Consumers are wary of genetically engineered crops, but FSE Director Rosamond Naylor makes the case for the role that GMOs can play in fighting persistent hunger in some of the world's poorest and malnourished places. Her perspective was included in a debate about GMOs that recently appeared in Boston Review.

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by FSE researchers finds smallholder irrigation has great potential to reduce hunger, raise incomes, and improve development prospects in an area of the world greatly in need of these advancements.

But even the cheapest pumps can still be prohibitively expensive without financing.

Distributed irrigation systems are those in which the water access (via pump or human power), distribution (furrow, watering can, sprinkler, drip lines, etc.), and use all occur at or near the same location.

These systems have the potential to use water more productively, improve nutritional outcomes and rural development, and narrow the income disparities that permit widespread hunger to persist despite economic advancement.

Only 4 percent of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa is currently irrigated. 

"Success stories can be found where distributed systems are used in a cooperative setting, permitting the sharing of knowledge, risk, credit and marketing as we've seen in our solar market garden project in Benin," said lead author Jennifer Burney

Moving forward development communities and sub-Saharan African governments need a better understanding of present water resources and how they will be affected by climate change.

"Farmers need access to financial services—credit and insurance—appropriate for a range of production systems," said co-author Rosamond L. Naylor. "Investments should start at a smaller scale, with thorough project evaluation, before scaling up."

FSE continues to contribute to these evaluations and added eight new villages to our project in Benin last year.

Climate change is already affecting crop production around the world through rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns and increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. A new Stanford study published June 14 in Environmental Research Letters examines extreme heat effects on crops during the flowering period and finds the world's staple crops are increasingly at risk.

We are beginning to see exposure to reproductive extreme heat for wheat in Central & South Asia and for rice in South Asia. Maize (corn) harvested area exposed to extreme heat is projected to grow from 15% in the 2000s to 44% by 2050. By 2050, all crops will see increased exposure, especially in tropical areas. For rice, the primary growing areas in South, Southeast and East Asia will become increasingly risky, whereas for wheat, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East will continue to be problematic.

Stanford scientists joined colleagues in presenting California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday with a consensus statement sounding the alarm on climate change and urging action on pollution, population growth, overconsumption and other global environmental challenges.

The document, which was signed by 520 scientists from 44 countries, warns that Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point, and if nothing changes, "we will suffer substantial degradation."

Forty-eight Stanford scientists endorsed the statement. Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, was one of eight faculty members who helped draft the statement.

"By the time today's children reach middle age, it is extremely likely that Earth's life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged by the magnitude, global extent and combination of these human-caused environmental stressors, unless we take concrete, immediate actions to ensure a sustainable, high-quality future," the scientists write in a summary of the statement.

Before receiving the statement, Brown said it's important that scientists communicate clearly to the public.

"We're in a war here in the contest of ideas," he said. "You have to reach people who are skeptical, disinterested and maybe even somewhat hostile."

Later, he urged those who support the statement to spread its message.

"You have to become missionaries," the governor said.

The statement, "Maintaining Humanity's Life Support System in the 21st Century," offers broad-brush solutions for challenges including climate change, loss of eco-diversity, extinctions, pollution, population growth and overconsumption of resources.

"It's important to start fixing these problems today – not next week, next year or next decade," the statement's lead author, Anthony Barnosky, a University of California-Berkeley integrative biology professor and Cox Visiting Professor in Stanford's Department of Environmental Earth System Science, said before the event. "We want to deliver this message to every world leader in government, business, religious institutions and people in all walks of life. These are big problems, but they are fixable."

Among the scientists who joined Barnosky on the stage when he presented the statement to Brown were Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellows Rodolfo Dirzo, Paul Ehrlich, Elizabeth Hadly and Stephen Palumbi, as well as Anne Ehrlich, a senior research scientist in Stanford's Biology Department.

"This statement deciphers decades of science describing how humans have radically changed the planet," said Hadly, one of 23 senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment who signed the statement. "I hope it helps policymakers of California and the world practice effective global stewardship."

Among the statement's recommendations:

• Replace fossil fuels with carbon-neutral energy sources such as solar, wind and biofuels
• Promote energy-efficient buildings, transportation and manufacturing systems
• Plan adaptation measures for climatic impacts such as sea-level rise
• Recognize the long-term economic benefits and intangible gains that accrue from protecting natural ecosystems, and act accordingly in dealing with pressures such as overfishing
• Improve the efficiency of food production and distribution
• Slow and eventually stop world population growth by ensuring access to education, economic opportunities and health care, including family planning services, with a special focus on women's rights

The effort grew out of a conversation between Brown and Barnosky, lead author of a 2012 paper warning that Earth is approaching a tipping point beyond which the planet's climate and biodiversity will be radically and unalterably changed beyond anything humanity has known.

"Governor Brown asked me last year why, if global change is such a big deal, scientists are just publishing in scientific journals and not translating their findings into terms that policymakers, industry and the general public can understand and start to address," Barnosky said.

"In 30 years, there are a few things that people will credit us for doing now or bemoan our failure if we don't," said statement co-author Stephen Palumbi, a professor of biology at Stanford and director of the university's Hopkins Marine Station. "Grappling with climate change, and stopping it, is the best gift we can give the future, because unstopped it will crack our society and impoverish our children."

The statement's signers include two Nobel Prize winners and dozens of members of national academies of science around the world.

In addition to Naylor, the other Stanford faculty who helped write the document were Gretchen Daily, Rodolfo Dirzo, Anne Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich, Elizabeth Hadly, Harold A. Mooney, and Stephen Palumbi.

The 40 other Stanford faculty members who signed the statement are Kenneth J. Arrow, Khalid Aziz, Sally Benson, Carol Boggs, Meg Caldwell, Page Chamberlain, Craig Criddle, Larry Crowder, Lisa Curran, Giulio De Leo, Rob Dunbar, Marcus Feldman, Scott Fendorf, Tad Fukami, Christopher Gardner, Deborah Gordon, Phil Hanawalt, Craig Heller, Martin Hellman, Jamie Jones, Pat Jones, Donald Kennedy, Julie Kennedy, Jeffrey R. Koseff, Eric Lambin, Stephen Luby, Gil Masters, Perry McCarty, Sue McConnell, Michael McGehee, Fiorenza Micheli, Jonathan Payne, Kabir Peay, Dmitri Petrov, Erica Plambeck, Terry Root, Ross Shachter, Robert Street, Peter Vitousek and Charley Yanofsky.

Households depend upon food prices, incomes, and disease burdens that impact the ability to use consumed food. Climate change and extreme temperatures impact all of these factors. In this talk, David Lobell focuses on the impact of heat in growing regions that are important for food prices. He reviews recent research on heat impacts and discusses whether crop yields are becoming more or less sensitive to heat.