Tomorrow the 27th and the day after tomorrow the 28th, the TICAD8 Conference will finally be held. While the African development agenda is not limited to agriculture, improving agricultural productivity is essential for providing nutritious food in rural and urban areas and for promoting economic structural transformation. This issue introduces the challenges of increasing agricultural productivity, the biggest issue in Sub-Saharan African agriculture, referring to a paper by Prof. Thomas Jayne of Michigan State University and Prof. Pedro Sanchez of the University of Florida, leading experts in African agricultural research, published last year in Science.

Focusing on the results of collaborative research conducted by JIRCAS in recent years, we have compiled technologies that can contribute to the development of sustainable food systems, which are expected to be utilized in the Asia-Monsoon region and Sub-Saharan Africa. We hope that the technologies presented in this showcase will serve as a reference for a wide range of stakeholders and help to transform sustainable food systems.

This weekend marks the 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD8). As we have already announced several times in this Pick Up, on August 30 (Tuesday), we will be hosting an event titled “Managing African Soil for Food Security and Environmental Sustainability - Opportunities and Challenges of Agronomy to Solve Low Fertility/Nutrient Bottlenecks”. In addition, many organizations involved in African development will be holding online seminars and other events this week and the week after. Please take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the challenges of African agriculture.

This past July was apparently the hottest July on record, despite the La Niña event. The Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe reported the third hottest surface temperatures on record, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the sixth hottest on record. In an article published in Nature, the authors state that recent extreme heat waves have actually been observed earlier than climate change models predict.

Tomorrow, August 11, is Mountain Day. Mountains play a central role in biological and cultural diversity and traditional knowledge, yet they are more exposed than ever to the effects of climate change and environmental degradation. These changes could affect water supply, energy production, ecosystem integrity, and agricultural and forestry production. Initiatives are needed to mitigate the effects of climate change and conserve mountain ecosystems at local and global scales.

On August 6, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released its World Food Price Trends, reporting that prices fell for the fourth consecutive month since March, when they reached an all-time high, but remained 13% above their level a year ago. The decline reflects, among other things, significant declines in vegetable oil and grain price indexes.

The 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD8) will be held on August 27 (Sat) and 28 (Sun), 2022. In conjunction with this event, we created the Information Page on Agricultural Research in Africa which is now available on the JIRCAS website.

On July 28, the winners of the 7th Niigata International Food Award, which is given to individuals who have devoted themselves to solving problems in the fields of food and agriculture, were announced. Among the five awardees this year, Dr. SAITO Kazuki, an affiliated researcher at JIRCAS, received the 21st Century Hope Prize.

Yesterday, July 28, was Earth Overshoot Day 2022. Last year it was August 2, five days earlier. We are now facing climate change and biological resource constraints, and we need to take all possible steps to build a more resilient society. Among these measures are eliminating resource inefficiency in food production, and preventing food loss and waste.