https://unfccc.int/blog/climate-smart-agriculture
The history of agriculture is really the history of human progress. We began to swap nomadism for settlements around 11,000BC; these were initially smallholdings where pigs and sheep were domesticated and a variety of crops such as wheat, barley and flax were cultivated. These small communities eventually led to bigger villages, towns and the modern cities we live in today. Yet in some parts of the world, agricultural methods have not changed in millennia.
Today, roughly 38 per cent of the world's land is used for agriculture - one third of this is for crops, with the rest used for grazing livestock. And with agriculture (and forestry) responsible for 23 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that changes need to be made to how we manage our land, while at the same time safeguarding our food and farmers' livelihoods. And with food security set to become more and more challenging as natural resources are stretched thin - both by overuse and climate change - it is vital we examine how we manage our land and produce our food.
Enter climate-smart agriculture, which encompasses the three main dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental, i.e. sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions. It is an approach for developing agricultural strategies to secure sustainable food security under climate change. It is vital that climate-smart agriculture takes the local context and cultural and social sensitivities into account, and ultimately listens to the local community about the approach that best fits their reality.
Nuclear technology plays an important role in agriculture and food security, complementing conventional climate adaptation and climate science technologies and approaches. So, how does it work? Stable isotopes are non-radioactive forms of atoms with unique properties. Important data can be collected by measuring their amounts and proportions in, for example, water samples. These data on naturally occurring stable isotopes of water and other substances are used to trace the origin, history, sources, sinks and interactions in water, carbon, and nitrogen cycles, and to determine the provenance of goods and materials. Stable isotopes can also be deliberately added to a system , such as agriculture or nutrition, to make it easier to study it. . Nuclear technology can be applied in a broad variety of sectors and topic areas, including water and soil management, environmental studies, food safety testing, ocean and climate change, nutrition assessment studies and forensics.
One of the institutions leading the adoption of climate smart agriculture is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA, in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), supports this integrated approach to addressing the causes and effects of climate change, by monitoring agrochemical inputs for improving food safety; developing innovative land and water management technology packages; and enhancing carbon sequestration through innovative land-water management practices. Nuclear technology can be used to support climate smart agriculture in several ways: to assess the impact of climate change on agriculture; to gauge the impact of agricultural practices on climate change; to develop technologies for adaptation, building resilience to climate change; and improve agriculture practices to support climate change mitigation.
Also in the area of climate smart agriculture, isotopic signatures, biomonitoring and bioassays are used to monitor the various chemicals used in agriculture, as well as for the assessment of the transfer of chemicals to the environment and, ultimately, the food supply chain. Nuclear and stable isotope techniques are applied to unambiguously quantify processes associated to land-water management, including carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions. Isotopic techniques are also being used in agricultural water management, including the development of water-saving technological packages. Induced crop mutation can produce new varieties of crops that are adapted to abiotic stresses, rendering them able to thrive under changed environmental conditions. This technology, in use since the 1950s, has helped improve many crops so that they can perform better in harsh environments or resist new pathogens.
Here are four examples of climate-smart agriculture in practice around the world:
Pineapple Producers (Costa Rica)
Costa Rica is the world's number one producer of pineapple; however, farmers use a significant amount of fertilisers and pesticides to grow this fruit. A large part of the fertilisers and pesticides applied are lost from the pineapple farms, which increases greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and pollutes surface and ground waters including rivers and streams. With the help of the IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Costa Rican experts from Centro de Investigacion en Contaminacion Ambiental (CICA) have been using nuclear technology to help producers grow pineapple and other crops more efficiently and ecologically. They use biochar, a carbonaceous material fabricated from natural residues, to improve soil fertility and help reduce the negative impact of chemicals to the environment. When planted with biochar, pineapple plants can use fertilisers in a more efficient way than when planted without biochar. This reduces fertiliser waste to the environment. Pesticides labelled with a radioactive isotope - carbon-14 (14C) - were applied to soil and their environmental fate traced. Also, using the 13C stable isotope, researchers identified the origin of CO2 emissions and C sequestration. Similarly, using nitrogen-15 (15N) labelled fertiliser, N transformation and dynamics in soil, plant and atmosphere systems were traced. Click here to read more.
Crop Production (Middle East)
Soil salinity, the increasing accumulation of salts in soil, is a worldwide problem, but it is more serious in arid and semi-arid regions such as the Middle East where rainfall is scarce and not uniformly distributed throughout the year, and where groundwater is mostly brackish/saline. Globally, 932 million hectares of agricultural land are affected by salinity. Approximately 2,000 hectares per day of irrigated land in arid and semi-arid areas across 75 countries have been degraded by salinisation over the past 20 years. To address the challenge of soil salinity, the IAEA, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has helped ten countries in the region facing severe salinization to improve soil, water and crop management practices, using 15N isotopic techniques. Five years on, farmers are successfully growing crops under saline conditions with significant yield. Through its technical cooperation programme, the IAEA has trained and worked with 60 scientists from Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, who are now using nuclear and isotopic techniques to improve crop yields on salt-affected soils. Click here to read more.
Boosting Tea Plant Diversity (Sri Lanka)
Sri Lanka has plans to increase tea production and improve its quality, but faces serious challenges from climate change and increasing global market competition. Enhanced genetic diversity is critical for productivity and quality improvements as well as for resilience to diseases that is intensified with climate change. Scientists at the Tea Research Institute of Sri Lanka's Plant Breeding Division have been working with the IAEA and the FAO, to use induced mutagenesis on cell or tissue culture and further plant breeding to bring novel genetic diversity to the tea plant. The goal is to strengthen its resistance to diseases and its ability to adapt to changing weather patterns such as warming temperatures and drought. Click here to read more.
Heat Tolerant Tomato Varieties (Mauritius)
In collaboration with the Plant Breeding and Genetics researchers at the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre, scientists at the Food and Agricultural Research and Extension Institute of Mauritius have developed new and improved mutant tomato varieties that perform well under high growing temperatures. Training provided in the IAEA Plant Breeding and Genetics Laboratory in Austria has enabled the screening of mutant tomato lines for heat tolerance using controlled growth chamber environments that mimic the warming growing temperatures in the field. Subsequent testing in the field has identified these tomato varieties with improved performance, and seed is currently being distributed to farmers for cultivation.