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State-of-the-art solutions for today’s challenges

How atoms are helping to reduce hunger and poverty

QU Dongyu

QU Dongyu, Director-General, FAO

 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the IAEA have successfully collaborated on the development and application of nuclear technologies in food and agriculture for 60 years. Atoms4Food is a new joint initiative that scales up these ground-breaking research and development (R&D) efforts to help address hunger and poverty.

 

Agrifood systems must feed growing populations amid ongoing global pressures such as environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution and the climate crisis — all of which are driven by the systems themselves — and socioeconomic factors such as nutritional demand, persistent poverty levels and conflict. In 2023, between 713 and 755 million people went hungry. Billions more could not afford healthy diets.

To tackle today’s complex challenges, the FAO and the IAEA are aiming high by scaling up their partnership to help countries adopt nuclear, isotopic and associated technologies to make agrifood systems more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable. These innovative approaches can enhance agricultural and livestock productivity and the management of natural resources, reduce food loss and waste, ensure food security and safety, improve nutrition and help vulnerable food-producing communities adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.

Increasing uptake

Since the establishment of the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture in 1964, applications of nuclear techniques in agriculture have increased hugely, bringing benefits across the world.

Crop production is being increased through the use of isotopes to optimize plants’ uptake of water and nutrients, and the use of radiation to produce crop varieties with higher yields, greater resilience and improved quality. Millions of hectares of crops are grown following mutation breeding, netting farmer billions of dollars every year while protecting their soils and environment.

Pests are being controlled through the release of sterilized insects to control and manage the population — an approach that has worked with fruit flies, moths, and the tsetse and screw worm flies. Areas free of fruit flies or that have low pest prevalence have been established from South America to the Middle East. This saves hundreds of millions of dollars in reduced production losses, and results in better quality food and increased exports, jobs and income.

The environment is being protected through the use of isotopes to minimize land degradation and water pollution and improve soil fertility. These techniques are used to determine critical factors, such as the optimal placement of fertilizer and the timing of its use. The economic benefit from fertilizer savings is at least $6 billion per year.

The list goes on: from increasing animal health and productivity through irradiated vaccines and molecular techniques that rapidly identify pathogens to improving food safety using food irradiation techniques to destroy bacteria, insects and other organisms, all these innovations translate into socioeconomic and environmental benefits for all — people, animals, plants and the entire ecosystem.

The initiative has laid out a comprehensive strategy, including country assessments and a robust action plan, to help countries propel themselves towards a better future through the FAO’s ‘four betters’: better production • better nutrition • a better environment • a better life

Accelerating change

The FAO/IAEA partnership has been instrumental in stimulating funding for and the implementation of initiatives. This unique R&D partnership — with proven scientific solutions — has had a positive impact on the transformation of agrifood systems. To respond to today’s complex and overlapping challenges, however, we must accelerate collaborative actions. That is why the FAO and the IAEA launched the Atoms4Food initiative in October 2023. With the aim of giving countries ground-breaking solutions tailored to their specific needs, the initiative provides greater access to scientific evidence and capabilities to inform policy-making, enhance R&D, upscale application and standardization, improve technical and management capacity, and strengthen knowledge exchange and collaboration.

The partnership’s guiding principles include equitable access to innovations for small-scale farmers and other underrepresented groups; gender equality; country ownership; alignment with the One Health approach; and sharing information on the risks and benefits of new technology. Innovations are only adopted once their added value has been confirmed and nuclear applications have proven beneficial, with high regional or global applicability.

The initiative has laid out a comprehensive strategy, including country assessments and a robust action plan, to help countries propel themselves towards a better future through the FAO’s ‘four betters’: better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind.

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Atoms4Food builds on nearly 60 years of experience developed jointly by the IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in supporting countries to use nuclear and isotope technology solutions. The Joint FAO/IAEA Centre advances and supports the safe and appropriate use of nuclear and related technologies in food and agriculture and provides the following services:

1. An Assessment Mission to map food security needs and develop a tailored plan to address food security challenges.

2. A Crop Variety Improvement Service to build crop improvement programmes using the nuclear method of plant mutation breeding to create more robust and nutritious crops.

3. A Soil and Water Management and Crop Nutrition Service to use the precision of nuclear and isotopic science to gather information on soil fertility; major crops and their average yield; and the availability of fertilizer and water irrigation systems.

4. An Animal Production and Health Service to provide a scientific assessment of the epidemiological situation of animal diseases; interventions for prevention, diagnosis and control; and laboratory and other veterinary service capacities.

5. An Insect Pest Control Service to tackle insect pests that affect agricultural production by using the nuclear-based sterile insect technique (SIT).

6. A Food Safety and Control Service to assess laboratory capabilities; the capacity to conduct surveillance of food hazards; and authenticity and irradiation applications.

7. A Public Health Nutrition Service to inform impactful nutrition programming using evidence on the nutritional value of foods and diet quality derived from the use of stable isotope techniques.

 

 

September, 2024
Vol. 65-2

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