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	Climate change may shrink wheat crops by AP, Standford Center on Food Security   Jan 2012   More intense heat waves due to global warming could diminish wheat crop yields around the world through premature ageing, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.   Current projections based on computer models underestimate the extent to which hotter weather in the future will accelerate this process, the researchers warned.   Wheat is harvested in temperate zones on more than 220 million hectares, making it the most widely grown crop on Earth.   In some nations, the grain accounts for up to 50 per cent of calorie intake and 20 per cent of protein nutrition, according to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.   In 2010, drought and wildfires in wheat-exporting Russia pushed world prices of the grain to two-year highs, underscoring the vulnerability of global supplies to weather- and climate-related disruptions.   Greenhouse experiments have shown that unseasonably warm temperatures - especially at the end of the growing season - can cause senescence, the scientific term for accelerated ageing.   Excess heat beyond the plant"s tolerance zone damages photosynthetic cells.   Fluctuations in wheat yields in India have also been attributed by farmers to temperature, most recently a heat wave in 2010 blamed for stunting plant productivity.   To further test these experiments and first-hand observations, a trio of researchers led by David Lobell of Stanford University sifted through nine years of satellite data for the Indo-Ganges Plains in northern India and then used statistical methods to isolate the effects of extreme heat on wheat.   They found that a 2C increase above long-term averages shortened the growing season by a critical nine days, reducing total yield by up to 20 per cent.   "These results imply that warming presents an even greater challenge to wheat than implied by previous modelling studies, and that the effectiveness of adaptations will depend on how well they reduce crop sensitivity to very hot days," the researchers concluded.   The world"s nations, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have said that Earth"s average temperature should not exceed the pre-industrial benchmark by more than 2C if dangerous warming impacts are to be avoided.   On current trends - if there is no major reduction in the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases - the global thermometer could rise by twice as much, according to scientists. "Even changes that were once considered rather extreme scenarios, such as a 4C in global mean temperature, ... could happen as soon as the early 2060s," the study notes.   Wheat also faces another possibly climate-related threat: aggressive new strains of wheat rust disease have decimated up to 40 per cent of harvests in some regions of north Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.   Wheat rust is a fungal disease that attacks the stems, grains and especially the leaves of grains including wheat, barley and rye.   Global warming and increased variability of rainfall have weakened the plants even as these emerging rust strains have adapted to extreme temperatures not seen before, scientists say. Visit the related web page
	Foreign investment in Mali"s arable land jumps by 60% by Guardian News / Alertnet   Report says largescale foreign agri-investment offers few solutions to the poverty and hunger plaguing the country smallholder farmers and civil society activists from 30 countries gather in Selingue, Mali, to draft a strategy to strengthen local communities’ resistance to ‘land grabbing’.   Foreign investment in arable land in Mali increased by 60% between 2009 and 2010, says a report published on Thursday to coincide with the first international farmers conference to tackle the global rush for land.   The report, by the US-based Oakland Institute and the Malian national farmers organisation, estimates that more than 544,500 hectares of Malian land have been leased or were under negotiation for lease by the end of 2010.   The bulk of these land deals – covering an area the report says could sustain more than half a million small farmers – were negotiated by just 22 foreign agri-investors. Less than 5% of west Africa"s largest country is arable.   Mali has been at the centre of agri-investor interest and farmer resistance to the largescale deals that have sparked growing concern from international aid and development organisations.   "Corporations, fund managers and nations anxious to secure their own future food security have sought and secured large landholdings for offshore farms or speculation," says the report, noting that the food and fuel crises of 2008 appear to have jump-started the rush to acquire farmland across Africa.   The report updates a study produced by the Oakland Institute earlier this year, which showed Harvard and other major American universities were key emerging investors in the continent"s farmland.   The report notes that 40% of the recent large land deals negotiated in Mali have been flagged for the production of agrofuels, despite government assurances that such investments were to strengthen food security and transform the country into a major food supplier for the region.   An "ideological divide" has blocked progress on negotiating investments that benefit local communities, says the report. "While [industrialised agriculture] may involve smallholder support projects, the purpose is rarely to strengthen and promote traditional farming systems … Rather the aim is to modernise them, increase competitiveness, focus on value chains for commodities, and orient smallholders towards the global marketplace."   The report levels significant blame on the World Bank, which it says has "shaped the economic, fiscal and legal environment of Mali in a way that favours the acquisition of vast tracks of fertile lands by few private interests instead of bringing solutions to the widespread poverty and hunger plaguing the country".   Mali ranked 175 out of 187 countries in this year"s UN Human Development Index. The most recent figures suggest more than 50% of the population live on less than $1.25 a day and nearly a third of children under the age of five are malnourished.   The famine and food crisis in the Horn of Africa has pushed policymakers to focus on the potential of Africa"s small farmers to strengthen countries food security and ultimately drive economic development on the continent. Smallscale farmers are credited with producing as much as 80% of Africa"s food.   Much of Mali"s large deals concern state-owned land, where the informal rights of communities living on the land are not protected by law, and rarely recognised by public officials.   Ibrahima Coulibaly, head of the Malian national farmers organisation, said "land-grabbing is a denial of historical rights", and that in many cases farmers have for generations lived on land that only formally became state assets after independence in the 1960s.   Publication of the report comes as hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists from 30 countries descend on Selingue, in southern Mali, to draft a strategy to strengthen local communities resistance to "land grabbing".   The conference is co-ordinated by the Malian national farmers organisation and the international peasants movement La Via Campesina, plans to focus on examples of farmers resistance to land grabs. While large land deals have received increasing attention from international organisations, conference organisers argue this has often been directed by large NGOs and rarely by small farmers themselves.   Research by Oxfam, published this year, suggests that nearly 230m hectares of land – an area the size of north-west Europe – have been bought or leased, largely in Africa, mostly by foreign companies, in thousands of secretive deals made since 2001. Earlier, the World Bank had published estimates putting that figure at just under 60m hectares.   (Reporter - Claire Provost/Guardian News. Lorenzo Cotula who leads the land rights team at the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development surveys "Land grabs" in Africa for Alertnet, calling for a greater investment in farmers, not in farmland). Visit the related web page
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