Devex Dish: Soaring temperatures light fire under push for heat-tolerant crops

If you feel as if you are wilting amid the scorching temperatures hitting much of the planet lately, spare a thought for the farmers in Southeast Asia who lost entire harvests to heat waves that reached 50 degrees Celsius earlier this year.

It’s only happening more frequently amid climate change. So the heat is on — quite literally — to accelerate research and development of crops that can withstand extreme heat.

Plant scientists have for decades bred climate-resilient crops — strengthening their tolerance to drought, flooding, and emerging diseases, writes Devex contributor Rebecca Root. But experts say not enough is being invested in the research and development of heat tolerance. This may be because developing crops’ resilience to heat is quite time-consuming and difficult.

“There is so much potential but not enough funding,” says Benjamin Kilian, senior scientist and project coordinator at the nonprofit Crop Trust, which works to conserve crop diversity and funds gene banks worldwide. “On the global scale, we need more investments into this work.”

Developing climate-resilient crop varieties and deploying them to farmers falls within the broader field of climate adaptation research. But funding for it is limited, accounting for 36% of total global climate finance in 2021-2022. Only a small portion is then allocated to research.

Rebecca’s story takes us on a worldwide tour of the fascinating efforts underway at research institutes and universities to strengthen global food security by identifying, genetically modifying, and distributing crops that are better adapted to a warming world.

For example, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas has a whole program dedicated to high-yielding and heat-tolerant varieties of wheat in sub-Saharan Africa.   And in Japan, researchers have discovered a wild variety of rice that flowers at 6 a.m. versus the typical 9 a.m. — meaning pollen are likelier to survive because the flowers open before it’s too hot — which the International Rice Research Institute is incorporating into various genetic backgrounds to create new rice varieties.

As climate scientists warn 2024 could be the hottest year on record, the importance of this research can’t really be overstated.

Read: Heat waves underscore urgency of developing heat-tolerant crops 

And ICYMI: How CRISPR gene-editing technology could change the way we eat

Related: Climate-resilient seeds offer farmers in Syria a path to food security

Jaws will drop at Science Week

Some people can’t wait for the Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week in July. Here at Devex Dish, we could not be more excited for CGIAR’s inaugural Science Week.

Set to start Monday in Nairobi, the conference will bring together leaders in research, science, food policy, and innovation to discuss how science can be scaled to build more sustainable food, land, and water systems. (And there will be a lot more to learn about heat-tolerant and climate-resilient crops, among other things!) Over 3,000 people are registered to attend, some online and many in person, and it is co-hosted by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization.

It’s no surprise that this event — long talked about within CGIAR — is taking place under the leadership of Executive Managing Director Ismahane Elouafi, a former chief scientist at the Food and Agriculture Organization who took the reins at CGIAR in December. Greenlighting plans for Science Week was among her first moves.

“We are in a very, very urgent situation,” she tells me. “There is a huge challenge before us, particularly in regard to hunger, malnutrition, climate change, the growing population … Science Week is really a moment to bring science and policymakers together, to bring the different scientists within CGIAR together, to put our heads together and find better solutions.”

Science Week will also serve as a forum for stakeholders to continue designing and discussing CGIAR’s coming research portfolio, which will run from 2025-2030.

💌 Will you be at Science Week in Nairobi? I’ll be on the ground along with regular Devex contributor David Njagi, and we would love to meet Dish readers! Shoot me a note at dish@devex.com.

Seeking the fountain of youth

Across the world, agriculture is facing a demographic time bomb: Farmers are aging, and not enough younger people are stepping in to replace them.

The average age of farmers is approaching 60 in high-income countries, while agricultural household heads are close to 50 years old in many middle-income countries. But the grueling, often impoverished life of farming — increasingly volatile in a rapidly changing climate — just doesn’t hold much appeal, and youth are flocking to cities instead.

“If this trend continues, our global food supply could be in serious jeopardy,” according to Ibrahim Thiaw, under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

But there are ways to attract more youth to farming — if we act fast, Thiaw writes in an opinion piece for Devex. That means creating decent jobs in rural areas and developing innovative strategies to attract youth to areas such as regenerative agriculture, ecotourism, and green entrepreneurship. It also means investing in sustainable farming practices to ensure that farming remains economically and environmentally viable. Only then will youth see a future in agriculture.

“We must invest in them, support them, and unleash their potential to address the challenges facing our land and agriculture,” Thiaw writes. “The future of our food, our environment, and our economies depend on it.”

Opinion: Farmers are getting old. Time to unlock our youth’s potential

Alarm bells

The threat of famine in Gaza has been revived as Israel’s military operation in the southern city of Rafah, a key border crossing, has disrupted aid deliveries despite some improvements in March and April, according to an analysis Tuesday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC.

About 96% of the population, or 2.15 million people, faces high levels of acute food security. And half a million face catastrophic levels of hunger, the most severe level on IPC’s scale, in which households “experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities,” according to the report. IPC is a United Nations-backed partnership that measures global food security.

“People are enduring subhuman conditions resorting to desperate measures like boiling weeds, eating animal feed, and exchanging clothes for money to stave off hunger and keep their children alive,” Kate Phillips-Barrasso, Mercy Corps’ vice president of global policy and advocacy, tells Devex in response to the report.

“​​The international community must apply relentless pressure to achieve a ceasefire and ensure sustained humanitarian access now,” she adds. “The population cannot endure these hardships any longer. The toll of military action has been far too high, and we fear without dramatic changes to the provision of humanitarian aid, the death toll will climb as people succumb to months of deprivation."

Background reading: Why famine is ‘inevitable’ in Gaza — and what’s next

+ Devex Pro members can dig deeper into how IPC and other U.N. bodies measure and analyze food insecurity to come about global hunger levels.

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Chew on this

Denmark’s government will introduce Europe’s first carbon tax on agriculture under a historic agreement reached Monday by farmers and conservation groups. [Politico Europe]

As Sudan barrels toward famine, community kitchens run by volunteers are feeding the tens of thousands of displaced people flocking to the capital — but they can hardly keep up with skyrocketing needs. [The New Humanitarian]

It can take months for the international measurement system to declare a famine, but the first damage to a child’s body is counted in days. In Gaza, the effects of hunger on children will last a lifetime. [Reuters]

In India, farmers are now getting their news on weather forecasts, commodity prices, and farming trends from a surprising source: artificial intelligence avatars. [Bloomberg]