One or two healthy chickens can significantly improve the health and prosperity of marginalized communities. Poultry recycle food scraps and garden waste, forage insects and worms to produce eggs which provide much needed protein and income. The Kyeema Foundation (https://kyeemafoundation.org/) is working with some of the world’s poorest communities to protect household poultry from disease. Kyeema started out vaccinating village chickens across Africa and the Pacific to protect them from disease. They have more recently expanded into restoring coral reefs and mangroves to revitalise local fisheries. 

 Small holder farmers provide food to around 80% of the world’s population. It is only through developing a deep understanding of these communities and leveraging local expertise, traditions, and capacity that Kyeema can work to improve food and nutrition security for some of the poorest communities.

There are more than 608 million family farms around the world, occupying between 70 and 80 percent of the world's farmland and producing around 80 percent of the world's food in value terms. Around 70 percent of all farms, operating on just 7 percent of all agricultural land, are less than one hectare, while another 14 percent of farms, controlling 4 percent of the land, are between one and two hectares, and another 10 percent of all farms, with 6 percent of the land, are between two and five hectares.
https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1395127/icode/

I recently caught up with Anthony to hear how he and his team are improving the reliance and health of their communities through sustainable local protein production. You can hear our conversation here. 

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Food, movement, social engagements, play, and stress.  These are all key drivers of how well our brain’s function and how cognitive function declines with age. It’s also the same for our dogs and cats. At a cellular level its largely about maintaining mitochondrial function, managing inflammation, and managing oxidative stress. What that means for the less technical of us is that exercise, social function, cognitive training, and a good diet are hitting multiple pathways in your brain to help it in 1000 different ways. To maintain cellular health in our brains we must feed our mitochondria and help our bodies manage inflammation. 

Dr Liz Head is a Neuroscientist who has been studying dementia, Alzheimer’s, and cognitive decline in dogs and humans. Her research began assessing brain aging in dogs as a model for human Alzheimer’s. This has expanded to examining how diet, behaviour, and inflammatory disease impact the activity of the brain’s mitochondria. Liz is at UC Irvine where she her team is examining various molecular pathways engaged in the aging and Alzheimer disease process to identify interventions that may improve cognition. 

I recently caught up with Liz to hear more about her work. You can listen to his conversation here. 

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With $500 billion how would you design a completely new city and food system from scratch, to feed and house 3 million residents? The city of NEOM is being built on the Red Sea coast in Saudi Arabia. There are no legacy systems to deal with, no existing infrastructure that needs considering and maintaining. The city is literally rising out of the desert and you have an open book when it comes to planning sustainable food production and linking that with sustainable energy and water use. Funded by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth with an aim of 100% renewable energy and no ultilzation of ground water the project aims to be the city of the future.  

Ray Moule is leading agricultural development for NEOM. His team is planning a food system to feed the cities predicted 3 million residents and 5 million visitors. Their plans include research needs, what new technologies will improve the sustainability of the food system, how to sustainably source water and nutrients for agriculture, creating circular economies, and how food systems are linked to health. He also has to balance what food to grow locally and what food to import.  

With an average annual rainfall of 15-20 mm (less than 1 inch) and temperatures regularly reaching well over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) throughout the summer new production techniques and technologies are critical to developing a sustainable food system. 

I recently caught up with Ray to discuss the amazing opportunity to build a food system from scratch and the challenges in doing so in a harsh desert environment. You can listen to our conversation here. 

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We don’t understand what it is we are eating! Our health is directly connected to the soil health in which our food is grown.

Research is showing that the nutrient composition of foods can vary over 100 times between two identical looking food items. A tomato is not a tomato and an apple is not an apple. The research is showing that the greatest determinant  of nutrient density is cover cropping as part of the system. Livestock productions systems also greatly influence the nutrient composition of meat wth the quality and variability of pasture leading to an increase in nutrient density. 

Eric Jackson is the Board Chair at the Bionutrient Food Association where they are studying nutrient density variability in foods and investigating what are the drivers of this variability.  He is bringing the medical and agricultural communities into the same room to tackle both food sustainability and the huge burden metabolic disease is having on our societies. 

I recently caught up with Eric to discuss the connections between human health, soil health, the health of the environment, and how intimately they are linked. 

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The effects of antibiotic use in livestock are far greater than the human health impacts of antimicrobial resistance. It is estimated that 90% of the antibiotics given to livestock end up in the soil. Despite these antibiotics no longer being detectable in manure they still significantly impact the soil microbiome. Research shows that these antibiotics reduce the ability of the soil to capture and store carbon, and the ability of soil to respond to increased temperatures. Livestock manure and the soil are breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant microbes increasing the potential impact on human health. 

Dr Carl Wepking is a soil microbial ecologist who has been studying the effects of livestock antibiotics use on the soil microbiome. His research has focused on how livestock antibiotics reduce soil microbial activity, decrease microbes’ ability to adapt to high temperatures, and decrease the soil’s ability to sequester carbon. He also found that the effects of livestock antibiotics on the soil microbiome did not require detectable levels of antibiotics in manure. Carl is at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where he is running the Grasslands 2.0 program that aims to develop sustainable livestock farming systems. 

I recently caught up with Carl to hear more about his work.

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Agriculture impacts climate change and climate change impacts agriculture. Dr Richard Eckard from the University of Melbourne has spent the last 20 years working on better understanding these interactions. In conversation, with Ash Sweeting, Richard discusses how today, changes in management practices can reduce livestock emissions by 10-15% and the potential for new products in development to reduce emissions by over 50%. Critical to enabling farmers to benefit from reduced emissions are the open source carbon accounting tools his team has developed, are maintaining, and deploying across industry. Richard also explores the nuances between emission reduction credit can be traded daily and a carbon sequestration credit can be traded once and then need to be maintained once it has been sold.

Interviewed by Ash Sweeting

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Joe McFadden Discusses – Collaboration, the value of existing research, innovative ways of leveraging the energy and passion of students to get the most of Cornell’s new respiratory chambers. 

Livestock sustainability is a much more complex issue than inhibiting methane production. Holistic solutions are needed that also maintain nutrient digestibility, reduce nitrogen pollution, maintain efficiency, are scalable across different production environments in the developed and developing world and are acceptable to the public. After coming to Cornell University in 2017 solving these critical issues have become the core focus of Prof. Joe McFadden. 

Cornell is building new climate-controlled respiration chambers, unique to the Unites States, to accelerate their research on livestock methane emissions. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, Joe’s team is building on research conducted over the last 50 years. His team is planning on using the new chambers to test compounds with proven in vitro methane inhibition data in live animals to determine how they work in North American production systems and other environments across the world.  

Joe understand we have to invest in people first and foremost to really drive solutions.  A key part of his plans are transitioning to a problems-based approach to sustainability where he is leading efforts across universities, states, and internationally to improve collaboration. To accelerate the approval process for feed additives he is collaborating with an environmental NGO and the FDA to develop new approval methodologies and he has developed a new program to educate both students and the public simultaneously. 

I recently caught up with Joe to hear more about his work. 

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Anastasia Volkova discusses sustainable farming, incentives for behavioural change, and  the importance of understanding the farming system when implementing regenerative agriculture. 

When it comes to sustainable food production, we are all responsible. 

The world forced farming to be this way because we wanted to support growth that is not sustainable. 

Regrow is the infrastructure for decision support and incentive exchange in sustainable agriculture. Regrow is working with farmers and food supply chains across over 200 million acres in 45 countries to reduce the climate impact of agriculture and improve yield resistance. 

I recently caught up with Anastasia Volkova, Regrow CEO and Co-Founder, to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and myths in transforming global food systems. Her deep understanding of their markets, customers, and the science guides how Regrow creates value across the whole supply chain. She explores the nuances around regenerative agriculture, which is a huge opportunity but must be applied in context. She also discussed the potential perils of limiting the sustainability conversation to carbon and overly simplifying the system. Anastasia dispels the myths that farmers are unwilling to share their data, declaring all that is needed is the right incentive. 

In this conversation we explore how realistic is cheap food and the why the current impact on the global food system due to the war in Ukraine should not be a surprise to those following history. You can listen to our conversation here.

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Could nature provide a map to greatly reduce the climate impact of animal agriculture. Dr Athol Klieve has spent his career researching the microbiome of ruminants and kangaroos and why ruminants produce methane and kangaroos do not. In our conversation Athol also explains how there are no identifiable patterns in nature as to why a particular species produces methane or does not produce methane and that with us humans, some of us produce methane and some of us don’t. The exciting thing is that the current situation is not fixed, things can be changed. 

Athol also delves deeply into the complex community structures within the microbiome, how micro organisms cooperate with each other, how they compete, how they protect or sabotage other microbes and, how they communicate or talk to each other. He also discussed the adaptability of microbes to change their metabolism and even genetic pathways under different conditions. The ultimate focus of Athol’s research has been how to better understand these complex ecosystems to improve animal agriculture and drastically reduce livestock methane emissions. 
 
I recently caught up with Athol to hear more about his work.

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Harry Lawson runs Australia’s largest Angus seed stock business. Lawson Angus (www.lawsonsangus.com.au) sells 1000 bulls annually across all states. While working to breed cattle that bridge the sustainability demands of beef consumers with the productivity requirements of his beef producing customers, he realized that collaboration among highly educated and skilled young people is critical. Sustainability and productivity are not mutually exclusive but much of the current thinking is moving the whole industry in the wrong direction.  

The issue is that very few people actually understand the whole livestock production system, biologically these systems are very complex. Harry’s big hope is that accelerating the transition to the next generation of highly educated farmers will bring that much needed knowledge and understanding to the industry.  

The Lawson Angus breeding program bucks the industry trend to breed larger cows. With the breeding herd producing around 70% of beef industry methane emissions Harry focuses breeding lower emission cows. It’s a win win that these moderately sized, highly fertile and energy efficient cows animals are also much more drought tolerant. 

When Harry’s children started questioning the environmental footprint of the family business, he soon realized he didn’t have the answers that would satisfy either his children or himself. His initial digging around has now led to developing his own research program to include methane emissions in his breeding program.

I recently caught up with Harry to discuss how he is working to improve beef sustainability. You can listen to our conversation here. 

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