David Lobell, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been named a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and one of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013.

MacArthur "Genius Grant"

Lobell, who is also the associate director of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment, was cited "for unearthing richly informative, but often underutilized sources of data to investigate the impact of climate change on crop production and global food security." He received his doctorate degree from Stanford in 2005 and was appointed to the faculty in 2009.

A pioneer of the emerging field of crop informatics, Lobell is revolutionizing the understanding of the environmental factors controlling crop yields, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change.

His work provides decision makers, for the first time, with critical information about how to adapt agricultural development to climate change.

"I was completely surprised by this recognition, but am really excited by the opportunity it presents," said Lobell, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "To have the MacArthur Foundation recognize the value of taking new approaches and the importance of the topics of hunger and food production is deeply gratifying."

Lobell's research focuses on identifying opportunities to increase yields of crops including wheat and corn in major agricultural regions, with projects currently underway in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States. 

"I'm interested in how to feed the world and protect the environment at the same time," he said. "While there are many theories about how to do that, my work tries to test these theories, often using data that were collected for completely different reasons."

The citation emphasized Lobell's work on understanding the risks of climate change, and options for adaptation. "Climate change is one of the reasons for concern about feeding people in the future, but it's not insurmountable if good decisions are made," he said. 

When asked how he would use the funding, Lobell said he would not rush the decision. He said that some of the award would likely relieve him of writing grant proposals. In addition, he said he would consider using some toward more travel.

"A lot of my better ideas in the past have started with travel and interactions with international collaborations," he said.  "And there's always a tradeoff between my work travel and family.  I now might take my wife and young sons with me on some extended trips."

Foreign Policy's Leading Global Thinkers

In December, Foreign Policy named Lobell one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013. The recognition comes for his work "helping farmers feed the world" in a changing climate. Lobell is joined on the magazine's list by fellow researchers working on climate issues, along with prominent public figures like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Pope Francis.

Widely sought throughout the world to provide expert advice, Lobell is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report chapter on food security, to be published in 2014. The IPCC, which won the Nobel Prize in 2007, also made Foreign Policy's 2013 Leading Global Thinkers list alongside Lobell, "for showing that humanity is on the brink of catastrophe" if climate change is not addressed quickly and aggressively.

Lobell studied applied mathematics at Brown University, and before receiving his bachelor's degree in 2000, he spent the summer of 1999 as a research intern at Stanford, developing remote sensing algorithms. He then pursued graduate studies at Stanford, receiving his doctorate in geological and environmental sciences in 2005.

He was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2005-2007, and returned to Stanford as a senior research scholar in the Program on Food Security and the Environment in 2008-2009.  He accepted an appointment as assistant professor in the Stanford School of Earth Sciences in 2009. 

In addition to his research, Lobell teaches several courses open to both undergraduates and graduate students, including "Feeding Nine Billion," "Climate and Agriculture," and "Global Land Use to 2050," as well as modeling and statistical methods classes.

Lobell received a NASA New Investigator Program Award for 2008-2011. He received the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2010, awarded for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding scientist under the age of 36.

Nancy Peterson is the chief communications officer for Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. Laura Seaman, communications manager for the Center on Food Security and the Environment, contributed to this article.

America may have legitimate competitive reasons to worry about the number of computer science and engineering graduates from elite Chinese and Indian universities – the figure dwarfs that of U.S. students with similar degrees.

But a new book by Stanford researchers and others says that the concern that these countries will develop their own centers of high-tech production and innovation and draw research, development and scholarship away from American shores is still premature.

The research, a multidisciplinary look at the growth of higher education in the world's four largest developing economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China (known collectively as the BRICs) – analyzes the quality of institutions, the quantity of people getting degrees and equal access to education.

The book, University Expansion in a Changing Global Economy: Triumph of the BRICS?, is published by Stanford University Press.

"In the past 20 years, university systems in these big countries have just exploded," said Martin Carnoy, a Stanford professor of education and one of the authors. Carnoy is also an affilate of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

"So the questions are why did it happen and what are the implications? And specifically, what are the implications for the U.S. if the market is flooded with new scientists and engineers? Are we going to be overwhelmed? What happens to their societies if all the energy is focused on elite institutions," Carnoy said.

The researchers approached their questions with the belief that societies, and governments, can be judged by the way they invest in and organize their public higher education systems.

For example, how well these countries create a labor force that is competitive in the information age depends on the quality of higher education. Whether people have equal chances to succeed relies on having colleges that are accessible to even the poorest students. And how effectively a country expands its university system may determine how successful it is at growing a robust economy and competing with the United States and Europe, the scholars argue.

"If you have economic growth and provide educational opportunities, you're perceived as a legitimate, successful government," Carnoy said. "So our theory was, if you can pull this off, if you can successfully expand your university systems, you are likely a pretty efficient government."

BRIC undergraduate education increased from about 19 million students in 2000 to more than 40 million students in 2010. The largest increase was in China, which went from less than 3 million to almost 12 million bachelor's degree students during that period, the study says.

Financing elite schools

The study found that BRIC countries are pouring money into their elite colleges in an effort to create world-class institutions and have their graduates compete with the United States and Europe.

Researchers say the elite colleges are much better for the focused investment, and the engineers and computer scientists are graduating with similar competency and training as those from developed countries.

But the mass institutions are receiving fewer resources, the study says, and that's where most of the students go. In 2009, 2.1 million of the 2.5 million total bachelor's graduates in China matriculated from mass institutions, not elite ones. In India, it was 2.2 million of 2.3 million.

This widening funding gap between top schools and mass institutions has broad implications, the scholars argue. The gap has the potential to slow economic growth domestically, deepen income inequality and create less social mobility.

Students who go to the mass institutions aren't getting high quality, competitive educational experiences, the study says, and many of the students also get stuck with big bills as funding assistance is directed toward the elite universities.

"What happens, then, is they are doing a good job of educating students at the elite levels, but they are not doing a good job of educating students at the non-elite levels who are also fundamental for the economy," said Prashant Loyalka, a research fellow at FSI and one of the study's authors.

In absolute terms, the sheer numbers of students graduating from elite institutions in computer science and engineering majors in these countries is also high. In China, for example, the total number of computer science and engineering graduates from elite universities is more than the total number of such graduates from the United States.

But sustaining and building innovation hubs requires more than the elite, the researchers said. The engine of these new economies is the rest of the population – those that attend mass institutions.

"In the United States, we have relied on competent second-tier engineers. They are the guts of our system. We need good students in all fields in these second-tier universities because the top-tier universities just don't produce that many graduates. They simply don't," Carnoy said.

He warned that this redistribution of funds away from second-tier institutions is a concern in the United States as well. "To an extent the BRICs have to do it, because they don't have enough resources to go around. But do we have to do it? The answer is probably no. It certainly should be no," Carnoy said.

The research is one of the first empirical and comparative looks at the higher education systems across these countries, and relied on in-country interviews, surveys, data analysis and classroom observation.

Report card

Overall, the researchers found that significant challenges remain as these countries march toward creating universities that can rank alongside those in the United States and Europe.

China, the scholars said, is doing pretty well, but Russia and Brazil are question marks.

"Russia has provided the vast majority of its people with a high level of education, but it has lagged in terms of putting money into research," Loyalka said. "Brazil has a high-level of graduate education and research at its top-tier public institutions, and these institutions are receiving a lot of support. However, the vast majority of students attend private institutions, which are, on average, of dubious quality."

India, Loyalka noted, was surprising. Despite its very good technical universities, he said, "you have a small proportion of Indians going to those, and the mass institutions are of really poor quality."

"The higher education system in India does not appear to be well organized," Loyalka said.

Among other recommendations, the researchers said India should increase its graduate education and, along with Russia, increase spending on research.

The project began in 2007 as an interdisciplinary venture supported by FSI, and incorporated scholars in economics and international comparative education at Stanford Graduate School of Education, FSI and universities in Moscow and Beijing.

Several articles focusing on different aspects of the review also have been published over the past year. The most recent, which appears in the July/August issue of the journal Change, highlights the research on quality and quantity of graduates in engineering and computer science from the four countries.

Besides Carnoy and Loyalka, the scholars involved in the project include Maria Dobryakova, a research associate and the director for portals at the Center for Monitoring Quality Education at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow; Rafiq Dossani, a senior economist at RAND Corp. and former senior research scholar at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute; Isak Froumin, a mathematician and director of the Institute for Educational Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow; Katherine Kuhns, who received her PhD in the International and Comparative Education Program at Stanford Graduate School of Education; Jandhyala B. G. Tilak, a professor at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration in New Delhi, India; and Rong Wang, director and professor of the China Institute for Educational Finance Research at Peking University.

Brooke Donald is the social sciences writer at the Stanford News Service.

My wife and I are again spending the summer on our farm in Eastern Iowa. I am fourth-generation from land just a mile away, first settled by the Falcon family in 1858. My wife is also fourth-generation, from the farmstead we now own. Our land is a medium-sized corn, soybean, and cow and calf operation in the heart of a very rural Iowa county—though Starbucks is only seven miles away!  Summers here provide a pleasant change from my day job, which is as Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy at Stanford University.  It helps when teaching agriculture to have one’s feet in the soil.  In 2013, “in the mud” is a more appropriate phrase.

My farm notes from 2012 chronicled the problems of farming during one of Eastern Iowa’s most severe droughts. Because of high temperatures and low rainfall, it was a truly miserable production year for farmers—made only mediocre financially rather than miserable—by the widespread use of crop insurance. Drought affected many states, and last year the national federal subsidies on crop insurance were nearly $15 billion, more than the total that was spent combined on all of the other farm-related programs in the federal Farm Bill. 

But what a difference a year makes. We have gone from one of the very hottest and driest years on record to one of very coldest and wettest. But what a difference a year makes.  We have gone from one of the very hottest and driest years on record to one of very coldest and wettest. For Iowa, it was the wettest spring ever, eclipsing the 1892 record.  The riskiness of farming is something to see in real time; it is also very instructive to listen as farmers talk about coping with uncertainty. Listening to them is not very difficult if one is prepared to invest a bit of time.  In most rural areas, there is typically a restaurant, diner, or some other slightly disreputable place where farmers gather for early morning coffee.  For our group, it is the old limestone store in Waubeek—the limestone having been hauled by horses in 1868 from nearby quarries at Stone City, the historic home of Iowa’s most famous painter, Grant Wood. What have not changed from last year are the watery coffee, the stale cookies, and the energetic exchange of farm tales—mostly true, occasionally coarse, and sometimes more than a little embellished.

As with last year, the talk is about weather—though now the signs have all been reversed.   Last spring it was dry; this spring it was wet. It rained and rained and rained.  During the critical planting period of April, May and June, it rained in significant amounts in our area for 40 days. We received 21 inches in total, as compared with less than 8 inches last year.  Much of it came in torrents, leading to significant erosion, runoff, and flooding. Moreover, the weather was cold.  The local weather station reports that average temperatures for May and June were about 6 degrees cooler than in 2012, which is huge as those kinds of comparisons go. 

Farmers have had plenty of time for morning conversations, since the fields were so wet there was not much else to do.  They commiserated about a lot of things, and here are some of things I heard and learned. Virtually everyone said planting had been delayed at least three weeks beyond the first week in May, the date most think is their optimal planting time.  Perhaps a quarter said that the delays were so bad that they were shifting some fields from corn to soybeans, since the latter typically do better than corn if planted in June.  Everyone spoke of having fields with low spots that would simply go unplanted, or if planted, were flooded out with zero yields expected.  (And everyone was checking the fine print of their crop insurance policies to determine coverage for land that could not be planted due to weather, so-called “prevented” acres.)

The temperatures were so cool that corn seeds often lay in the ground and rotted or only germinated partially.  They talked about the merits of re-planting—the costly process of “tearing out” what had already been planted to replace it with new seed.  The calculus of that decision is complicated, since it involves further delays in the crop cycle and, at a minimum, the cost of new seed and tractor fuel. New corn hybrids cost up to $100 per acre, depending on the special traits that have been stacked into the seeds, thus putting seed costs on par with those of nitrogen fertilizer.  All farmers grow genetically modified corn, and those who initially had paid extra for the more expensive, drought-resistant seed seemed more resigned—“the cost of doing business”—than angry.

There was also great concern about fertilization this year.  Agronomists have been urging farmers to put nitrogen into the ground (called side-dressing) when plants needed the nutrient, rather than prior to planting, to help prevent nitrogen losses due to runoff or into the atmosphere and groundwater.  My neighbors know that nitrogen runoff is a problem, but as one put it, “this year we are screwed; because of the rain, we can’t get back into the fields with supplemental nitrogen.”

The number of rainy days was totally frustrating for livestock farmers as well, most of whom also grow alfalfa for forage.  There was barely a sequence of dry days long enough to make hay.  The quality of the alfalfa diminished, as it grew tall and coarse. On our farm, we actually baled hay on the 4^th of July. The lateness of this first cutting will mean the loss of at least one, and possibly two, later cuttings. The latter, of course, are the most valuable in terms of quality and price per bale.

The 4^th is also the traditional benchmarking date for the corn crop.  Historically, corn was supposed to be “knee high by the 4^th.”  But with new varieties of seed and early planting dates, corn is typically shoulder high. In 2013, however, it really was knee high and looking puny and yellowish.  The 4^th is traditionally also the start of the season for sweet corn—the best in the world!  But it too was delayed by more than two weeks.  The bit of good news is that the Japanese beetles, a fierce pest in 2011 and 2012 to both soybeans and home gardens, have yet to appear.

The flooding that accompanied the rain was huge. Iowa expects to lose substantial acres of corn because of flooded fields.  Almost every farmer I know was affected in some way or another.  The week after we arrived from California, for example, we had two severe storm warnings and one tornado warning in the first four days.  The tornado blew around us, but the latter of the storms came in torrents. With the rivers running high, and with the soils saturated, flash floods happen almost instantaneously, as we experienced first-hand.  Our large permanent pasture, summer home for the red Angus cow and calf herd, contains a medium sized creek.  It quickly overflowed flooding the entire pasture.  The cows and calves were understandably unhappy, bawling loudly and persistently, thereby triggering a 5 am rodeo in the rain as they got moved to the barn on higher ground.  (Rodeos in the rain are not fun, however glamorous and intriguing the thought may be. There is always one calf….) But it was a good thing the move was made.  For later in the morning, we saw that the flood had taken out 50 yards of fence, thus opening the pasture up to the adjacent highway.  And for those interested, repairing creek fences is not a whole lot of fun either.

That same storm had countywide effects as well.  The Linn County Fair was to open on June 26th, and unfortunately the fair grounds sit alongside the good-sized Wapsipinicon River.  The storm had pelted areas upstream and the river was rising rapidly. There was a decision to be made.  National and local weather service models projected a crest of 25 feet, which would mean four feet of water in the grandstand, and a small lake where the exhibits were to be.  The fair was called off, and that is a BIG decision for a rural area. It affected almost every farm family, especially the farm boys and girls who had spent literally a year preparing their 4-H and F.F.A. (Future Farmers) projects—from livestock to sewing—for the competition. Everyone then waited in gloom for the fairground to flood.  But it didn’t!  The fair had been canceled for naught.

The forecasters had missed the river crest, and missed badly. What was estimated at 25 feet, turned out in fact to be 14.95 feet. Everyone thought that a miss by one foot was understandable, but that a miss by ten feet was sheer incompetence!  They were relieved that the flood had passed, and bore no ill will against the fair committee.  But the coffee conversations the next few days were blue about government forecasters.  I cringed, given my day job, when one of my neighbors said, “those weather guys are even worse than the damned economists.”   And that comment then triggered a lengthy conversation about the Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts for the size of the new (2013) corn crop.

Despite the wetness in the Midwest, the USDA at the time was predicting a record corn harvest for 2013.  Farmers, who tend to be a bit myopic and to see and think the whole world is like their county, simply didn’t believe the numbers—neither the area nor the yield forecasts.  Those estimates of a big crop were helping to drive prices for the 2013 crop down to about $5 per bushel for corn, relative to the $7 per bushel farmers had received during 2012 and the early months of 2013.  Several of them argued that it was a deliberate attempt by the government to drive down prices. I suggested that it wasn’t what the government thought, but what markets believed that was important.  But they had a point, because the markets couldn’t figure out the estimates either, with a great deal of day-to-day variation in prices based on weather assumptions, both in the U.S. and in China.

At last the rains finally broke and there was a week of dry weather.  What happened in the countryside then was nothing short of amazing. Farmers, typically with help from their spouses and extended families, worked 24/7.  Tractors, with lights, comfort cabs, and sophisticated GPS systems to do virtually all of the steering, pulled 16- or even 24-row planters; they were everywhere one looked. So much planting took place in those few days that fertilizer dealers were overwhelmed by the logistics of moving sufficient quantities of starter fertilizer into the countryside. During that one week alone, 56 per cent of Iowa’s entire corn crop was planted!

These notes are being written in real time, and what this year’s harvest will bring eventually is now anyone’s guess.  At a minimum, the harvest will be late, which means that an early frost could be a very serious problem.  Farmers now are beginning also to worry about late-season precipitation. (My wife is convinced that we have had our rain for the season, and that from now on we will see drought.) Farmers are not an optimistic lot when it comes to forecasting weather! But at this point in the season, most of farming is waiting.

My clearest conclusions from the last two years are about risk.  Farmers and farming communities face lots of it, and in almost every direction they turn.  (I smile inwardly every time I am told by neighbors, “I don’t see how you can live in California with all those earthquakes!”) Modern corn-belt agriculture is complicated, capital-intensive, and uncertain. That is why federal crop insurance is already such a key element in the new Farm Bill, and likely to become even more so in the context of future climate variability and change.  Finally, anyone who believes that farming is done by those who can’t do anything else, or that farms are quiet, idyllic places, ought really to spend a summer on an Iowa farm. 

Seeds of Sustainability tackles a central challenge of sustainable development: agricultural modernization. It is cutting edge not because the issue itself is new, but rather the level of integration the authors attempted and the innovative process they used. The volume summarizes the findings and reflects on the process of a highly interdisciplinary team of researchers, integrating perspectives from: biogeochemistry, atmospheric sciences, land-use change, institutions, agronomy, economics, and knowledge systems. The foundation of the work is rigorous, grounding its findings in multiple peer reviewed publications, while not hesitating to point out gaps or unresolved issues. Seeds of Sustainability includes an in depth historical analysis, which captures issues of path dependence. It demonstrates both originality and critical reflectiveness in its efforts to engage practitioners in the conceptualization and execution of its research, and the implementation of its findings. And almost uniquely in our collective experience, it speaks seriously, frankly, and insightfully to the challenges of institutionalizing the sort of work it reports on.

Q&A with FSE visiting scholar and food aid expert Barry Riley.

President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget proposal promises significant food aid reform that will enable the United States to feed about 4 million more people without a significant increase of the current $1.8 billion spent on feeding the world's most hungry. Since the food aid program's inception in 1954, the U.S. has helped feed more than 1 billion people in more than 150 countries, and remains the largest provider of international food aid.

The intention of the reform is to make food aid more efficient, cost effective, and flexible. It aims to use local and regional markets to lower the cost of food and speed its delivery, and calls for the use of cash transfers and electronic food vouchers.

The proposed reforms would also end monetization—the sale of U.S. food abroad to be sold by local NGOs for cash. This practice has been criticized for hurting vulnerable communities by depriving local farmers of the incentives and opportunities to develop their own livelihoods. Several studies, including one by the Government Accountability Office, found monetization to be costly and inefficient—an average of 25 cents per taxpayer dollar spent on food aid is lost.

Barry Riley, a food aid expert and visiting fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, discusses his perspective on the importance of these new reforms, their chances of passage, and the country's current role in international food aid.

Why is local procurement such an important addition to food aid reform?

An increase of funding for local and regional procurement is the most important programmatic element of the proposed reforms. It would help managers working in food security-related development programs to determine for each emergency what commodities are most appropriate and where they can be procured most quickly and inexpensively. Some studies have shown local and regional procurement of food and other cash-based programs can get food to people in critical need 11 to 15 weeks faster at a savings of 25-50 percent. Equally important, local procurement is less likely to disrupt local economic conditions, but rather promote self-sufficiency by increasing demand (often for preferred local staples) and incomes of local producers. The move to 45 percent local (and 55 percent tied) procurement is a BIG step, and one to face strong opposition from American commodity interests and U.S.-flag shippers. 

How difficult is it to ensure vouchers and electronic cash transfers are getting into the hands of people that really need the aid?

Vouchers (and similar urban coupon shops) have been used many times over the past decades as a food transfer mechanism (also sometimes used in food for work programs) enabling the recipient to trade the voucher(s) for foodstuffs when it is most convenient or when they are most needed. Electronic vouchers are new, and how well they work depends on local situations. In places like urban Latin America, Africa and India, it probably could be made to work quite well; the technology is evolving quickly that would enable this sort of transfer mechanism.  

Rural Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Malawi – probably not so well. I’m admittedly skeptical that electronic transfers of purchasing power to remote areas would be sufficient in most cases to motivate traders to move food to these hungry areas. Their risks are extremely high and, in my experience in Africa, traders will only deliver food to remote rural areas (inevitably over very bad roads) if they can command prices considerably higher than costs plus a high risk premium.

Why aren’t international food aid organizations more in favor of direct dollar support for local operating costs?

There is (and has long been) opposition among many of the NGOs to the President’s proposal to replace “monetization” with a promise of on-going direct dollar support for the local operating costs of NGO food security-related projects. They believe it will continue to be easier to get Congress to approve money to buy American food commodities to ship overseas than to get approval for dollars to ship overseas, particularly in light of tightening budgets. These NGOs have tended, over the years, to receive a sympathetic ear from Congress.

The proposal shifts oversight of the food aid program from the Agriculture Committees within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the Foreign Affairs/Relations Committees of the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). What is the likelihood of Congress approving this transfer?

The chance of that happening, in this of all Congresses, is about the same as winning the Power Ball Lottery. Crusty committee chair-people are extremely sensitive to reductions in their empires and the agriculture committees – especially in the Senate – are powerful committees. On top of that, there are so many elements in the overall 2014 federal budget creating heartburn on the Hill that food aid considerations are far, far, far down the line. The best the President is likely to get in the present divided Congress are hearings and a continuing resolution of some sort.

What did you wish to see in the food aid reform proposal that was not addressed in this budget?

Change, if it ever comes, will likely be incremental and halting. I’ll be happy to see any step, however small, in the right direction. The total end of tied procurement would be at the top of my wish list. Even more important, perhaps, iron-clad, multi-year commitments of funding to food security programs intended to overcome long-term institutional impediments to achieving enduring food security in low income food deficit situations…and sticking with such commitments for 15 years.

What role does food aid play in advancing American foreign policy goals?

Most importantly, by being the single largest source of food commodities to the World Food Program in confronting disaster and emergency situations. Food support to American NGOs has been under-evaluated over the past 40 years. I’ll be talking about this later in the book I am writing, but these small projects were all that kept agricultural development (and early food security efforts) going in many small countries during the “dark decades” when international finance institutions and bilateral donors were not financing agricultural development. There are valuable on-the-ground lessons in that NGO food-assisted experience still waiting to be assessed.

Let me add, given what we know about the onset of serious climate change in the decades to come, the need to supply large amounts of food to populations suffering severe food deprivation will probably grow in the future. Where will the food come from and who will pay for those future transfers?

While the U.S. remains the largest provider of food aid, what can the EU and Canada teach the U.S. about food aid policy?

Donors hate to think that other donors have something to teach them. But, of course, they always do. The Canadian and European experience with food aid is best summed up in the way their objective has come to be restated over the past 15 or so years: not “food aid” but “aid for food.” The purpose of assistance intended to improve food security is to improve either, or both, availability and access over the long term (leave nutrition aside for a moment).

European and Canadian assistance can be much more flexible in choosing the instruments – food, cash, technical assistance, training, institutional strengthening, public policy, public-private cooperation, etc. – required to achieve a realistic food security goal which I would describe as pretty good assurance that most people can get their hands on the food they need most of the time. Commodity food aid, in some form – or the promise of its ready availability when needed – will probably need to be part of the total array of inputs required for the several years needed in particular food insecure countries to achieve that “pretty good assurance.” Europe and Canada are closer to understanding this and have become appropriately flexible in concerting resources to get it done. That’s the lesson.

We have read the headline a number of times now warning us that increasing temperatures are threatening global crop production. One need only to recall the drought and heat wave that hit the mid-western United States last summer, damaging corn and soybean production. Higher temperatures are certainly part of the problem, but a new study led by FSE associate director David Lobell finds its impacts in the U.S. are more indirect. Water stress may be the main culprit.

To validate this hypothesis and to help differentiate the different mechanisms impacting crop yields at higher temperatures, the research team used a model known as an Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). High temperatures had a strong negative effect on corn yield response in the United States, in agreement with the data, but the predominate effect of heat in the model was via increased water stress.

As temperatures increase, plants transpire more water into the atmosphere, just as people sweat more on hotter days. With more hot days, the corn plant finds it harder to maintain growth rates, and at the same time loses more water, which sets up the risk of even more drought stress later in the season.

“APSIM computes daily water stress as the ratio of water supply to demand, and during the critical month of July this ratio is three times more responsive to 2 ºC warming than to a 20 percent precipitation reduction,” writes Lobell and co-authors in a new paper published in Nature Climate Change. “Water stress during July is particularly important for overall biomass growth and final yield, with July being the month with the most total biomass growth.”

Direct heat stress on the plant, such as happens on extremely hot days, played a more minor role in determining final yield. The study suggests that increased CO₂ may reduce crop sensitivity to extreme heat by increasing water use efficiency, but gains are likely to be no more than 25 percent.

“The APSIM model has been valuable in its ability to discriminate the importance of these factors,” said Lobell. “Models like these are useful for guiding efforts to develop crops with greater tolerance to increased temperatures, an important component of most adaptation strategies in agriculture, and helping to identify which processes are critical for modeling efforts to consider when projecting climate change impacts.”

The researchers project sensitivity to extreme heat will remain a severe constraint to crop production in the foreseeable future, especially as the region warms. They are now using the models to evaluate different strategies for developing new varieties of corn that can better handle the heat.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a Stanford law professor and expert on administrative law and governance, public organizations, and transnational security, will lead the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The announcement was made in Feb. 11 by Provost John Etchemendy and Ann Arvin, Stanford’s vice provost and dean of research.

“Professor Cuéllar brings a remarkable breadth of experience to his new role as FSI director, which is reflected in his many achievements as a legal scholar and his work on diverse federal policy initiatives over the past decade,” Arvin said. “He is deeply committed to enhancing FSI’s academic programs and ensuring that it remains an intellectually rich environment where faculty and students can pursue important interdisciplinary and policy-relevant research.”

Known to colleagues as “Tino,” Cuéllar starts his role as FSI director on July 1.

Cuéllar has been co-director of FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) since 2011, and has served in the Clinton and Obama administrations. In his role as FSI director, he’ll oversee 11 research centers and programs – including CISAC – along with a variety of undergraduate and graduate education initiatives on international affairs.  His move to the institute's helm will be marked by a commitment to build on FSI’s interdisciplinary approach to solving some of the world’s biggest problems.

“I am deeply honored to have been asked to lead FSI. The institute is in a unique position to help address some of our most pressing international challenges, in areas such as governance and development, health, technology, and security,” Cuéllar said. “FSI’s culture embodies the best of Stanford – a commitment to rigorous research, training leaders and engaging with the world – and excels at bringing together accomplished scholars from different disciplines.”

Cuéllar, 40, is a senior fellow at FSI and the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at the law school, where he will continue to teach and conduct research. He succeeds Gerhard Casper, Stanford’s ninth president and a senior fellow at FSI.

“We are deeply indebted to former President Casper for accomplishing so much as FSI director this year and for overseeing the transition to new leadership so effectively,” Arvin said.

Casper was appointed to direct the institute for one year following the departure of Coit D. Blacker, who led FSI from 2003 to 2012 and oversaw significant growth in faculty appointments and research.

Casper, who chaired the search for a new director, said Cuéllar has a “profound understanding of institutions and policy issues, both nationally and internationally.”

“Stanford is very fortunate to have persuaded Tino to become director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,” Casper said. “He will not only be an outstanding fiduciary of the institute, but with his considerable imagination, energy, and tenacity will develop collaborative and multidisciplinary approaches to problem-solving.”

Cuéllar – who did undergraduate work at Harvard, earned his law degree from Yale and received his PhD in political science at Stanford in 2000 – has had an extensive public service record since he began teaching at Stanford Law School in 2001.

Taking a leave of absence from Stanford during 2009 and 2010, he worked as special assistant to the president for justice and regulatory policy at the White House, where his responsibilities included justice and public safety, public health policy, borders and immigration, and regulatory reform.  Earlier, he co-chaired the presidential transition team responsible for immigration.

After returning to Stanford, he accepted a presidential appointment to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a nonpartisan agency charged with recommending improvements in the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs.

Cuéllar also worked in the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration, focusing on fighting financial crime, improving border coordination and enhancing anti-corruption measures.

Since his appointment as co-director of CISAC, Cuéllar worked to expand the center’s agenda while continuing its strong focus on arms control, nuclear security and counterterrorism. During Cuéllar’s tenure, the center launched new projects on cybsersecurity, migration and refugees, as well as violence and governance in Latin America. CISAC also added six fellowships; recruited new faculty affiliates from engineering, medicine, and the social sciences; and forged ties with academic units across campus.

He said his focus as FSI’s director will be to strengthen the institute’s centers and programs and enhance its contributions to graduate education while fostering collaboration among faculty with varying academic backgrounds.

“FSI has much to contribute through its existing research centers and education programs,” he said. “But we will also need to forge new initiatives cutting across existing programs in order to understand more fully the complex risks and relationships shaping our world.”

In addition to Casper, the members of the search committee were Michael H. Armacost, Francis Fukuyama, Philip W. Halperin, David Holloway, Rosamond L. Naylor, Douglas K. Owens, and Elisabeth Paté-Cornell.

FSE affiliated faculty member Pamela Matson was the keynote speaker at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center at the University of Maine. Her talk focuses on what is needed to transition to a sustainable world. She frames her lecture around FSE's agricultural sustainability research in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico.