 With us yesterday it was a great moment because throughout this week it's been climate smart agriculture and we're excited because we've seen the launch of a global initiative that's going to bring us all in the forefront in our fight to make sure we save this planet. We all know that if we are to be climate smart, we also need to be water smart. We need to be landscape smart and energy smart. I can see my system is water smiling, beaming away because I had to start with water after hearing a question and remarks in the previous session. However, we cannot hope for pure synergies and win-win-wins everywhere in what we do. In the global transition to a smarter world, trade-offs are likely to arise, particularly between priorities of productivity, environmental sustainability and poverty reduction. We all know that at the end of the day all the choices are political. But we do hope that science can make all the best contribution into these decisions. And so today we welcome three distinguished panelists from the world of science who are going to bring their perspectives to these issues and identify where improving our knowledge can help the most. I'm happy to present to you Dr. Marion Guyoux, who is the president of Agrineum, a public consortium that promotes the role of research to meet the challenges of food security and sustainable development. Prior to this she was the president and CEO of the French National Institute of Agricultural Research. She's a member of the International Advisory Board of IFPRI and a member of the working group of the CGIR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Secups. Welcome. Thank you. In the middle we have Rose, Dr. Yuba Socorna, Special Advisor on Sustainable Development at the South Centre. The South Centre is based in Geneva. It is an intergovernmental organization comprised of developing countries which looks to promote their common interest in the international arena. Dr. Socorna is a former coordinator of the African Climate Policy Centre, ACPC, and is also a co-chair of the IPCC Working Group 3. Thank you, sir, and welcome. Finally, Dr. Cheryl Palm, the director of research at Agriculture and Food Security Centre here at Columbia University. She's a tropical ecologist and biogeochemist. I specially sent that to my daughter because she's been grappling with what to do, so I thought biogeochemist is the way to go. It's the way to go. It's the way to go. Dr. Palm's research focuses on land use change, degradation and rehabilitation and ecosystem processes in tropical agricultural landscapes. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got the best of what the world can offer in science, and this is your time. The challenge I have is we've already started 20 minutes late, and we have to be out of this room at exactly four. So I will be like Tony, I will start with the hard questions. Dr. Cheryl Palm, agriculture is a problem. We all accept that. We know that. It is a source of around a quarter of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions, and that's not broadly accepted, but we still need to eat. And based on today's science, we need to ask the difficult question. Is it possible to meet the growing demands for food, fiber and fuel with a much lighter footprint? Is it a reality or a dream? And what can we tell our policymakers? Is it doable? Over to you. Okay, great. I'd like to say three things quickly. One is that the largest trade-off with food production has been deforestation and land clearing. I think over the last week, there's been great news on that front in terms of the global carbon budget, that deforestation is no longer 25 percent. It's down to like 15, 12, I can't remember exactly, or even less than 10. So I think that's good. And I think a lot of it has to do with work in the Amazon, fantastic work that brings together science and agricultural policy and this moratorium on soy produced in recently deforested land. And now we're finding the same thing about oil palm grown on peatlands in Indonesia. I think those are two fantastic things that will eliminate the biggest trade-off we have right now, which is clearing more land. Then I want to talk about things that I think are not necessarily trade-offs, but actually going less for more. And one is nitrogen, and people will say, you're biased, but I do think nitrogen has a great role to play in the synergies. First I'll talk about areas where there's too much nitrogen, and I'll talk about China particularly. I was in China just 10 days ago when their paper in Nature came out just 10 days ago and it is actually about producing more food with less environmental impact. So they've shown for rice, wheat, and maize that with improved agronomic management, and this is what people always forget, just remember the agronomy, that they've been able to keep yields the same, or even increase yields with less nitrogen. And even as, you know, taking 20% less nitrogen and having the same yield, if not higher yields, they've actually increased yields 50% for rice with less nitrogen. So I think these are fantastic examples. The same thing in Mexico has been shown for many, many years. I mean, fertilizer inputs, nitrogen fertilizer, decreases greenhouse gas emissions without compromising food. So that to me is not a trade-off, it's actually more for less. Now I want to talk about systems where there's not enough nitrogen. Much of Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Latin America, and parts of South Asia. We need more nitrogen. So it's not more for less, but we're not producing enough food there. So you need more nitrogen to produce more food. So that's a synergy. And there's been more and more research lately shown that up to 100, 150, even 175 kg of nitrogen per hectare, that you really don't increase nitrous oxide emissions because you're also increasing crop yields. So to me, that's another smart agronomic thing where you actually produce more food with less of an environmental potential. Excellent. Excellent. So we deal in some conversations with the argument that no fertilizer means climate smart agriculture. And what you're telling us is we've got to do the science. We've got to see what we need and make sure we provide for that. Yeah. I don't think without fertilizer you're going to produce foods in many of the lands we are, especially at the high yields, needed if we're not going to deforest. Excellent. Let me turn to you, Sir, smallholder farmers. We heard in the last session that back of the envelope calculation by 2030, 2040, we are still dealing with 700 million smallholder farmers. What are the tradeoffs there? How are we going to make sure that these farmers are productive? Do we look up to the markets to provide? Where is the balance there? What do we need to give and what do we take? I think that the real question here is the agricultural development and poverty reduction in the context of changing climate. And then if you frame that in the context of sustainable development, in that regard, context matters. It's important because we can argue on different pro and con, the tradeoff and synergies, but the context matters. There is difference, there is similarities between what's happening in Nigeria, what is happening in Niger, what is happening in Uganda or South Africa, but each has specificities. And then we need to look at those specificities. It's true also that agricultural development has an impact, particularly in the context of Africa, because I'm familiar with the African context, in the context of Africa has a huge, the growth of agriculture has a huge impact in the growth of economy and at the same time has an impact on poverty reduction, but it is not sufficient. And then we need to look at in each of those specific contexts and then to take different realities and then looking at the, as it has been highlighted, we need to bring in some cases fertilizer, in some cases not. We need to bring also the key to fundamental aspect and then that will help us to deal with the climate aspect is water and energy. But if I take you back to the issue of context, one common language we are hearing now is resilience. The need to build the resilience of this small holder household and the belief being the markets will open up new opportunities. Is that an answer that you can endorse? No, as I said it, in some context the market can help to do that. In some other context, it is not the market that will do it. You can increase it because you have to frame all those different aspects in development and then how you make the development more sustainable. So resilience we agree is a must too? You cannot say a resilient or the market both are working and depending on the specific situation, depending on the baseline, in some cases if you have the basic infrastructure in place, because you can develop the production in area if you cannot transport what you have grown or if you cannot store what you have grown and then it does not make any sense. In some cases resilience is important, in some cases the market is water and then we have to bring the balance between the two depending on the local context and the local situation. I'll come back to you and ask you to take us to a real life situation where we can actually visualize this trade off and balancing that we have to make in the context of a small holder farmer in these situations. Over to you, Marion. We are excited because recent science suggests that there should be more food on our table and less damage but you are pushing more for the reduction of consumption and waste and pick that scenario to us. Yes maybe I want to look at the whole food system instead of just looking at the supply side of it and if you look at the demand side of it then you think about diets and you think about losses and waste. And if I want to take a few figures, when we did Agrimond foresight exercise with Syrah Daninra, we have two hypotheses, two scenarios. Either people go on increasing their diets from the tendency we have now, the scenario business as usual and we would need 80% more in agricultural production. You take the hypothesis that people just eat what they need. You have 3,000 kilocalories per person per day out of which 500 calories of animal origin and then when you do the calculation you only need 28% instead of 80%. So you see the difference depending on the diets the people will have depending on the share of the animal products origin calories then what you need will be very different. So maybe we need to keep that in mind, I mean diets is maybe one of the main drivers of what will be a sustainable food system in the future. The second element is about waste and losses. Maybe you have now in mind that it's about 1 third of what is produced that is lost or wasted. It's between 6% and 10% of human generated greenhouse gas emission. You realize we are talking about how we can decrease greenhouse gas emission. Decreasing waste and losses is a good solution to do that. And so it's very important to have that in mind and to have practical examples of what we can do. For diets of course we know now that environment has a role to play. Environment, do you have a grocery or do you just have a fast food near your house? Do you have means to have a diverse diet? Do you have good information about what is a good diet? Because of course it's good for you as well. So on the nutrition side well we know that we could have collective action. And on the waste and losses I want to give example of the CG system experience. Because I'm a member of the board so I don't know practically on the field but we have reports about what is going on in the fields. And I want to quote an experience by Africa Rice using a Thresher that has been built if you want by Erie before and introducing that Thresher in Senegal. And with that machinery you have one third less losses. And it makes a real difference, one third less losses for rice when you use those Thresher. And so now there are more than 4,000 Thresher all around this part of Africa. So you know we can do something about waste and losses. So that's a practical example. And it's not just a problem of developing countries. You know we heard about metal silos in Central America and Latin America. So that we have quality of conservation of produce. So you have a lot of examples of what can be done practically. And it's not just a political decision. I think everybody can make something about it. So you know when I present the topic of food security I think it's very important to tell the people well of course you have the people meeting in New York that decided very important things but you can do something as well. Thank you the action is at the local level. I want to go to the audience. We've tried to migrate from the agriculture to the local context of the smallholder farmer to diets and management of losses. How do we unpack these trade-offs and synergies? Questions for the panel? Can we have the mic please? Hi I'm Rob Bertram from USAID. I'm really delighted with the comments of all three panelists because they've really gone to the heart of some of the challenges that are out there and some of the ideas that say for example fertilizer use and climate smart somehow don't go together. So I was really glad to hear you talk about per unit productivity. And then Marion you anticipated my question and that is you know from our perspective if we want to achieve a transformation particularly in Africa we're going to have to figure out how to capitalize undercapitalized farmers, smallholders. So we think about we have a new program in small scale irrigation that links the CGIR and the universities in the US and we have another program focused that's going to have an emphasis on small scale mechanization which Marion spoke to. And I just so I was going to ask in terms of you know what are the what is the thinking out there around these kinds of transformations because you know as I was at the opening of the climate smart picture launch yesterday two of the pictures had people hoeing. Well that's a really rough way to do your farming. I mean you know it's looked nice it was a beautiful day in both cases and all that kind of thing but you know long term you really wonder about that so I feel like all of us who have objectives around poverty and hunger, nutrition you know it's figuring out that right way to approach this and so I'm really grateful to the panel but I'd welcome any further guidance you have for us about how to handle these kinds of complex trade-offs. Thank you. Thanks Rob you will be happy to know that Her Excellency Nkosa Zanazuma when she made her intervention she said can we take the handhold to the museum? Good idea. Any other common contribution? Yes, the mic is here. Three interventions I'm waiting. Christine Negra, Eco-Agriculture Partners and obviously the context dependency completely makes a lot of sense I think people accept that. Are there any overarching meta-themes that we can be thinking about especially we're here with CJAR today. How do they think about being useful in a world where we need context dependent solutions? Thanks Christine, Maggie and then Chrissy at the back. Thank you. I wanted to go back to you. Please introduce yourselves. Sorry, I'm Maggie Gill. I'm chair of the Independent Science and Partnership Council of the CGIR. Sorry I was too keen to get into my question there. I want to go back to the issue of land use and while it's great that there's going to be no more deforestation for one of the things that sort of bugs me about some of the discussion on livestock and climate change is that a lot of it focuses on ruminants and the fact that there's increasing meat therefore there's increasing greenhouse gases. But when you start to unpack the increase in meat, if you do it on a per capita basis, so between 1961 and 2011, at a world level there was very little increase in beef consumption in terms of K-calds per capita and the increase, which is obvious in terms of meat, is coming about through poultry. And when the predictions in terms of cereals moving forward and that 40% of the increase in cereals required is required for livestock, is down to pigs and poultry. But actually they get off the hook a lot because the focus is on ruminants and methane. And I just wondered whether the panel had any views on that. Thank you, that one Marion. Well, let's take questions and then I'll come back to you. And please, from the audience, if you have responses, we are in a dialogue, yeah, it's a discussion, so we expect that some of the responses to come from the floor. Kwesi Overtu, please introduce yourself. Thank you, Lindy Wee. I'm Kwesi Ataka, and I'm the director for the CGIR research program on integrated systems for the humid tropics. Now my question is really related to, on the one hand, we have complex systems. And on the other hand, everybody wants to have things as simple as possible. And of everything we have heard about since morning, talks about the need for looking at things at landscape scale, the need for looking at integrated systems, even climate smart agriculture requires a very complex web of functioning. And yet, we seem to be very quickly directed to producing, break it all down into components that are easy to measure, easy to assess. And that also happened to be what a number of donors are interested in funding. And at the end of the day, my question is, how do we see the necessity for these complex systems which takes into account the capacity to innovate? That is built through communities to other sectors. How does it play out? If at the end of the day, all we go back to do is just to focus on our little bits of separate silo, what is your reaction to that? I'm seeing a lot of nodding heads, so I'll come back to those nodding heads for answers. Last one, Bruce, I'll take yours. Then Bruce will be last, then we'll... I'm Pedro Sanchez from Columbia University. One question that nags me on this whole discussion of climate smart agriculture is, what do we mean by climate smart? Does it mean we adapt to the changing climate adaptation or is it mitigation or is it both? Bruce weighs the special group that was working on the definition of what is climate smart agriculture. Over to you, Bruce. Please introduce yourself. I'm Bruce Campbell. I'm the director of the Climate Change Program in the CGR, CCAFs. So I won't answer your question. We'll look for the working group. So actually, for my climate smart agriculture, I really like the very practical pieces of the pie which make up the bigger picture, which could be mechanization, fertilizer, could be a variety of things, so I like that. But what I missed from all the discussion was it was too agricultural for me that I want to see the national meteorological services, I want to see the cell phone companies, and I want to see the sort of managing of the whole food system, WFP-type humanitarian stuff, insurance, those kinds of things, that was what I missed to make it more complicated but still very practical things. Thanks, Bruce, for that one, because when we started you, but said where is the climate change issues here? So I think that one is coming directly to you. Where is the bigger picture? Because we know this is multi-sectoral, it is multi-partnerships who are really responding to this challenge of being climate smart. But before we go to the panel, I want a brave lady or gentleman who can respond to what is climate smart agriculture? Because if we don't crack that one, we are not filling the hole. So I want to just kick in some excitement here. Sir, you thought I would run away from that one. Good. Don McCabe, I'm a farmer. Yep. Climate smart agriculture is the fact that at the end of the day I'm allowed to take care of my family. I'm able to put a roof on the church, uptown. Occasionally I even think about buying a pizza from my friend in town. It also means that I don't pollute the water underneath my farm because I'm going to drink it. Also means I don't knock off all the biodiversity by either poisoning them or driving them away by taking away all their habitat. Because I'm a farmer, like every other farmer on the universe or on this earth, who's a manager of carbon and nitrogen cycles with the interception of the water cycle to produce starch, oil, fuel, fiber, energy, and protein while preserving animal habitat, improving air quality, improving soil quality, and improving water quality. I just got to get paid for something, and I'm really getting tired of the damn noise that comes out with the invention of new L-Y-S-I-S words, or A-T-I-O-N words, and there's no damn difference between mitigation and adaptation in my world because I have one drawbolt in one no-till drill, and it's doing it all, but while producing the next facility. Because in this context, you've got small-scale farmers more out of the issue of policy that exists on a political front. Nobody here is addressing the soils yet, because you don't take care of those soils in the context that I just laid it out. I don't need the cell phones to come in, and I don't need the other sides. What I need is science to be now proposing exactly what the gentleman from the UNFCCC just offered here a bit ago. Risk management strategies, because the politicians will not move until they are absolutely, positively certain nobody's gonna eat their damn lunch. And right now all we're doing is fueling the flames to continue a discussion that is going to end up destroying this planet. Climate-smart agriculture is a step in the absolute right direction that brings the winds together and needs a lot less noise and a lot more action. Thank you, and that's why the theme is more action and less noise. You're getting it from a farmer. When we together coped 15, and we were trying to launch climate-smart agriculture and we were pelleted, everybody thought that's a bad word. What's suddenly smart about agriculture? And to a farmer, good agriculture is good stewardship. It is adaptation, it is mitigation, it is responsible increases in yields and income for the farmer, good life. Thank you. Now back to my panel. Yeah? Okay, what shall I take? You take what you can eat and not waste. Okay. I will try to apply to myself. That's a good advice I gave. Okay, so maybe complexity and simplicity. It's of course the question we all turn around. But maybe giving examples is a way to address it. In France we have a cooperative that is called Terena and they decided to promote agriculture that smart agriculture, if you want. That is more productive and more environmentally friendly if you want. And so what did they do? In fact, they built the cooperative with farmers that were at the source of the innovations. They have built some examples for milk producers, for grain producers, for poultry producers, which means they could put in place to improve their farming. And then they trained the advisors. And I have to tell you, it's quite important to know that that only one out of two advisor was able to take the new training because you need to think differently. You have no recipe, you have to think the system. So only one out of two advisor was able to come into the new system. And then the farmers volunteered to adopt a new system. It's about 80% of the farmers that adopted the new system. So if you simplify, I mean, by your collective work, you can simplify the work of the individual farmer. And then the cooperative bought the produce and they put in place a risk insurance sharing the risk between the farmer and the cooperative. So then, well, it's a question of Maggie about animal is very difficult. What I have no answer to your question, of course, but we can see really a lot of examples, practical examples. And I will take one in East Africa. And it was a program by the CG Center Z-Craft and Ilri and how to decrease the greenhouse gas emission while improving the farmer's life. Because as you said, it's about improving the farmer's life and being climate smart at the same time. And it's by further improving, by manure, better management. So a bunch of technical tools that was provided, discussed, built with and provided to the farmers and they are quite convincing results. So it will be thousands of small stories that will make it trustable. And I want to advertise what, in fact, the Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture wants to do. That is to say to documents and then to scale up real story of people that succeeded in doing practical things in their situation. Because there is no one recipe for all situations. But I can give you a lot and you know a lot of examples, practical examples of what now we call win-win situation. But before we call the agroecological. Just to clarify on that livestock question. Yes. The issue is, are we doing enough SICAFs on livestock and climate smart agriculture in telling the story and unpacking ruminants versus non-ruminants? It looks like we are bashing and buttering some without bringing up the science to tell us and help us make the decisions. Are we putting enough in and packing that closed box? What does that note mean, Son? It means we are? It's a good question. You know, we'd never do enough. But don't start by that. Because we need to make step by step. I mean, we need to advance. And that was Maggie's question. Where are we? Yes, where are we? Well, we need to progress. And we need, we have big science. How can we select bovine? How can we select poultry and so on so that they are more efficient? We have big science about big processes and big cycles. And we have practical examples so that we can say that we have done something today. And I wouldn't make them fight. You know, I think we need to do the two of them. The big science, the big steps and the small steps that we share so that we improve all together. But Maggie, you know a lot of examples. Can we have the mic for Dr. Maggie Gilday at the back too? I'm just giving the livestock a bit more time so that we, because... No bias done there. No. Yeah, I mean, the point I was making was that perhaps not are we doing enough, but are we looking at the data that we have rigidly, rigorously enough to actually know what we're saying. And to me, the sort of beat the life, beat the ruminant lobby is because ruminants can turn grass, which we can't eat, into something useful. So they have lots of benefits. But we have pigs and poultry and the meat increasing and they're going into cereals. And to me, there's not enough discussion about that. And Kwesi earlier mentioned the meeting that we had earlier this week in Washington in relation to nutrition. And one of the things I took away from that meeting was that actually there's a lot of talk about nutrition transition and that it's all the same. And actually it isn't. Different countries, it's going in different ways. And actually we're not keeping up with it. It's happening so fast. And people are still quoting data from back in the 1990s or the early 2000s. And we're behind the times. So for me, I think the CGIR has a sort of, I don't know if one would call it necessarily foresight because it's not foresight. It's actually, where are we at the moment? What is happening? What can we learn from the data right there? Are we really flagging the right things? Or actually, are we missing some key points because we're looking too far back? Thank you. But on the top of poultry, you have fish, aquaculture. How you convert, how you develop non carnivore fish, how you change the feed of the fish, how you have genetics. I mean, you have a lot of very good research topics. But I would agree with you on the fact that we should share and try to find new facts. In fact, we work a lot about bovine. We work a lot about fish. Maybe less about poultry. Dr. Palm, you want to come in there and also pick up some of the questions that were directed to you. Yeah, just a bit more about the livestock. And that's certainly not my field. But I listen and I do appreciate your question because soy produced in the Amazon and the deforestation that was occurring because of that was to feed poultry, pigs, things like that. And so are we accounting for that? And the other thing is the meat-based diet assumption was quite wrong because the trajectories are very different. And so I don't think. I think the IFPRI 2020 Livestock Revolution, that's already 15 years old. And we need an update on that. I really think you're right. The other thing is the whole issue about, and this gets back to components versus systems. And the livestock system is separate from agriculture at this point. And that's causing huge problems. Manure management is known to be an area where you can mitigate a lot of issues. And right now they're separated. And how do we reintegrate livestock into the agricultural system? It's been simplified and become a real problem, not just with greenhouse gases, but enormous problems with water quality. So again, systems thinking is important. I will say one other thing about systems and simplification. We have to start with what we know. We have a lot of plot data and I think we should take that and move with what we know works, both in terms of mitigation, but I like to say mitigation that is also making it resilient systems. So let's go with it. I'm afraid we don't know a lot about the landscape issues other than carbon and biodiversity. And it's many of the other ecosystem services that come from landscapes that are critical for agriculture, pollination, pest control, but water is the key one as we look at climate mitigation adaptation. And I know there's some progress in that, but far too little research and data. There's lots of models about water and what happens, but there's very little data certainly in the tropical agricultural systems. And I think we need to have combined strategic research at the landscape level, particularly about water, because that's not one that's just summing up the component parts. It's very complex and it's a delivery of a system from natural systems to agricultural systems, but also within agricultural systems that can really be improved. Thank you. Dr. Sagona, in terms of Bruce, the bigger picture. Let us take the case of a real case. Let us take the case of Nigeria and then the baseline, 90% of the food is produced by a small farmer moving to less than two hectares. And 70% of the employment is created in the agricultural sector. And then the majority of the farmer are using their hands for cultivation. And that means they have only 5% of the farmer household have grown animal. And then if you bring the tractor in equation, it's almost three tractor for 100 farmers. And this is the baseline situation. And then in that context, you have to analyze that in a context of development. And then you can not only look at, the context of development is much more complex and it's much more complicated. This is the baseline, this is the situation of Nigeria. If you take South Africa, the baseline is completely different. That is why I said that the context matters. And then in the case of Nigeria, you have two challenges you have to tackle at the same time because the baseline situation is very sensitive to the climatic condition, the climatic situation. And then you have to make it to resilience. Making the resilience will take time. And then at the same time, you have to respond to the short-term issues. And then to make people resilient. At the same time, you work on the system to make it much more climate resilient than the agricultural system. And then to develop also it in a low carbon perspective. And then for me, that goes to the direction of climate smart agriculture. But that will take time. It cannot happen overnight because you have to address the issue of climate information. You have to address the issue of information. You have to address the issue of science. You have to address the issues of means that finance and other. For me, that is why I said that all those have to be in a context of development. It cannot, you can take agriculture as an entry point for development. And then it's much more complicated because if you solve one problem, then it will pop up. And to make it much more complicated, at the same time in the context of Africa, we have to deal with the short-term issues that the people resilience, day to day because they want to eat today. If they eat in lunch, they do not know if they will eat dinner. And at the same time, we have to invest in the longer-term perspective. Most of our decision, unfortunately, is in a very short-term perspective. But I think what's exciting is that things are beginning to change. And that's what the bigger picture that Bruce is talking about. We heard yesterday from Minister of Finance, Ngozi from Nigeria, that they are managing this big facility for insurance, which is about resilience of the smallholder farmer, and she's the chair of the Africa-wide AC program, where they've had the biggest payoffs last year. And Minister Keane is boasting about the cell phones and how he's distributing inputs and what he now wants is weather, transmitted through those cell phones to the farmers so they can be climate smart. I think we've tried in a way to sort of unpack these trade-offs and understand let's move now to the role of science. Dr. Sokon, I'm not going to leave you alone. We know that most of the decisions around environment, livelihood, food security are political in nature. Scientists avail the evidence, but it's the policymakers and mostly the politicians who choose who are the winners, who are the losers. Now, in our context and in real life, is there anything like neutral science that politicians and business people respect? Or is it just a fantasy of us scientists that we are being called to serve and we are doing our duty? At the practical level, in order to succeed, does a body like the CJIR have to become more savvy in selling its ideas to politicians? How do we navigate this complex terrain to get the evidence in a palatable manner that they can eat from our plates and have evidence-based policies? What's your experience? What makes it work? I think this is a complex issue. At the same time, it's simple. It's much more simple than the previous discussion. And then we have some life experiences where science and policy can communicate and can understand each other. This is the IPCC experience. The only difference between IPCC and the CG, IPCC is not undertaking any research. It's assessing the literature, but IPCC experience can help. Through that process, how the work of IPCC is done, any assessment is going through a scoping. And then the scoping is a wider community, including those who are the client. So, the scoping and the determine what are the critical issues, the critical fundamental issues that are not determined by the scientists. And then the scientists, they do the research. And then there is a, the cycle of review is very important. And the review is done by the peers and is done also by the government. Those are, those who are using, it's important. And then the third element is much more important is the approval of the sentences for policymakers because it's the government who approved the report. But the integrity, the scientific integrity is by the authors. Okay, now let's come back to the context of the CJIR centers. You have brought in that government is at the center, you work with them and they approve the report. What I'm trying to explain is that for a body like CG, it can be a broker between two critical clients if I can use that terminology. The first client is the policy makers at different level. From the global, regional, national to local level. And then they are the one who has to set the agenda of the research for CG. And then, I'm coming, I said that this one cluster. And then if the broker decides to be a broker between two. And then the second one, what I call it is the practice communities. The practice communities is the farmer, is the private sector, is the different other institution. And then to, so that the science that produce will inform the policy. And at the same time, the science will base also on the practice. There is an interrelationship between those different and then the CG became a broker. And then if the agenda is set by the CG or if the agenda is set by one of the other communities, there may be some bias. It can be an honest broker. And then we can base also that in the experience of the IPCC. We're currently battling with contributing and informing and shaping the sustainable development goals. And we are saying there is the IPCC experience and as CGIR, they are yearning for help in terms of how do we make sure that this evidence that is being chained is at the center and it's being used to inform the development of the SDGs. As I said, being a broker between the policy and the practice, that is the best way of being serving the both and then bringing also what is needed for the policy side and what is needed from the practice side. Thank you. I'll let you off. I'll come back to you, Sheryl, in terms of the challenges, the dual challenges that you presented. We're looking at agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability. So what can science tell us about where and when does it make more sense to maximize current yields versus investing in the long-term for the betterment of the environment? Well, I think that we need to step back and see what we have. People often talk about sort of a global, this works. And I think the CG in particular has a responsibility to make sure that there is, the science is context specific and things don't work everywhere. And there's this big debate about conservation agriculture and soil carbon. As a soil scientist, I'm ashamed, we cannot provide enough information about where you're gonna store carbon and how. And so let's not pretend it's gonna happen everywhere. And so let's really be, take a bigger view and not get caught up in our own science and try to pretend it solves everything. We really need to have evidence-based but we really need to get context specific. What agro-ecosystem does it work in? What climate, what soil, what social context, what institutional context? There's lots of biophysical evidence that we could spout, this works, this works, this works. But it doesn't always work and adoption is very low. And that's the thing I think where the science hasn't come in that really links a biophysical to the social, economic and institutional things. And I think the CG needs to take a much bigger step in looking at adoption and the constraints and how we move forward. Thank you. Marion, we come back to you. You are managing this big entity and also the CG is a big $1 billion institution. What are the best bets? As we transition into climate, smart agriculture, water smart, landscape smart, what are the best bets for science investments? Where do we put our bottom dollar, $1 billion? What are the priorities that you have in mind and what would be your message that we can take for sustainable development goals in terms of us scientists? This is where we want to go. Well, I won't pretend to have the answer. But I will give you some clues from based on my experience. Maybe two necessities for scientific bodies. The first one is better dissemination. So better dissemination through advisors, better dissemination through training, virtual universities or real teachers to change the way you teach the people. We were told this morning to teach people working in teams and things like that so that all together they can have a multidisciplinary look at a problem. Well, first, dissemination is a necessity. The second necessity for me is to, because we need to repeat it, is to be attractive so that you do good science. You need quality in science. So that's the basis from my point of view. Then you have bets and you were asking about bets. And I think there are two bets. We are all experimenting at the moment as research institutions. And I saw that in CG and I saw that in INRA. You know, it's about the same, well, we try, we try, we improve. How to collaborate better with stakeholders. And when we say collaborate better, it's that we discuss with them to set the priorities and that we discuss with them at the start of a program so that you don't sell your results once you have got the results and trying to find who would buy them. So it's difficult because you need not to be, well, submitted to the clients. So for a researcher, it's difficult to admit that by dialogue the question is better set. It's very difficult to convince people. That issue of engagement is tough for scientists. So engagement for me is one of the bets. And the second one is networking. When we are talking about problems like the one you were mentioning, we need to look at a lot of data. We need to have models being looked at together. We need people to confront so that we go faster. And networking could be, well, you know, the Global Alliance that has been launched yesterday, I think, or could be the GPI we have built in Europe between 21 countries. How do we gather data? How do we share experience? And that's where I think that, you know, the Global Alliance we have talked about yesterday, in fact, they have put in place three groups. One is about knowledge. How can we share knowledge? That would be very useful. The second one is about how do we share environmental policies, if you want? How do policy makers take into account the context and things like that? And it's very important as well to share that. And the third one, and we have talked about a little today, is insurance financing, investment. And you were, Bruce was telling, well, was telling that we did not talk about the global picture and investment takes part, of course, in the global picture. So I think it's very important that insurance company worldwide, you know, try to work together to know how they could put in place some special insurance products. Thanks, Marianne. I'll come back to the audience now and say, so what are our best bets? I used to call you Mr. Gender. What are our best bets? Rob, oh, Quessie, you start and then we'll bring the mic up, Frank. Yeah, no, in answering that question, I like to start from the point that was made by our farmer. And I think I liked everything that he said. One thing that I know he would agree with, but he didn't say, is that all that goodness he described, he wasn't looking at it only from the point of him being able to enjoy those goodness, but for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, after him, to be able to enjoy that goodness. Now, climate-smart agriculture is basically common-sense agriculture. That's why they all have CSA as the abbreviation. If you want to continue to have this goodness. That's a good one. CSA is common-sense agriculture. Exactly. And the same as climate-smart agriculture. Better tweet that one. So if you want to have that goodness that you are enjoying to be enjoyed by your great-great-great-grandchildren, what kind of agriculture do you practice today? Taking into account all these sort of elements. So it's really about moving away from the idea of maximizing production for today and thinking in terms of optimization that ensures that we are able to sustain this production for as long as we can contribute to that sustainability element. And for me, those are the areas where we need to put a little bit more research. And not just research, but action which involves communities, policy people, research people, education people, youth, gender, to basically focus on those sort of issues. Thank you. Rob? I think in answering your question, Linda Way, I'd like to come back to Bruce's point earlier about risk. At the heart of Feed the Future, we have something what we call sustainable intensification. And so we think about biomass and we think about resource use efficiency and we think about ground cover and all kinds of things that are based on technology, information. And so when I think about the big problem we're facing, we're doing this to try to get at the hunger and poverty and under nutrition pieces that afflict smallholders in particular. But what we're running into is that they're so risk averse. I mean, they just don't have enough capital, enough buffer to take risks in terms of making investments. So I'd like to think if we could to pick up on Bruce's idea that to think about technologies, policies, management practices, weather information, market information, things that reduce risk, you brought the cooperative approach up as well. Anything we could do, and it might be, it just might be that those kinds of risk reduction strategies are also in many or nearly all cases quite climate friendly too, because so many of the risks are tried back to at least weather, which is at least our current surrogate for climate, right? I mean, in terms of what a farmer's facing. Just thought on that. The big one. Thanks, Rob. Yes, I was in the farm. Bob Fries, I'm with ACDI Voka. Just to build on that theme, I think there's, I'm sorry? You're our family. I wanted, I think there's two parts of this. There's the risk and there's the return. We implement a number of programs under the future activity. I think when we went in, we went in with a sense of there are good agricultural practices. There are packages that can be deployed. There has to be effective dissemination methods. I think what a lot of us rushed into, we didn't really look at the numbers. When we did break out certain types of investments that we were asking farmers to make, we really were asking those desperate smallholders to subsidize the investment and the test. And we have to be honest about that. We have to look at the risk and we have to look at the return and we have to be able to segment it. Different size actors or different contexts that aren't just geographic, they're also economic, make sense for some investments and don't make sense in other cases. And I'm interested to see how can, you talk about the, being able to disseminate more effectively, how does the feedback work? How can objective shaping of research get into the equation so that the things that we're learning in the field when we're working with the smallholders can impact how you're looking at research and what to invest in and be able to segment it? Excellent. I think we have made our farmers poorer and thanks to the UN, next year is the year of soils. And I think if we address the fundamentals of where are they trying to grow food from and what is there, are we taking away or are we giving back to our soils? Then we'll get the fundamentals right. Farmer. Please may I have the, yes, I'll come to this side. Thank you for the segue to the issue of soils and I wish to agree with the concept that we don't have enough research done in our soils. I think we know more about how the universe has been formed than we do about our own soil. But on the same token, I also need to put a plug in for how conservation agriculture as in no-till or direct seeding or whatever else you wanna call it is moving ahead. And it's gonna move ahead more rapidly in areas where you have moisture to work with because that moisture is necessary to help break things down as in residues. But at the same time, there are certain latitudinal belts across this earth that are going to also now become sources of a new bioeconomy. And that'll be also necessary to continue to grow food. There is no food versus fuel debate except in fricking philosophy classes because the reality is that we have corn yields now in certain portions of this globe that are extremely high. And it's just the fact that we can't move at any place and the issue of waste around here has been raised already. And I've heard it said that we're growing for 12 billion now, but we can't feed seven. So the reality is as we move ahead, let's not close our minds to the issue of looking at how agriculture is closing its own loop. We're not gonna waste a molecule. We're not gonna waste an electron. And the last thing we will ever do with anything is make an electron for electricity because that's where mother nature truly wins. And don't forget that in my line of work, mother nature always wins. And that means that I may go out with the best of intentions and place down nitrogen fertilizer that one day later, two days later is on the move when I didn't want it to be, but I guess got four inches of rain and that's happened on a numerous base. So I fully applaud the issue around looking at risk management issues and how these practices can be brought together. But my final point is to move this thing ahead. We have to have a globe that's constantly growing something and that's even in Northern latitudes. And that's where ruminants come back into the picture. Ruminants are necessary to go out and catch that carbon that I can't get any other way and nobody else would either, but they're gonna take that carbon and turn it into protein that we're gonna enjoy whether we like meat or we want milk. Those are the realities of the circumstance. We are good managers, but let's start remembering we've all got a job to do and let's make sure we only do it before we start looking for custom work on how to become a blogger. Thank you. Next on Mother Nature Always Wins. Thank you. I hope you've got that one on Twitter. They were burning hands this side. It's Pedro again. I'm gonna, you've been asking questions about what can be done and so on. I'm gonna be very simplistic here, but get to the core. I'm gonna talk about Africa and I translate climate change into drought and water. And certainly for southern parts of Africa that is quite correct. So we have a couple of technologies that are well proven in how to handle the scarce resource of water. In irrigation water, you can go from 50% efficiency to about 70 to 90% efficiency if you simply switch from flood, ferro irrigation into sprinkler irrigations or drip irrigation. That's proven. That can be done. And that's what has people scared is the problems of irrigation. Now the other part, I'm a soil scientist so I'll tell you about soil moisture. In the case of soil moisture, studies that Johan Rockstrom, I don't know if he's here, have done show that if you only have a miserable yield of one ton per hectare of maize, let's say, about two thirds of the soil moisture wherever it comes from goes out by evaporation. Doesn't help anybody. Only one third by transpiration. If you triple that yield to three tons per hectare, which is perfectly possible in African situations, two thirds go by transpiration, making biomass and one third is lost by evaporation. These two things, so in irrigation and rain feed systems are pretty robust. Their context is wide. And that can be done. I'll give you another one which is more idealistic from the point of view. We talk about ruminants. Thank goodness for ruminants. Ruminants eat what we cannot eat. They transport themselves. They choose the best pieces of leaves and the most nutrition stuff and recycle back to the soil via their urine and feces. About 70% of the nutrients that they ingest. This is a fantastic recycling system. With grass-fed beef, this can be done. Now, what we're doing in this country and in other countries is making that ruminant a monogastric, making it into a pig or a chicken or a person using the feed lots. And there you break that circle. Yeah, they love to eat grain just like we do. And they pile up these enormous mountains of manure which becomes instead of a nutrient source, a problem of waste and greenhouse gas. I think we'd go ahead. Hey, this is Africa or what? No, it's Columbia University. Okay, I was asked by Science Magazine to write an article on grass-fed beef versus the other kind. The calf was confined animal operations. I had people from all parts, many parts of the world, I had it all in good shape until I got into economics. And the economics are painfully clear. It's much more economical to feed these animals confined to turn their ruminant into a monogastric and give us nice fatty beef that actually doesn't do us much good. So ideally I would say, put a stop to that, the confined animal operations, like the cattle graze. As they should be, give me little supplements, but not much like the Brazilians do. Ideally, yes. But politically, it's certainly a non-starter. So clearly the picture you're bringing is when we were dealing with more for more, it makes sense. But now we are looking at more for less. So take the animal back to the bush and let it use that which nobody else can use so that they don't compete. Simple science. Thank you. Thank you. I want to come back to the panelists for comments. We've just got 10 minutes and I just want to take you back to where we started from. We looked at the synergies and the trade-offs. We tried to migrate to the science in terms of how do we use the evidence that we have to inform the decisions that are being made at local, national, regional, but more important for shaping and informing the sustainable development goals. Here we're doing it in the context of the CGIR. We're looking at $1 billion and we are saying what are our best bets? What is it that we can bring to the world to create a better place? You've had contributions from the floor. You've come in as the expert. What is the take-home message that you have for us? Who wants to have a go first? I can go first. Cheryl Sand was up. Okay. I'd just like to reiterate that I do think there are lots of synergies. It's the adaptation mitigation and I think we just need to get those out there but better targeted so that the science is credible. And the second point I want to say again is let's really find out what works where and why and if it doesn't work, is it a biophysical or a social issue or a political issue, institutional? If it's the latter, then what are the incentives that have to be in place? Because we have to move forward. We can't do business as usual. So how do you promote these things that we all think should just be happening and they're not? So let's look at the context, the system context. I work with biophysical scientists but we really need these teams. We can't pretend we know how to do that. So that's the other point I would like to make. Thank you, Cheryl. I think that one aspect we did not touch is important is capacity mobilization and capacity building that is crucial, particularly at national and at regional level. Those are important elements. I think it's important to use sustainable development as a framing principle and then to avoid having, particularly in the context of Africa, dichotomy of adaptation and mitigation because the characteristics of sustainable development of mitigation and adaptation are the same as sustainable development and then how you make that development more sustainable and then that will give to you some perspective. And then it's important also that there is four key prerequisites that very important in the context, particularly in the context of Africa that apply everywhere, but it's fundamental in the context of Africa. That is the political will and vision. And then if you have that, we need institutions at regional or national level and then how it might be possible, a structure and institution like CG, and then to be, to accompany, and then to be, to accompany the national, the regional institution so that they will become autonomous in the long term. And then the third element is resources and that is human resources. That is financial resources. And then we discuss about and then different infrastructure. And then the fourth element is much more important and much more difficult. And this apply even at global level because if you want to buy to politician, you want to buy to the people, to the peasants, to the farmer, all are interested in urgent and urgent needs. And then while you are dealing with urgent need, we invest in a long term aspect. And this is much more difficult. And this is how the whole framing in the context of sustainable development will bring us. And then I will use the CSA as an entry point to development, to sustainable development in the context, rather than the agricultural or per se and then the food security per se. I fully agree with the gentleman who said about the water and agriculture. I will bring another element. If you are not bringing the energy element in the context of Africa, you cannot do anything. Because this is crucial fundamental. There is those three pillars in the context that we cannot separate them. Energy, water, and agriculture. Thank you Yoba. Mark here. Yes, I would like to stress that in fact, everything is going to simplification. You know, we were talking about livestock and crops. And now they are in different parts. And the best system would be a mixture of the two. We know that the diversity of the food is decreasing. You know, Seat proved that not long ago in a very good article, that now it's rice, wheat, and maize that increase and regional crops are decreasing. And we know that diversity would be good in principle for a climate-smart agriculture. So we know that we have problems. Everything is simplifying, as we know that deficiencies, nutrient deficiencies, and smart system would need diversity. So how can we do to increase, to re-increase, to come back to a better diversity in agricultural system and food systems? So that would be my first message. Do we need social initiative? Do we need policy initiative? Well, we need technical means, of course. We need technical solutions, but we need something more. So we should make the diagnosis so that diversity increases again, increases again. My second message would be that maybe when we think about food security, it's, you know, we think about climate-smart agriculture at the same time, because when we talk about water and a lot, there are so many links between the two that maybe there are the two sides of the same coin. So I don't know how to express it, but every time we think about climate change in our sector, it's the same kind of thinking than the food security issue. And my third point would be, unless you disagree because you said that every single, you know, water, agriculture, and energy, well, well, important, and I agree on that, but agriculture will be at the heart of sustainable development. So I repeat what some colleagues said this morning, but pedagogy is the scientist of repetition. But because agriculture will be nature, a nature work, it will be a social work, it will be a rural development work. And so we have to keep in mind that agriculture, even if I talked about food systems, agriculture is at the heart of our future. Thanks, Marion, and I'll end up by saying mother nature always wins, that's my new one. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you'll agree with me that we've had, we've lent, we've discussed, but clearly to be climate smart in agriculture, we need to be water smart, we need to be landscape smart, we need to be energy smart, we need to be gender smart, but most important, knowledge smart. So we're here to share, clearly $1 billion is not enough. There are a lot of questions that we still need to answer, so more investments into research, but research for action and for shaping the policies. We need a sustainable development goals that are informed by science, and we can learn from other initiatives. I'd like to thank our panelists, please join me in thanking them. Thank you. I'm sure Dr. Yoba Sokona would be very happy because he bribed me into finishing the session five minutes early because he has an urgent call with the chief policymaker to give advice that we give way for. Thank you very much, and thank you for being an engaged audience.