B4FA Month in Review – November 2019

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B4FA Month in Review – November 2019

December 12th, 2019

After eight years, we fear that B4FA will have to suspend its activities at the end of December 2019 due to a lack of funding.

Over the years we have run training courses on biosciences for agriculture in Africa in four African countries – Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda – working with African universities and research institutes to introduce the opportunities and benefits of modern advances in crop improvement and breeding to more than 160 journalists.

We have also published three collections of essays on various aspects of bioscience for agriculture in Africa (freely available on www.B4FA.org); run a daily news service, aggregating stories from and about African agriculture on Twitter (#B4FA), our website (http://www.b4fa.org) and through this regular newsletter. All this has been generously funded, at different times, by the John Templeton Foundation; the Cambridge Malaysian Education and Development Trust; the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture; and the N8 AgriFood Resilience Programme of the University of York, a multidisciplinary programme across eight universities in the north of England working to develop sustainable food systems, and a number of individuals.

We hope you have valued what we have done. You all have certainly been generous in voicing your support in terms of communicating how you value what we supply, whether by passing on our tweets, commenting on the newsletter or visiting our website. Over the years, we have hardly ever received anything but support.

But times change. Despite all our efforts and continuing enthusiasm to give African bioscience for agriculture and farming a voice and reflect its interests and concerns, we have not been able to raise enough funding to continue into 2020.

However, were funds of the order of GBP 15,000 from a number of sources to become available or were we able to forge a partnership with an (African) organisation to continue and/or widen our activities, we would love to continue.

Can you help, or contribute, or do you know of someone or an organisation that might? Or have you any comments and criticisms about what we are doing, and how we could improve? Please contactProfessor Christopher Leaver, CBE, FRS, FRSE (chris.leaver@plants.ox.ac.uk)or;Bart Ullstein (ullsteinb@gmail.com) as soon as possible.

We really NEED to hear from you NOW.

NOVEMBER HEADLINES
As we write the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP25) continues its deliberations on saving the planet from catastrophic climate change at its meeting in Madrid, Spain. Its aim is to strengthen the world’s governments’ commitment to the Paris Accord and keep global warming below 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels. In advance of the COP, UN Environment published its latest Emissions Gap Report, describing where we are in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and what still needs to be done to meet the Paris Accord targets. The picture it paints is not positive: on our current trajectory, the world is heading for a 3.2° C temperature rise by the end of the current century and that unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6 per cent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity of getting on track to the 1.5° C temperature goal.

Also from UN Environment, we hear from food systems expert James Lomax about why the world’s food systems need to change. As he explains, ‘current food systems are failing us in terms of livelihoods, human health and the environment. We have to look beyond the idea that more food in the world and greater productivity will solve our problems. Local and national food systems need to be strengthened to adapt to the climate crisis and become better equipped to provide diverse diets for consumers in food-insecure communities. Diversity in diets can help farmers diversify their risk, provide markets for food crops, break their dependency on commodity crops, and increase biodiversity and resilience’. He goes on to highlight different issues in the developing and developed worlds, ‘the priority for food systems action in a developing country might be tackling post-harvest losses and pesticide use, whereas in a developed country it might be land degradation caused by continuous monocropping, or food waste’.

Nature reports on a major success, genome editing making one of the world’s most important crops, rice, resistant to a devastating bacterial blight. Researchers from the International Rice Research Institute in Manila, Philippines, using CRISPR-cas9 gene editing, have thwarted the bacteria that infect rice by changing rice genes involved in sugar transport.

We are saddened to report the death in August this year of a friend to B4FA, Professor Martin Diran Makinde, Senior Adviser at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). B4FA Founder, Professor Sir Brian Heap writes, ‘We are saddened to hear of the death of our dear friend, Diran Makinde. Oludare J Olusan highlights his many distinctions in a recent issue of Nigerians in South Africa and we want to add and warmly acknowledge the professional advice Diran provided during our ongoing projects – Biosciences in Africa and Smart Villages. We will always remember with gratitude his deep knowledge of the contrasting development issues in African countries, his insights into the application of new technologies of agricultural biotechnology for food security and nutrition, and his appreciation of innovation in the process of improving rural livelihoods. He will be greatly missed not only for his professionalism but for the personal charm and sensitivity that underpinned his real faith in working for the betterment of humanity. He was a wise and special African friend and counsellor.’

We welcome questions, comments and story links to ullsteinb@gmail.com. Please also visit B4FA.org for further reading and useful resources – and follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with daily news and join the conversation.

HEADLINES
Cut global emissions by 7.6 percent every year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target – UN report
UN Environment

Why food systems need to change – an interview with the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) food systems expert James Lomax
UN Environment

A crop that feeds billions, rice, freed from blight by CRISPR
Nature, UK

Professor Martin Diran Makinde, Senior Adviser at NEPAD, dies in Johannesburg at 70
Nigerians in South Africa

Golden rice
GMO Golden Rice lauded as one of the most important research projects over the past 50 years
Genetic Literacy Project, US

IRRI and other proponents of Golden Rice claim that it will be an important intervention to address vitamin A deficiency, or VAD
CBAN Fact sheet

How misguided regulation has kept a GMO ‘superfood’ off the market
Genetic Literacy Project, US

Golden rice finally on track for approval in Bangladesh, so what is the delay?
The European Scientist