http://fse.stanford.edu/Recent news, events + publications from FSEen-usPublic domainhttp://fse.stanford.edu/images/feed-icon-48x48.jpghttp://fse.stanford.edu/60http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1562FSE is very happy to announce a five-year, $3 million donation from Cargill in support of a visiting fellows program and other program activities. "Cargill's investment will provide critical seed-funding for the innovative solution-based research and teaching going on at FSE," said Roz Naylor, FSE director. "It will jump-start a visiting fellows program that will bring to Stanford experts working in key FSE research areas from the United States and abroad, and will help establish an infrastructure to support our research team."]]>Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1562http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1552The Program on Food Security and the Environment was featured in a short profile in the Stanford Report.]]>Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1552http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1553Energy self-sufficiency at home can mean widespread starvation abroad, FSE director Roz Naylor and deputy director Wally Falcon write in a May 18 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed.]]>Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1553http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1545By the turn of this century, sub-Saharan Africa had experienced 25 years of economic and political disaster. In the May/June 2008 issue of Boston Review, economist Edward Miguel tracks comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub-Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround. Nine experts, including Rosamond Naylor and Jeremy Weinstein, gauge Miguel's optimism.]]>Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1545http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1515In addition to important recent contributions to public understanding of the global food crisis by researchers at FSE, the issue is increasingly being picked up in the popular press.]]>Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1515http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1514FSE visiting professor Peter Timmer calculates that up to 10 million people in Asian countries could die prematurely from the recent run-up in global rice prices. In an interview with the Center on Global Development, he described the spike in the cost of rice as "the most serious problem facing the world food economy since 1973-74, when a million people in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh alone died prematurely as a result of a rice crisis."]]>Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1514http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1508%people1%, director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment, discusses the global food crisis on NPR's Morning Edition and KQED Forum. She also was interviewed by ABC7, while program director %people2% talked to NBC11.]]>Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1508http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1506Researchers at FSE have received a 3-year, $350,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study the potential effects of climate change on agriculture and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Rockefeller funded work will seek to assess climate threats to staple food crops at a country level, quantify the sources of uncertainty inherent in these assessments, and determine what implications shifts in crop climates have for agricultural adaptation and genetic resources preservation - with the end goal of helping prioritize investments in agricultural development and food security under a changing climate.]]>Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1506http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1454Full video of the Google.org course on poverty and development that Program on Global Justice Director Joshua Cohen moderated from September to November 2007 is now available online at YouTube.com. The 10-week course, which focused on understanding poverty and development at the global, national, local, and personal levels, was the first of three courses on Google.org's main areas of philanthropic activity.]]>Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1454http://fse.stanford.edu/news/1412Crops of central importance to many of the worlds poor could be greatly harmed by climate change within the next two decades, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). The results are scheduled for publication on February 1st in the journal Science. "Understanding where these climate threats will be greatest, for what crops, and on what time scales, will be central to our efforts at fighting hunger and poverty over the coming decades," said lead author David Lobell, senior research scholar at FSE. The article has received extensive coverage in the popular press.]]>Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/news/1412http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22207Science vol. 321, 2008
Rapid economic growth in China and India is the envy, and worry, of the world. Never in history have so many people been pulled out of poverty so quickly. But the newly emergent middle class in both countries has familiar desires: better diets, more comfortable housing, more pleasant places to shop, and more convenient transportation (including personal automobiles). The demands these rapidly expressed desires are placing on global resources have stirred new Malthusian fears. Is there enough food and fuel for China and India to live like Europe and the United States?]]>Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:41:43 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22207http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22194Environmental Modeling and Assessment, 2008
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Although genetically modified (GM) crops are being grown on increasing large areas in both developed and developing countries, with few minor exceptions, there has been almost no country that has commercialized a GM major food crop. One reason may be that it is unclear how the commercialization of GM crops will help poor, small farmers. The objective of this article is to report on the results of an economic analysis that uses 3 years of data from a series of quasi-experimental areas (called preproduction trials) in China's GM rice program that were carried out in the fields of small and relatively poor producers in two provinces in China. The article shows that the use of GM rice by farmers in preproduction trials allows farmers to reduce pesticide use and labor input. The effect on yields is less clear, and the findings suggest that there is very little if any yield effect. The article concludes by arguing that the commercialization of GM rice in China could have consequences that exceed the direct impacts on China's farmers and could be a key step in breaking the world's current plant biotechnology logjam.]]>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:58:20 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22190http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22189World Development vol. 36, 2008
The overall goal of the paper is to better understand the development of groundwater markets in northern China. Field survey shows that groundwater markets in northern China have emerged and are developing rapidly. Developing in a number of ways that make them appear somewhat similar to markets that are found in South Asia, groundwater markets in northern China also differ by the impersonality and case bases. The privatization of tubewells is one of the most important driving factors encouraging the development of groundwater markets. Increasing water and land scarcity are also major determinants that induce the development of groundwater markets.]]>Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:29:51 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22189http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22188Agronomy Journal vol. 100,
Geographic information systems (GIS) present new opportunities for empirical agronomic research that can complement experimental and modeling approaches. In this study, GIS databases of irrigation practices for more than 4000 fields were compared with wheat yields derived from remote sensing for five growing seasons in the Yaqui Valley of Northwest Mexico. Significant yield effects were observed for both number and timing of irrigations, but not for reported water volumes, suggesting that proper timing is more important to yields than total water amounts. In most years, yield losses were observed when the second irrigation occurred more than 60 d after preplant irrigation, with an average loss of 11 kg ha1 for each day above this value. Overall, we estimate that optimal timing and number of irrigations for all fields in Yaqui Valley could increase average yields by roughly 5%. Results varied by year, in part because of variability in growing season rainfall and in part because of variations in water allocations. Interactions with soil types were also evident, with greater yield variability attributed to irrigation on soils with higher clay contents. The results of this study provide new insight into specific causes of yield losses in farmers' fields, which can inform future field experiments, management, and water policy in this region. In general, empirical studies of large GIS databases can help to improve crop management, and meet the dual needs of higher yields and improved water use efficiency.]]>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:47:11 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22188http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22187Geophysical Research Letters vol. 35, 2008
Previous studies of the long-term climate effects of irrigation have focused on average monthly temperatures. Given the importance of temperature (T) extremes to agriculture and human health, we evaluated irrigation induced changes in various metrics of T extremes using daily observations in California and Nebraska. In addition, simulations from a regional climate model were used to evaluate irrigation effects on T and heat index (HI; also known as the discomfort index) extremes in California, with the latter representing a combined measure of T and humidity. Contrary to our expectation that irrigation would have larger effects on hot days when sensible heat fluxes are higher, both observations and a regional climate model indicate that irrigation cools T on the hottest days of the year by a similar magnitude as on an average summer day. The HI is also reduced by irrigation, but by a much smaller magnitude than T because of the higher humidity above irrigated surfaces. Interestingly, HI is influenced less on the most extreme days than on average days, because of the nonlinear effect of humidity on HI at high T.]]>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:41:02 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22187http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22186Earth Interactions vol. 12, 2008
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The response of air temperatures to widespread irrigation may represent an important component of past and/or future regional climate changes. The quantitative impact of irrigation on daily minimum and maximum temperatures (Tmin and Tmax) in California was estimated using historical time series of county irrigated areas from agricultural censuses and daily climate observations from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network. Regression analysis of temperature and irrigation changes for stations within irrigated areas revealed a highly significant (p < 0.01) effect of irrigation on JuneAugust average Tmax, with no significant effects on Tmin (p > 0.3). The mean estimate for Tmax was a substantial 5.0°C cooling for 100% irrigation cover, with a 95% confidence interval of 2.0°7.9°C. As a result of small changes in Tmin compared to Tmax, the diurnal temperature range (DTR) decreased significantly in both spring and summer months. Effects on percentiles of Tmax within summer months were not statistically distinguishable, suggesting that irrigations impact is similar on warm and cool days in California. Finally, average trends for stations within irrigated areas were compared to those from nonirrigated stations to evaluate the robustness of conclusions from previous studies based on pairwise comparisons of irrigated and nonirrigated sites. Stronger negative Tmax trends in irrigated sites were consistent with the inferred effects of irrigation on Tmax. However, Tmin trends were significantly more positive for nonirrigated sites despite the apparent lack of effects of irrigation on Tmin from the analysis within irrigated sites. Together with evidence of increases in urban areas near nonirrigated sites, this finding indicates an important effect of urbanization on Tmin in California that had previously been attributed to irrigation. The results therefore demonstrate that simple pairwise comparisons between stations in a complex region such as California can lead to misinterpretation of historical climate trends and the effects of land use changes.]]>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:50:02 PSThttp://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22185http://fse.stanford.edu/publications/22184Environmental Science and Technology, 2008
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