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Pick Up300. The Anthropocene Perspective
This is the 300th article in this Pick Up series. In this article, we would like to introduce a paper that summarizes the concept of the Anthropocene, which has become a common topic of discussion in the food system. The concept was first introduced in 2000 by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, who argued that human impact on the earth was sufficient to create a new geological era. Today, in the earth sciences, the Anthropocene is commonly associated with the "Great Acceleration" of the mid-20th century and 1950s, but in the arts and humanities, it seems to be interpreted in a broader sense. -
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299. Recent Topics on Global Temperature Rise and Icebergs
A video released this month by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shows that temperatures on the Earth's surface have risen since 1950, showing a trend of unusually hot days and less frequent cold days. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, it was confirmed that one of the largest icebergs, A-76, which is 40 times the size of Paris, has begun to drift.
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298. International Biodiversity Day 2021 - We’re Part of the Solution -
The slogan for the celebration of International Biodiversity Day 2021 is "We're part of the solution #ForNature", and we would like to share our thoughts on biodiversity by summarizing the Pick Up articles on biodiversity that we have covered so far.
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297. Joint Report on Child Malnutrition
The UNICEF, World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank released this month the 2021 edition of the joint global and regional estimates of malnutrition among children under 5 years of age. The report shows that the number of children with stunting has been declining rapidly in recent years, but the rate of decline needs to accelerate to reach the 2030 target. The estimates do not take into account the impact of COVID-19 which is expected to exacerbate all forms of malnutrition in the future.
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296. Impact of Climate Change on Safe Climatic Space for Agriculture
A paper published in One Earth in May 2021 asserts that under the worst-case climate change scenario, regions equivalent to one-third of the world's food production could fall outside the safe climatic space suitable for agriculture. The regions projected to be most vulnerable are those with inherently low resilience to climate change, such as South and Southeast Asia and the Sudan Sahel zone in Africa.
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295. International Fascination of Plants Day
The European Plant Science Organisation (EPSO) proposed this day in the autumn of 2011 as a day for everyone across the world to think about the importance of plants, and since 2012, has designated May 18th every year as international “Fascination of Plants Day”. -
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294. Double Pyramid of Food System: Healthier Food is Better for the Planet
The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (a think tank of the Barilla Group, an Italian company famous for pasta) has devised a "double pyramid" of food systems. By placing the health and climate pyramids side-by-side, the model aims to show that healthier foods are similar to foods with a lower environmental impact, thereby reducing the impact of food choices on the environment and climate change.
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293. Publication of the JIRCAS-FFTC International Rice Blast Workshop Proceedings
The Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS) and the Asia-Pacific Food and Fertilizer Technology Center for the Asian and Pacific Region (FFTC) jointly organized the “International Workshop: Applicable Solutions Against Rice Blast in Asia” on September 18, 2020. The workshop was attended by 116 participants from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, Malaysia, India and other countries. The proceedings of the workshop have now been published as a collection of papers presented during the workshop -
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292. Benefits and Costs of Mitigating Methane Emissions to Prevent Global Warming
According to the Global Methane Assessment: Benefits and Costs of Mitigating Methane Emissions, a report published by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in May 2021, methane emissions from human activities could be reduced by up to 45% over 10 years, thus limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5˚C in line with the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement. -
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291. Limitations of Technological Innovations in Solving the Food Crisis
In April 2021, an editorial in Nature Food pointed out the limitations of approaches that rely solely on technological innovations in achieving food security and sustainability, and discussed the need for traditional knowledge and behavioral change to solve the current food crisis.
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290. Global Food Policy Report: Food System Transformation After COVID-19
In April, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published the 2021 Global food policy report: Transforming food systems after COVID-19. In this report, food policy experts provide data-based evidence and policy recommendations for healthy, resilient, efficient, sustainable, and inclusive food system transformation by examining the impact of the pandemic and policy responses, particularly on the poor and vulnerable. -
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289. Announcement of the New U.S. Climate Normals
With the new coronary pandemic affecting every aspect of our lives, the term "new normal" has become a popular topic in the news. In the meteorology, the new normal refers to a data set that is updated every 10 years based weather factors such as average temperature and rainfall over the past 30 years. On May 4, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its 30-year Climate Normals data set for the period 1991-2020, reporting warmer temperatures and increased rainfall across the U.S., but with large spatial and seasonal differences. -
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288. Resource Security and Poverty Eradication
A paper published in Nature Sustainability in April 2021 discussed the importance of resource security in poverty eradication. According to this study, human demand for natural resources increasingly outstrips the speed of the Earth's biological recovery. As a result, the capacity of ecosystems to regenerate biomass has become a material constraint for human economies. The analysis showed that as of 2017, almost 72% of the world's population lived in countries where the supply of biological resources does not meet demand, and low-income countries were trapped in a situation called an ‘ecological poverty trap’.
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287. Climate Change Summit Momentum
At the Climate Change Summit hosted by the Biden administration in late April 2021, a number of countries updated their greenhouse gas reduction targets. According to the Climate Action Tracker, which is run by a group of researchers who estimate the effect of limiting temperature rise based on countries' greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, taking into account recent commitments, temperature rise by the end of the 21st century could be limited to 2.4°C. However, the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C goal will require further greenhouse gas emission reductions. -
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286. Science and Technology and the Food System
The Nobel Prize Summit "Our Planet, Our Future" was held online on April 26-28, 2021 providing a venue where scientists discussed the importance of action and collaboration in addressing global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. A mini-special lecture presented at the recent JIRCAS Open House, which was held in conjunction with the Science and Technology Week, discussed the actions needed for planetary health based on the development of food systems and science and technology since the 20th century. -
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285. Addressing Low Fertilizer Inputs and Nutrient-poor Soils for Improving Rice Production in Africa
In Africa, there are large differences in topography and soil conditions even within a very small region, creating large variations in the yield response to a certain amount of fertilizer recommended within the region and reducing the efficiency of fertilizer use. In response to this, recent attempts have been made to develop decision-making tools for pinpointing and implementing appropriate fertilizer applications using drones and other remote sensing technologies to determine differences in soil conditions within a region at low cost. A JIRCAS paper published in Plant Production Science in 2019, provides a comprehensive review of the problems of insufficient fertilizer inputs and nutrient-poor soils in rice production in Africa, as well as measures to improve them, and received the 18th Japanese Society of Crop Science Best Paper Award.
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284. Fruits and Vegetables: Input from the United Nations Food Systems Summit Scientific Group
The United Nations Food Systems Summit will be held in New York in September 2021. The Scientific Group consisting of leading researchers and scientists from around the world, which has been set up to support the process leading to the summit, has published a brief entitled “Fruits and Vegetables for Healthy Diets: Priorities for Food System Research and Action”, providing views and actions on making fruits and vegetables more available, accessible and desirable.
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283. WeRise — Decision Support System for Rainfed Rice Cultivation Using Seasonal Climate Prediction
Rice is one of the world’s three leading cereal crops and is an important food for feeding nearly half of the world's population. However, most of the rice producing areas in the tropics depend completely on rainfed rice cultivation, and the yield is about half that of irrigated rice cultivation. In order to increase yield, it is necessary to overcome the problems of water and nutrient supply. Since 2010, JIRCAS has been conducting research, development and technical validations of the weather-rice-nutrient integrated decision support system (WeRise) in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute through an international research project supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. We have published the results of field validations of WeRise conducted in Southeast Asia in the journal Agriculture, showing that it will enable the improvement of farming plans for rainfed rice farmers. -
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282. Highlights of the State of Global Climate 2020
In line with the climate change summit hosted by U.S. President Biden on April 22, 2021, the Japanese government has also announced a significant greenhouse gas emission target. A few days earlier, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published the State of the Global Climate 2020, and reported that 2020 in which people's lives have been affected by extreme weather events caused by artificial climate change.
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281. Food for Thought on Earth Day: The Miracle Crop Quinoa and its Potential to Save the World
Today, April 22nd is Earth Day. It is an international anniversary proposed as a day to think about the global environment. JIRCAS is pursuing research activities aimed at solving global food and environmental problems, and we have released a video introducing our research on the miracle crop "quinoa".