Food: Nutritious, plentiful, affordable, equitable, diverse

People around the world face serious and complex challenges to their agricultural and food systems. Solutions are emerging by empowering people at the margins, listening to their needs, and investing in indigenous and under-appreciated crops. Experience shows solutions can work when coupled with collaboration, innovation, interdisciplinary approaches and serious investment. 

These are the key take-aways from an international meeting on global food systems held at UC Davis and hosted by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Resources. The meeting highlighted the role of the Department of Plant Sciences among the institutions, agencies and actors working toward food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture in the coming decades.

“UC Davis is the ideal place to seek these solutions,” Chancellor Gary May said at the opening of the Global Food Systems Research Day, held Oct. 24. “We are the world’s leading comprehensive university for food and agriculture. Our agricultural research is key to driving innovation.”

Scientists here have been innovating for agriculture in California and the world for more than a century. They continue to confront issues of food, water, energy, climate change, conservation and human health, noted CA&ES Dean Helene Dillard. “Our mission includes engaging globally and fostering innovation and collaboration in sustainable agriculture.”

The university’s global partnerships and ability to draw from multiple sectors nourish that work and push research toward tangible, impactful action, said Ermias Kebreab, co-host of the event and CA&ES associate dean for global engagement.

“The shock of climate change will continue to test our food systems,” Kebreab warned. “We need solutions that are sustainable and scalable, that confront systemic inequities and support under-served communities.”

The meeting drew some of the world’s leading agricultural thinkers and planners, including representatives from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the African Union, the United States Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Erin McGuire, co-host and director of the Innovation Lab for Horticulture, called on participants to develop food systems that can bring people nutritious diets at affordable prices. 

“We don’t yet have all the solutions,” McGuire said. “But the university is uniquely positioned… to approach these problems from a systems perspective, with partnerships from around the globe.”

More nutritious, affordable, secure

Christine Diepenbrock, an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, moderated a panel exploring how food systems can provide diets that are more nutritious, diverse, plentiful and affordable.

Everyone must benefit: “Every stakeholder has to benefit,” advised Allen Van Deynze, director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center and based in the department. For example, Africa’s current population of 1.5 billion people is projected to grow by nearly 40 million each year, according to the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa. To produce enough good-quality and affordable food, “we need to both invest locally and produce locally. This needs to be part of policy,” he said.

Cost, culture and convenience: Achieving nutritional security requires that farmers be able to produce food year-round. Efforts to breed plants better-adapted to changing conditions will help, Van Deynze added. Diversifying farmers’ crops can boost income and improve their families’ diets. But policy and programs need to consider cost, convenience and culture to be effective, he said.

Listen to farmers: To build sustainable food systems, small-scale producers must have a voice, said Boitshepo “Bibi” Giyose, senior nutrition officer for policy and programs at the FAO. “Our food systems are broken,” she said. “We have to have an up-down, down-up, horizontal co-creation of solutions.”

“Women’s crops”: Programs that teach both men and women farmers the economic and health benefits of indigenous and under-used crops are more likely to succeed, said Penina Yumbya, manager of the East Africa Regional Hub of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture, based in Kenya. “Women don’t have access to the land. Men make decisions about what is planted,” she said. Sexism also poses obstacles to Africans choosing to eat nutrient-dense indigenous crops, which are denigrated in part because they typically are grown by women at small scale and bring in less money, Yumbya added.

Change food habits: People’s eating habits also need to change to bring richer diversity to their tables, Giyose added. Policy could help by introducing indigenous, locally grown commodities into school lunch programs. “Kids are great at communicating to their households,” she added. “Food habits are hard to break, but you can do it if you are consistent and are systematic.”

Yumbya also recommended teaching women the benefits of consuming indigenous crops, and teaching those who don’t know -- especially younger people -- how to prepare them.

Improve postharvest storage: Post-harvest management that reduces food waste, including at the consumer level, would enlarge the food supply: An estimated 50 percent of food grown in Africa is wasted, and up to 70 percent in Uganda, Yumbya said. She called for innovation to store fruits and vegetables so that, when they’re out of season, farmers can fetch higher prices, produce availability can be extended beyond the harvest season and consumers can access more nutritious choices.

Identify distribution bottlenecks: Target problems in food distribution systems and in governance, recommended Guido Santini, coordinator of the Plant Production and Protection Division of the FAO. By reducing transactions from farm to table, and by improving connections between rural food-producing areas and urban food-consuming areas, waste can be reduced, and food can be made more accessible and affordable to consumers.

Gender matters for making real change

Amanda Crump, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, moderated a panel exploring social considerations in agricultural practices, especially the different and sometimes conflicting roles of women and men in food production systems.

Train husbands and wives together: Hazel Malapit, senior scientist for the Washington, D.C.-based International Food Policy Research Institute, gave an example of a program that failed because it didn’t take gender dynamics into account: The program gave families each a cow and taught the husbands how to care for it. What the planners missed was, “it was the woman, not the man, who did most of the work,” Malapit said. Already overburdened and seeing no personal benefit, the women typically neglected the animals. 

By training husbands and wives together, both are more likely to see the benefits of their work. They more often make agricultural decisions jointly, men see the benefits to the family of their wives’ incomes, children’s nutrition improves and families have greater resilience to shocks such as natural disasters and disease, Malapit said.

Natural plus social sciences: Programs work better when they are shaped through an interdisciplinary, teamwork approach, advised Krishna Sapkota, manager of the South Asia Regional Hub of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture, based in Nepal. Solutions must embrace both social and natural sciences to achieve long-term sustainability. In Nepal, for example, men are more likely to plant market crops that bring in more money, rather than high-nutrition crops that fetch lower prices.

“You need to ensure acceptance of the crop,” Sapkota said. “Ask, what tools are needed to integrate gender into your practices?”                                                                              

Ask farmers: Change is complex, noted Mark Bell, agriculture development specialist for the CA&ES Global Engagement Office. “You have to ask the farmer: ‘What is your priority?’” Bell recommended. Ask small-scale producers why they adopt or don’t adopt crops or practices. “Ask, ‘What change would you like to make? What is important to you?’ Fit your project around the farmer’s priorities.”

Trust and local knowledge: For agricultural extension practices to have impact, planners must incorporate local knowledge, develop trust with the audience, make sure the program is appropriate for the situation, collaborate with key players in the region and ensure the program has tangible -- including financial -- rewards. “People perform based on how they are rewarded,” Bell observed.

Create opportunities for student internships

The conference covered a broad range of topics, all seeded and fertilized by exploration in the Department of Plant Sciences, Chair Dan Potter noted, from research to a strong emphasis on translation to solid international involvement.

Vision for a more sustainable future points to training the next generation of food system planners, Crump added. She called on conference participants to create opportunities for internships for graduate and undergraduate students, and she offered a win-win for partner organizations.

“These are students trying to solve real problems for real people,” Crump said. “Our students always are looking for places to host them. Just give them data and something fun to do.”

Associate Professor Cameron Pittelkow leads the department’s international agricultural development major and can be reached at (530) 752-0433 or cpittelkow@ucdavis.edu.

More on the Global Food Systems Research Day

The conference covered more areas, including:

• The potential for sweet potato cultivation in Africa to enhance nutrition
• Cutting-edge trends in global agricultural research
• Livestock and crop systems for climate resilience
• Building resilience and its global impact
• Scaling research results

Read more about the inaugural Global Food Systems Research Day here.