The Center on Food Security and the Environment is a joint effort of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
George Azzari joined FSE as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in February 2015. He worked with David Lobell on designing, implementing, and applying new satellite-based monitoring techniques to study several aspects of food security. His current focuses include estimates of crop yields, crop classification, and detection of management practices in Africa, Asia, and the United States. He is currently the Chief Technology Office at Atlas AI.
George's research uses a variety of satellite sensors from the private and public sector -including Landsat (NASA/USGS), Sentinel 1 and 2 (ESA), MODIS (NASA), RapidEye (Planet), Planet Scope (Planet), and Skysat (Terrabella)- combined with crop modeling and machine learning techniques. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, where he worked with Mike Goulden on monitoring post-fire succession of southern California ecosystems from remote sensing data. He examined the impact of topographic illumination effects on long time series of optical satellite data.
Over the last two decades global production of soybean and palm oil seeds have increased enormously. Because these tropically rainfed crops are used for food, cooking, animal feed, and biofuels, they have entered the agriculture, food, and energy chains of most nations despite their actual growth being increasingly concentrated in Southeast Asia and South America. The planting of these crops is controversial because they are sown on formerly forested lands, rely on large farmers and agribusiness rather than smallholders for their development, and supply export markets. The contrasts with the famed Green Revolution in rice and wheat of the 1960s through the 1980s are stark, as those irrigated crops were primarily grown by smallholders, depended upon public subsidies for cultivation, and served largely domestic sectors.
The overall aim of the book is to provide a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the rapid expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. After introducing the dramatic surge in oil crops, chapters provide a comparative perspective from different producing regions for two of the world's most important crops, oil palm and soybeans in the tropics. The following chapters examine the drivers of demand of vegetable oils for food, animal feed, and biodiesel and introduce the reader to price formation in vegetable oil markets and the role of trade in linking consumers across the world to distant producers in a handful of exporting countries. The remaining chapters review evidence on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution in the tropics. While both economic benefits and social and environmental costs have been huge, the outlook is for reduced trade-offs and more sustainable outcomes as the oil crop revolution slows and the global, national, and local communities converge on ways to better managed land use changes and land rights.
To predict how agriculture will be affected by future climate change, scientists often rely on a single crop model – a computer simulation of how a specific crop’s yield responds to temperature changes. By combining 30 such models into a single study, and comparing each model against data from existing experimental wheat fields around the world, a team of researchers including Stanford professor David Lobell have developed a more powerful and accurate way to predict future wheat yields.
In a new analysis published in Nature Climate Change, the team’s results support previous work suggesting that wheat yields around the world are sensitive to rising temperatures. Using the new method of analysis, the team estimates an average six percent future yield loss for every one degree Celsius rise in global mean temperature.
“Combining 30 models gives us a much greater ability to predict future impacts and understand past impacts,” said Lobell. “This is a clear step forward.”
Lobell is professor of environmental earth system science in the School of Earth Science at Stanford and the deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. He is a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The estimated six percent yield loss for every degree increase is equivalent to about a quarter of the current volume of wheat traded globally in 2013. Yields at some sites, notably those in Mexico, Brazil, India and Sudan, show simulated wheat yield losses of more than 20 percent - in Sudan’s case, more than 50 percent - under a scenario in which global mean temperature rises by two degrees Celsius.
With higher temperatures also comes an increase in the variability of wheat yields, both by location and between years. More fluctuation in wheat yields could mean greater global price volatility for the staple crop.
Approximately 70 percent of the wheat produced today is grown either on irrigated plots or in rainy regions. The research team accounted for this factor by focusing its simulations on multiple regional-specific varieties of wheat that are commonly grown under these conditions.
The new paper includes several suggestions for avoiding some of the predicted yield losses. For example, some varieties of wheat are more heat tolerant than others, and farmers in the places hardest hit by rising temperatures could switch varieties to capitalize on this heat resistance. The effects of rising temperatures could also be managed, in part, by adjusting sowing and harvesting dates, or changing the way fertilizers are applied to crops.
Contact: David Lobell, dlobell@stanford.edu
If we are to feed by 2050 a growing population that is increasingly adopting western style diets we will have to intensify food production - producing more but on the same amount or less of land and with the same amount or less of water. Moreover this has to be done in a sustainable manner, i.e. with much lower environmental impact and greater resilience. We can do this with ecological approaches, genetic approaches and socio-economic approaches. Each has its pros and cons.
Sir Gordon Conway is a Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London and Director of Agriculture for Impact, a grant funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on European support of agricultural development in Africa.
From 2005-2009 he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development. Previously he was President of The Rockefeller Foundation and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex.
He was educated at the Universities of Wales (Bangor), Cambridge, West Indies (Trinidad) and California (Davis). His discipline is agricultural ecology. In the early 1960's, working in Sabah, North Borneo, he became one of the pioneers of sustainable agriculture.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004 and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2007. He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George in 2005. He was recently President of the Royal Geographical Society.
He has authored The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for all in the 21st century (Penguin and University Press, Cornell) and co-authored Science and Innovation for Development (UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS)). His most recent book One Billion Hungry: Can we Feed the World? was published in October 2012.
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Rosamond (Roz) Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor, Emerita, of Global Environmental Policy in the Doerr School of Sustainability; and founding Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She has been involved in numerous field-level research projects around the world with her students and has published widely on issues related to global food systems, food policy, and aquaculture. She is the co-chair of The Blue Food Assessment, an international initiative aimed at providing a comprehensive scientific evaluation of the sustainability, nutrition, equity, and justice dimensions of aquatic foods cultured and captured in freshwater and marine environments within the global food system. She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a Pew Marine Fellow, and a Leopold Leadership Fellow. She is also the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Aspen Global Change Institute and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana. At Stanford, she teaches courses on The World Food Economy, Human Society and Environmental Change, and Food and Security.
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David Lobell is the Benjamin M. Page Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Earth System Science and the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. He is also the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy and Research (SIEPR).
Lobell's research focuses on agriculture and food security, specifically on generating and using unique datasets to study rural areas throughout the world. His early research focused on climate change risks and adaptations in cropping systems, and he served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report as lead author for the food chapter and core writing team member for the Summary for Policymakers. More recent work has developed new techniques to measure progress on sustainable development goals and study the impacts of climate-smart practices in agriculture. His work has been recognized with various awards, including the Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union (2010), a Macarthur Fellowship (2013), the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences (2022) and election to the National Academy of Sciences (2023).
Prior to his Stanford appointment, Lobell was a Lawrence Post-doctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University and a Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University.
Michael McFaul, a Stanford political scientist and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been selected as the next director of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The announcement was made Wednesday by Stanford Provost John Etchemendy and Ann Arvin, the university’s vice provost and dean of research. McFaul will succeed Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who was nominated in July as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court and elected Tuesday.
McFaul takes the helm of FSI in January.
"Stanford has long been a home for scholars who connect academia to policy and public service, and Professor McFaul is the embodiment of that model," Etchemendy said. "We are grateful for Mike's service and confident he will be a strong leader for FSI."
Arvin said McFaul is a strong fit for the position.
“Professor McFaul’s background as an outstanding scholar and his service as an influential ambassador give him a vital perspective to lead FSI, which is Stanford’s hub for studying and understanding international policy issues,” she said. “His scholarship, experience and energy will keep FSI and Stanford at the forefront of international studies as well as some of the most pressing global policy debates."
McFaul has been a faculty member in the department of political science at Stanford since 1994. He joined the Obama administration in January 2009, serving for three years as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House. He then served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014.
McFaul already has a deep affiliation with FSI. Before joining the government, he served as FSI deputy director from 2006 to 2009. He also directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) from 2005 to 2009.
During his four years leading CDDRL, McFaul launched the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship program for mid-career lawyers, politicians, advocates and business leaders working to shore up democratic institutions in their home countries. He also established CDDRL’s senior honors program. From 1992-1994, McFaul also worked as a Senior Research Fellow at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
“I am thrilled to be assuming a leadership role again at FSI,” McFaul said. “FSI has become one of the premier institutions in the country for policy-relevant research on international affairs. I look forward to using my recent government experience to deepen further FSI’s impact on policy debates in Washington and around the world.”
Arvin said McFaul’s previous positions at FSI and CDDRL will make for a smooth transition in the institute’s leadership.
“His familiarity with FSI’s history and infrastructure will allow him to start this new position with an immediate focus on the institute’s academic mission,” she said.
McFaul is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and plans to build on his long affiliations with both Hoover and FSI to deepen cooperation between these two premier public policy institutions on campus.
He has written and co-authored dozens of books including Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.
“In so many ways, Mike represents the best of FSI,” said Cuéllar, who has held leadership positions at FSI since 2004 and begins his term on the California Supreme Court in January. “He knows the worlds of academia and policy extremely well, and will bring unique experience and sound judgment to his new role at FSI.”
McFaul currently serves as a news analyst for NBC News, appearing frequently on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC as a commentator on international affairs. He also appears frequently on The Charlie Rose Show and The Newshour, as well as PBS and BBC radio programs. He has recently published essays in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Politico, and Time.
McFaul was one of the first U.S. ambassadors to actively use social media for public diplomacy. He still maintains an active presence on Facebook at amb.mcfaul and on Twitter at @McFaul.
McFaul received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
“Since coming here in 1981 as 17-year-old kid from Montana, Stanford has provided me with tremendous opportunities to grow as a student, scholar, and policymaker,” McFaul said. “I now look forward to giving back to Stanford by contributing to the development of one of the most vital and innovative institutions on campus.”
In a recent speech, Stanford professor Rosamond Naylor examined the wide range of challenges contributing to global food insecurity, which Naylor defined as a lack of plentiful, nutritious and affordable food. Naylor's lecture, titled "Feeding the World in the 21st Century," was part of the quarterly Earth Matters series sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies and the Stanford School of Earth Sciences. Naylor, a professor of Environmental Earth System Science and director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford, is also a professor (by courtesy) of Economics, and the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
"One billion people go to bed day in and day out with chronic hunger," said Naylor. The problem of food insecurity, she explained, goes far beyond food supply. "We produce enough calories, just with cereal crops alone, to feed everyone on the planet," she said. Rather, food insecurity arises from a complex and interactive set of factors including poverty, malnutrition, disease, conflict, poor governance and volatile prices. Food supply depends on limited natural resources including water and energy, and food accessibility depends on government policies about land rights, biofuels, and food subsidies. Often, said Naylor, food policies in one country can impact food security in other parts of the world. Solutions to global hunger must account for this complexity, and for the "evolving" nature of food security.
As an example of this evolution, Naylor pointed to the success of China and India in reducing hunger rates from 70 percent to 15 percent within a single generation. Economic growth was key, as was the "Green Revolution," a series of advances in plant breeding, irrigation and agricultural technology that led to a doubling of global cereal crop production between 1970 and 2010. But Naylor warned that the success of the Green Revolution can lead to complacency about present-day food security challenges. China, for example, sharply reduced hunger as it underwent rapid economic growth, but now faces what Naylor described as a "second food security challenge" of micronutrient deficiency. Anemia, which is caused by a lack of dietary iron and which Naylor said is common in many rural areas of China, can permanently damage children's cognitive development and school performance, and eventually impede a country’s economic growth.
Although hunger is more prevalent in the developing world, food insecurity knows no geographic boundaries, said Naylor. Every country, including wealthy economies like the United States, struggles with problems of food availability, access, and nutrition. "Rather than think of this as 'their problem' that we don't need to deal with, really it's our problem too," Naylor said.
She pointed out that one in five children in the United States is chronically hungry, and 50 million Americans receive government food assistance. Many more millions go to soup kitchens every night, she added. "We are in a precarious position with our own food security, with big implications for public health and educational attainment," Naylor said. A major paradox of the United States' food security challenge is that hunger increasingly coexists with obesity. For the poorest Americans, cheap food offers abundant calories but low nutritional value. To improve the health and food security of millions of Americans, "linking policy in a way that can enhance the incomes of the poorest is really important, and it's the hard part,” she said.” It's not easy to fix the inequality issue."
When asked whether there were any "easy" decisions that the global community can agree to, Naylor responded, "What we need to do for a lot of these issues is pretty clear, but how we get after it is not always agreed upon." She added, "But I think we've seen quite a few success stories," including the growing research on climate resilient crops, new scientific tools such as plant genetics, improved modeling techniques for water and irrigation systems, and better knowledge about how to use fertilizer more efficiently. She also said that the growing body of agriculture-focused climate research was encouraging, and that Stanford is a leader on this front.
Naylor is the editor and co-author of The Evolving Sphere of Food Security, a new book from Oxford University Press. The book features a team of 19 faculty authors from 5 Stanford schools including Earth science, economics, law, engineering, medicine, political science, international relations, and biology. The all-Stanford lineup was intentional, Naylor said, because the university is committed to interdisciplinary research that addresses complex global issues like food security, and because "agriculture is incredibly dominated by policy, and Stanford has a long history of dealing with some of these policy elements. This is the glue that enables us to answer really challenging questions."
