuclear science and technology is a crucial role to develop existing i mean to new climate smart agriculture products are to really climate smart agriculture practices otherwise you know we only 3 percent of agriculture land on this planet the remaining is either water or glaciers are those mountains which we cannot use for agriculture purposes and then my colleague already mentioned that okay 80 percent of the land is in developing country so we need to do something and that means to develop the new technology nuclear science and technology is the most important inclusion role thank you thank you so very much thank the man for reminding us in fact nuclear and isotope techniques cannot be ignored in terms of its important role in addressing climate change and especially our topic today on the soil senility thank you so very much in fact dear panelists for the sake of time i will now go around to the second round of discussion or questions to each of you i just want to provide us each of you to provide us your key messages what's the role of your specific institution and play jointly together with the FAO AIA and the UN agency to fight or to mitigate the soil salinitation salinization and climate change please starting from Shabelle please yeah thank you as i mentioned you know i mean as as a center so our focus is on research in marginal environments so and our research focus is basically divided into sort of four fields uh breathing and genetics okay so where we have here we are again we have to accept the fact that there are lands that are saline by nature okay so and then people live there and they have used agriculture you know i mean as a source of living in many in so we are trying to help talking about smart agriculture you know i mean so to develop smarter crops that can really survive in those environments you know and and uh definitely when i say producing crops that are nutritious as well you know i mean it's not only just like like quinoa for example so this is because this is one of the things that we work in at the at the center so the second thing is we work with with soil and and water okay so whether it has to do with the Joel talked about you know proper use of water you know i mean again not over irrigating not not under irrigating so this is smart agriculture again smart irrigation in terms of using sensors how how much for example i mean there is a a big project an old project that we have on date palm okay where really what we are doing there is is trying to see how much salt can and those date palm trees handle how much water they need to to really be irrigated with another thing that we we work on is the integrated agri aquaculture system again so trying to make use of this ecosystem in order to increase the production of proteins through through uh having fish grown you know i mean within a system where making that water where this fish are growing to uh irrigate some crops one of the crops that we work with is is siliconia which is a salt living plant i mean by nature it is a salt living plant so it is irrigated by by uh so these are the areas that we work in and i feel like in all those aspects you know i mean at one point whether it has to do with the with the uh providing energy because all these things at the end of the day they need energy okay so uh definitely i see a lot of of of common things that we can do together not only iaa but i mean all that is here in the in the group i think uh i think we can we can work things together whether it has to do with the soil whether it has to do with the fertilizer whether it's had to do with the energy so that we can really help again as you said Catherine the farmers thank you thank you please do yeah what i think about climate smart solutions we work for many years with folks that are measuring background atmospheric gases of co2 methane n2o but what i think about is the act what what actions can we take to reduce those today in agriculture what pacaro does is provide the ability for measurements in the field of the impact of different agricultural techniques not just the water the timing of the application of fertilizer now the plants are grown to see uh co2 methane n2o all big contributors to climate change and can be reduced by actions that we're taking today in the ways that we um in the ways that we plant and grow crops uh just like with the water i mentioned how um you can use the isotopes to trace the water it's the same thing with the co2 and the methane and the n2o we can look at the isotopes and see what is the source of the co2 coming from by looking by by using the nuclear science and the isotopes we can actually help do source attribution for these greenhouse gases another key is that most of these can be deployed into the field to be make measurements at the site where the crops are grown and caro works with many different groups to develop operating procedures and training so people know how to use these technologies effectively and when we see there's a new challenge or some new measurement that needs to be done we can invest in solutions to try to um improve the measurements to continue to provide as i said the key is actionable data things that can change the way that you are working with your crops and uh lead to better uh climate smart solutions thank you please katherine oh yeah okay um i mentioned before that since the 1950s we've seen a three-fold increase in the production requirements or production of food and most of that has been as a result of um genetic changes um and development in land management techniques what we haven't seen there's a change in how we look at fertilization so i have spoke before about the woods with mine and our our um part of this panel and part of part of this space is really around providing solutions that meet that trilemma of challenges that i mentioned earlier but doing so in a scalable fashion when the woodsmith mine opens in the uk in 2027 it will provide 13 million tons of polyhalide into the fertilizer market per year it will be the single sole largest nutrient supply on the planet we believe that this is a foundational mineral here is an opportunity the first new mineral in 75 years here is a mineral that we can use and we can understand and develop techniques using the i techniques and collaborating in unusual or in pioneering collaboration with other organizations to further understand the elemental levels of our nutrients coming from polyhalide which has four of six plant macronutrients but providing that as a catalyst for innovation in this space because it isn't a silver bullet polyhalide it's not going to meet all of our requirements what it can be is a catalyst for change and a catalyst for innovation and that's really what my message is thank you very much thank you um yeah please yes okay um well you know i'm coming from a university institution that means we are doing basic research but i would like to ask you a question have you ever seen an animal keeping a huge rubbish dump you know what i mean by this there are certain resources and normally in nature these resources have to be used very wisely right and if we keep adding resources like over fertilization of course we generate a lot of losses now this is exactly the problem we want to avoid we want to actually change we want to keep within these limits and that is what we are kind of terming also climate smart agriculture okay the other problem is soil is absolutely understudied we may know perhaps 15 percent of the microbes that are living in the soil but what we know is that plants for instance with their root system in the soil and the microbes that communicate with each other that is how the amazon forest that has never been fertilized is that green you understand what i mean right um and therefore we come to what we call nature-based solutions you know nature-based solutions are something what we are actually researching back home to understand the connections between all different planes right and mimic this one in our management later on that for instance means that we already know for instance in rice just an example we think that rice picks up only ammonium fertilizer this is totally wrong they pick up a lot of nitrate but the nitrate comes from communication channels between plants and the soil and certain processes that they actually activate and that is kind of what we do with together with the IAA in nuclear techniques that means I think basic research is absolutely essential and once we actually have some idea then we need to translate this one into applied research that the farmer understands the farmer does not need to understand about stabilizatops right but the farmer needs to understand what is coming out of our research and that is where I see our focus for instance in the new collaborating center that's going to happen between IAA and uses libic university the libic center of agroecology and climate impact research thanks thank you Christoph Zaman please okay um thank you very much again um you know knowledge only make a difference when it reached the end users in their language because we are talking about you know combating climate change how we can bring you know sustainable solution to mitigate the negative impact and let me just tell you that just to our three examples you know that okay in Azerbaijan using the nuclear derived techniques we successfully demonstrated to the farmer and the farmer field by increasing the cotton production from traditional returns at tons per hectare then in several African countries in the regional project sponsored by IAA we increase cassava production cassava is one of the major staple food in Africa from traditional 10 tons to 50 tons and then you know in several Asian countries we increase the rice production by 2 to 3 tons per hectare by using and adopting climate smart agriculture practices and these climate smart agriculture practices were effectively developed by using nuclear and isotopic techniques so that's why I'm saying that okay there are numerous challenges and problems but there is always a light in the tunnel and I'm sure that you know because we cannot do this by yourself but I'm so grateful that okay the university the academia Igba industries are on our side so we need to work together and go hand in hand and each end user which are the farmers and on top of that we need to sensitize our decision makers our politicians you know to convince them that look we need to bring changes and innovation and farming practices thank you very much thank you Zaman Nadjaj please thank you I really enjoyed the discussion and and knowing also understanding what each one of the distinguished panelists which the institutions is doing and I think we should just now say okay we know the problem we know what we can provide to contribute to the solution let's now sit together and say let's work together because together we have more impact and IAA we have this coordinated research program where we work with out with the countries with institutions we can bring almost more than 15 or 20 institutions around the world together to to and work with farmers for proof of concepts and I think this is a wonderful mechanism and I'm inviting you all to join us let's sit and say okay what you want to try we have a product we have technology we have research we have experts we have an institute that has years of expertise on in biosalina agriculture you have a platform IAA that can offer let's sit together and let's have an impact share our results in the scope so we have done it we have done it together because we want to work together because we can make change and we can make life of these farmers better let's stop saying there is a problem but say we have a solution and we did it so let's work together thanks thank you Nadia for your encouraging message so in fact right now we are approaching to the end of the first session so we can easily tell from the speakers so we have already during this session all of our speakers has already provided us their insight how can we use science technology and innovation solutions to to to help the farmers the end users of farmers and also I hear about partnerships I hear about solutions from basic to applied solutions and also how can we join hands work together so I thank you so very much distinguished speakers so let's just move to the second session as we discussed every each of our speakers said partnerships how can we join hands so now we let's move to the second session we will witness the signing ceremony of the practical arrangement agreements between AEA and England and Anglo-America crop neutrons so let's move to the second session so shall we just start one or two questions please please thank you I think that now it's okay thank you for our playlist excuse my English I'm French speaker I'm from Niger I work to the Agricultural Bank of Niger on my right I have the president of the platform of the Niger's farmers so I want to ask like three questions the first one is how to get all of this technology which who will present the second one is how much cost this technology because it's important for our farmers and our populations the second one the third one is how to get a partnership with all of your entities and to improve them in our country because we have this whole problem you talk about here and we have it in Niger thank you thank you so very much for your question I think this question is really to each of our panelists so you put the questions how can we provide solutions and what's the cost of the relevant technologies and what's the partnerships will help us to provide support so please let me start I mean since first of all we are a non-profit organization okay and having said about partnership and about capacity development so we at the center we work in our very small center we work in like 40 countries and many of them are in Africa so we have projects there we have capacity development activities that we do there so now in terms of funding so the funding comes from different sources so this can be discussed in a but for example we are a center where we are funded by the Islamic Development Bank so we have some grants that also development projects that are supported or funded by ifad or badia so those are the resources you know I mean in terms of of costs I mean this is this is something that that need to be looked at you know I mean what kind of technology and what kind of activities you want to do that this is from my side at least I'll just say from the measurement side we've worked for quite a while with IEA to try to make this technology available in a lot of places that might not otherwise have access to it it tends to be you know obviously still it's it's pretty high-end equipment but still much more deployable than say some of the the lab type instruments for doing you know nuclear measurements but but probably something to discuss kind of you know through the work that we've done with IEA to try to make this more available in the field yeah we can we have a program with Niger and I think Yuzaman you can answer to that we have strong program particularly in food and agriculture many Nigerian Nigerian scientists have been trained now we have this initiative with FAO together and with FAO it's Atoms for Food and it's about scalability we talked about scalability and I hope all our partners will join us and we will work with Niger to see what we have transferred to Niger in terms of capacity and technology to another level to to the Nigerian farmers to the scientists but we need more government because our government when we do IEA they think about bombs and they think about Ukraine and Iran she's our role it's about safety and security and safeguarding the misuse of technology but we are also technology dreamciful use why we do this safety and security part is to make sure nuclear technology is being used for the good for health for water for agriculture and this is where we are here for you wasn't 175 member states 144 are with us not because of a nuclear reactor they are with us because they want to benefit from nuclear technology for health and agriculture and I will welcome Niger to be with us president there was my colleague we have a great program with the World Bank on water in Niger agriculture we have been working for a long time we have an initiative with the FAO we call it Atoms for Food the time the time for the for the for agriculture and so we hope that we can work with us because we transfer technology with our partners to serve the farmers to serve the people of Niger so you are welcome the command the command is enough to ask and to ask send us an official request through your embassy to Vienna in Austria and we will answer you here is the command okay we have a division with us okay let's move to the sign thank you very much thank you so let's move to the signing ceremony so please so the signing ceremony is with the director general Tarifa it's an honor to have you with us and we have been working with Iqba for many years it's just a formality to say we continue working together and not only with Iqba but with all our partners in this initiative Atoms for Food to harness solidarity it's an honor ma'am thank you thank you very much Najat and everyone I mean I absolutely enjoyed the panel discussion today it is a true translation of what we want to reach it is the science it is the innovation and then we need the implementation the scale up is a key to this partnership I mean I kept saying and and I repeat we need to change the formula for our partnership 1 plus 1 is not equal to 1 plus 1 is equal 11 and that's what really we're going to maximize our benefits to go absolutely yes I like it 1 plus 1 it's 11 it's not only 2 we need much more absolutely shall we yes okay so and today I think pre-December congratulations I hope that through the signing ceremony so our partnerships between IAEA and Iqba will go to another starting point thank you so very much so next the signing ceremony is between the IAEA and agro America Newton drop Newton's please yes please please thank you program director good afternoon ladies and gentlemen it is indeed a pleasure for me today to join you in this very auspicious panel discussion and also signing ceremony my many thanks to the deputy director general Mok Mokta doctor Zaman and your team for making this event and the cooperation agreement a reality in particularly my thanks also goes to Catherine Bartlett who has been the driving force behind this project and without those dedications and visions this opportunity would not have arisen or have been developed for those of you who don't know us we are Anglo-American a global diversified mining company with over 56 operations across 15 countries most people do not fully realize that mining is the foundation of our modern life our electricity networks through copper our buildings through steel our smartphones electrical cars and wind turbines through precious metals and of course our food many fertilizers this is only going to increase as we produce the metals and minerals which underpin the green revolution and will make it possible for the transition to a low carbon economy but none of our biggest challenges is that we the way we have mined and the way we have grown food in the past and not be the way of the future we will need ever greater amounts of minerals and grow more food from the earth if we are to sustain the estimated 10 billion people by 2050 but we need to do this in a responsible way with low environmental impacts while reducing our emissions and protecting or restoring wealth of our planet that is why Anglo-American has some of the most ambitious emissions reductions targets and programs in our industry we aim to be carbon neutral by 2040 and are already well on our way to achieving that so we are building a huge three to five gigawatt solar and wind renewable energy program for our South African operations we already have a hundred percent in our South American and Australian operations arguably our most exciting sustainability story is the reason why we are here today our revolutionary low environmental impacts poly halide mine which we are building in the neatest of England in a world heritage site I must say poly basite is a natural source of sulfur magnesium potassium and calcium we will mine crush it and granulate it to make low carbon soil friendly fertilizer we have a resource of around two billion tons enough to last perhaps a hundred years and we believe it is the first new mass market crop nutrient product to come on the market in around 75 years and it is organic poly halide unique physical chemistry means it delivers nutrients into the soil in a way that is the potential to improve crop nutrition and soil preservation practices without the environmentally damaging effects associated with legacy fertilizer products and we hope that this collaboration with IAA will deliver further evidence of poly halide's ability to positively impact soil health and therefore contribute towards including food security and relieving pressures on agricultural systems in some parts of the world most affected by climate change there are global challenges and if we are all to succeed in the transition to a more sustainable farming system we need to work with partners that is one of the reasons why we are excited by such events as crop and why we see them as being powerful and this agreement is unique and an opportunity for us at Anglo-american and I hope for IAA to unleash our respective organizations power intellect purpose driven commitment to improving people's lives so thank you very much excited we will work together and I think this poly halide poly halide poly halide I think this is something that's also Dr Khalifa we will work together DG to really prove and help others this would be wonderful let's sign them no thank you thank you very much congratulations can we remove this