Guidelines for Sustainability Assessment in Food and Agriculture

The ecological, economic and social principles of sustainable development (WCED, 1987) received nearly universal agreement during and following the 1992 Earth Summit. One of the summit‘s major outcomes, Agenda 21, includes a whole chapter (Chapter 14) on sustainable agriculture and rural development. Much progress has been made in the past two decades. For most social and economic Millennium Development Goals, improvements have been substantial (UN, 2011). Global per capita Gross National Income has more than doubled between 1992 and 2010 (from 5,035 current interna-tional USD at PPP to 11,058; World Bank, 2011). Yet, reaching the poorest, all over the world, re-mains a challenge (UN, 2011) and it is today generally recognised that GDP growth alone is not a sufficient indicator of development progress. The number of undernourished people was estimated by FAO to be 925 million in 2010. This figure has increased by 75 million people since 1990-92 (FAO, 2010a). Rockström et al. (2009) estimate that humanity has transgressed three of the environmental planetary boundaries within which we can operate safely, namely for climate change, biodiversity loss and changes to the global nitrogen cycle. Boundaries for ocean acidification and possibly the global phosphorus cycle might also be close to being crossed.global phosphorus cycle might also be close to being crossed. As agricultural land and forests occupy more than 60% of terrestrial surface, and fishery activities can be found on virtually any water body, agriculture, forestry and fisheries are major contributors to the ecological footprint of humanity. For example, 31% of global greenhouse gas emissions have been attributed to agriculture and forestry (IPCC, 2007). Agriculture alone accounts for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals (FAO, 2011). On the other hand, farming, animal husbandry, forestry and fisheries produce the food and renewable materials basis of humanity’s existence and provide liveli-hoods to more than 2.6 billion people (FAOSTAT, 2011), including many of the world’s poor. One approach to tackle the risk of the human economy’s overstraining the capacities of Earth’s eco-systems is the concept of a “Green Economy”5 that respects planetary boundaries and adopts eco-efficiency as a guiding principle. This concept brings about major challenges in relation with freedom and distributional equity (UNDP, 2011). The translation of the green economy concept for the food and agriculture sector is reflected through the GEA concept that recognises the need to take an eco-system- and rights-based approach to development, according to specific country circumstances (FAO, 2012a). The challenge of delivering sustainability lies in an effective integration of the envi-ronmental, economic and social dimensions of development. This can be only achieved through good governance. Need for a common language Recent years have seen the development of frameworks, initiatives, standards and indicators for assessing and improving the environmental and social impacts of human activities. More than one hundred countries have established national strategies for sustainable development, as well as sets of sustainability targets and indicators (UN, 2007). Thousands of companies have adopted concepts such as corporate social responsibility, creating shared value, responsible supply chain management and the triple bottom line6. These concepts are put into practice through internal management, B2B and B2C communication. Systems for independent, third-party verification, certification and accredi-tation have been put in place.Of the many verification systems, tools, databases and other approaches for measuring, communi-cating and improving sustainability, environmental impact or social impact, respectively, few cover the whole value chain and all dimensions of sustainability at the same time (Appendix A). In the de-velopment and application of sustainability systems and frameworks, SME and stakeholders from developing and emerging countries are less represented than large companies and stakeholders from industrialised countries, in spite of many systems’ building on transparent, participative mechanisms. Despite the valuable efforts for making sustainability assessments in the food and agriculture sector accurate and easy to manage, no internationally accepted benchmark unambiguously defines what sustainable food production entails. There also is no widely accepted definition of the minimum re-quirements that would allow a company to qualify as sustainable. FAO and the SAFA Guidelines.In order to offer a fair playing field, FAO has built on existing efforts and developed the present Guidelines for Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) as part of its efforts for the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD). In line with the FAO mandate, the vision of the SAFA Guidelines is to contribute to a sustainable development of the food and agriculture sector. This shall be achieved by enhancing the measurability of sustainability per-formance and the accessibility and transparency of sustainability measurements. The SAFA Guide-lines provide a benchmark that defines what sustainable production is, and a template for agriculture and food sustainability assessment, for the use by primary producers, food manufacturers and retail-ers who wish to substantiate sustainability claims. Existing sustainability indicator systems and as-sessment tools can be related to the content of the SAFA Guidelines

Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture

The authors are grateful for the inputs from Caterina Batello, Jan Breithaupt, Carlo Cafiero, Marianna Campeanu, Reto Cumani, Rich Conant, Piero Conforti, Marie-Aude Even, Karen Franken, Andreas Gattinger, Pierre Gerber, Frank Hayer, Jippe Hoogeven, Stefan Hörtenhuber, Mathilde Iweins, John Lantham, Robert Mayo, Eric Meili, Soren Moller, Jamie Morrison, Alexander Müller, Noemi Nemes, Monica Petri, Tim Robinson, Nicolas Sagoff, Henning Steinfeld, Francesco Tubiello, Helga Willer, and thank Robert Home for checking the language. KHE gratefully acknowledges funding from ERC-2010-Stg-263522 (LUISE). The input of PS contributes to the DEVIL project (NE/M021327/1), funded under the Belmont Forum / FACCE-JPI. This paper contributes to the Global Land Project (www.globallandproject.org). The authors acknowledge funding for open access publication by the Institute of Environmental Decisions, Federal Institutes of Technology, Zurich.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Supporting scale-up of COVID-19 RT-PCR testing processes with discrete event simulation

ABSTRACT: Testing is critical to mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic, but testing capacity has fallen short of the need in the United States and elsewhere, and long wait times have impeded rapid isolation of cases. Operational challenges such as supply problems and personnel shortages have led to these bottlenecks and inhibited the scale-up of testing to needed levels. This paper uses operational simulations to facilitate rapid scale-up of testing capacity during this public health emergency. Specifically, discrete event simulation models were developed to represent the RT-PCR testing process in a large University of Maryland testing center, which retrofitted high-throughput molecular testing capacity to meet pandemic demands in a partnership with the State of Maryland. The simulation models support analyses that identify process steps which create bottlenecks, and evaluate “what-if” scenarios for process changes that could expand testing capacity. This enables virtual experimentation to understand the trade-offs associated with different interventions that increase testing capacity, allowing the identification of solutions that have high leverage at a feasible and acceptable cost. For example, using a virucidal collection medium which enables safe discarding of swabs at the point of collection removed a time-consuming “deswabbing” step (a primary bottleneck in this laboratory) and nearly doubled the testing capacity. The models are also used to estimate the impact of demand variability on laboratory performance and the minimum equipment and personnel required to meet various target capacities, assisting in scale-up for any laboratories following the same process steps. In sum, the results demonstrate that by using simulation modeling of the operations of SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing, preparedness planners are able to identify high-leverage process changes to increase testing capacity

Impacts of feeding less food-competing feedstuffs to livestock on global food system sustainability

Funding Christian Schader, Adrian Muller, Nadia El-Hage Scialabba, Judith Hecht, Anne Isensee, Harinder P.S. Makkar, Peter Klocke, Florian Leiber, Matthias Stolze, Urs Niggli thank FAO for funding this research. K.E. gratefully acknowledges funding from ERC-2010-Stg-263522 LUISE. Additional data and method details are provided in the supplementary materials. The contribution of P.S. is supported by funding from the Belmont Forum-FACCE-JPI Project ‘Delivering Food on Limited Land’ (DEVIL), with the UK contribution supported by NERC (NE/M021327/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Economic vulnerability and resilience of small states

Agriculture, fisheries and forestry have, for centuries, provided the main source of livelihood for the population of many small islands. These activities still represents a major source of income for many small island developing states (SIDS) and the sustainable management of such activities remains crucial for the future of these states. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) enjoys a long history of partnership with SIDS. Since the launching of the Barbados Programme of Action in 1994, FAO has extended considerable technical assistance to SIDS and implemented a large number of regional and interregional projects. This chapter summarises the action taken by FAO in favour of SIDS with regard to the global trading environment, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, the environment in general, and capacity building.peer-reviewe

Subjective and physiological emotional response in euthymic bipolar patients: A pilot study

International audienc

La voix, un biomarqueur pour l'humain aussi ? Influence de la hauteur de la voix du patient sur le diagnostic expert du TSPT

Cette étude réalisée sur un groupe de 17 soignants spécialisés dans la prise en charge du Trouble de Stress Post Traumatique (TSPT) examine de manière inédite la perception que les soignants (psychiatres, psychologues et infirmiers-psy) font de l’état psychopathologique de patients à partir de la seule écoute de leur voix et, plus spécifiquement, l’influence causale du pitch et de sa modification sur cette perception. Pour cela, nous avons demandé à des soignants de comparer des extraits de voix de patients TSPT, deux à deux, correspondant au même moment du récit traumatique enregistré en début et en fin de thérapie. Selon les conditions, les extraits sont soit présentés tels qu’enregistrés, soit manipulés acoustiquement avec une transformation de pitch mimant l’évolution naturelle de la voix en cours de thérapie observée lors d’une précédente étude, à savoir une baisse de pitch moyenne de 10Hz. Ainsi, nous appliquons une diminution de pitch sur des extraits sélectionnés en début de thérapie pour donner l’impression que le patient est plus avancé dans le traitement (schématiquement, une transformation de voix « guéri ») et une augmentation de pitch sur des extraits correspondant aux séances finales de prise en charge pour donner l’impression que le patient est plus en amont de thérapie (schématiquement, une transformation de voix « malade »). Nos résultats montrent non seulement que les soignants sont capables de faire des inférences diagnostiques à partir de la voix, mais qu’ils utilisent spécifiquement le pitch comme indice vocal dans l’évaluation de la psychopathologie, la pertinence de cet indice semblant reposer sur une heuristique pitch-symptôme acquise par observation de régularités en cours de thérapie chez les experts. En cela, de la même manière que pour l'apprentissage machine, la voix serait également un biomarqueur diagnostique chez l'humain dont la modification algorithmique influencerait les inférences perceptives des soignants

La voix, un biomarqueur pour l'humain aussi ? Influence de la hauteur de la voix du patient sur le diagnostic expert du TSPT

International audienceCette étude réalisée sur un groupe de 17 soignants spécialisés dans la prise en charge du Trouble de Stress Post Traumatique (TSPT) examine de manière inédite la perception que les soignants (psychiatres, psychologues et infirmiers-psy) font de l’état psychopathologique de patients à partir de la seule écoute de leur voix et, plus spécifiquement, l’influence causale du pitch et de sa modification sur cette perception. Pour cela, nous avons demandé à des soignants de comparer des extraits de voix de patients TSPT, deux à deux, correspondant au même moment du récit traumatique enregistré en début et en fin de thérapie. Selon les conditions, les extraits sont soit présentés tels qu’enregistrés, soit manipulés acoustiquement avec une transformation de pitch mimant l’évolution naturelle de la voix en cours de thérapie observée lors d’une précédente étude, à savoir une baisse de pitch moyenne de 10Hz. Ainsi, nous appliquons une diminution de pitch sur des extraits sélectionnés en début de thérapie pour donner l’impression que le patient est plus avancé dans le traitement (schématiquement, une transformation de voix « guéri ») et une augmentation de pitch sur des extraits correspondant aux séances finales de prise en charge pour donner l’impression que le patient est plus en amont de thérapie (schématiquement, une transformation de voix « malade »). Nos résultats montrent non seulement que les soignants sont capables de faire des inférences diagnostiques à partir de la voix, mais qu’ils utilisent spécifiquement le pitch comme indice vocal dans l’évaluation de la psychopathologie, la pertinence de cet indice semblant reposer sur une heuristique pitch-symptôme acquise par observation de régularités en cours de thérapie chez les experts. En cela, de la même manière que pour l'apprentissage machine, la voix serait également un biomarqueur diagnostique chez l'humain dont la modification algorithmique influencerait les inférences perceptives des soignants