Climate-smart Agriculture: Engaging One Health, Insects, Food and Water Security

Georgina Bingham, Research Associate Professor, Entomology, UNL & Faculty Fellow, Daugherty Water for Food Institute Author

02/15/2022 Added

35 Plays

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Translating discoveries into commercial products requires balancing business drivers with scientific possibilities. This presentation will provide an overview of the path from discovery to application for biotech trait development in the Ag industry and – with a focus on complex traits – highlight some of the challenges faced along the way and opportunities provided by the emergence of new technologies.

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[00:00:00.800]The following presentation
[00:00:02.250]is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture seminar series,
[00:00:05.840]at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
[00:00:08.380]Good afternoon everyone,
[00:00:10.380]and welcome to today's session of the spring 2022,
[00:00:15.510]Agronomy and Horticulture seminar series.
[00:00:18.240]My name is Dan Uden and I'm an professor
[00:00:21.530]in UNL school of natural resources
[00:00:23.570]and department of agronomy and horticulture.
[00:00:27.270]And along with professor Stev Knezevic
[00:00:31.560]in the department of agronomy and horticulture,
[00:00:34.330]it's my pleasure to welcome
[00:00:36.460]and introduce this afternoon's speaker Dr. Georgina Bingham,
[00:00:42.670]from UNL department of entomology.
[00:00:46.510]Dr. Bingham has a rich background,
[00:00:49.820]which for decades has taken her all around the world
[00:00:55.320]in the private sector and in academia,
[00:00:59.960]exploring entomological impacts on food security
[00:01:06.000]and nutrition, insects of medical and veterinary importance,
[00:01:12.740]zoonotic disease and various other things,
[00:01:15.850]as I'm sure you'll hear in her seminar today.
[00:01:21.090]So this afternoon,
[00:01:23.760]she's going to tell us about some of her work
[00:01:25.590]in the realm of one health and the intersection of insects,
[00:01:30.640]food and water security.
[00:01:33.690]Thanks so much, Dan,
[00:01:34.710]thanks for that nice introduction.
[00:01:36.970]It's really nice to be here and see so many people online.
[00:01:40.190]Thanks for joining to listen in
[00:01:41.980]on some of that I've been doing
[00:01:44.060]over the past 10 or so years.
[00:01:48.710]I wanted to kind of try and encompass as Dan was saying,
[00:01:56.270]the many areas that I have had the opportunity
[00:01:59.310]to work in during my career.
[00:02:03.010]and then focus in on some of the research
[00:02:05.690]that I am working on here at UNL and hope to broaden out.
[00:02:11.660]And I'm really hopeful that I'm gonna be able
[00:02:14.680]to find some more people to collaborate with
[00:02:18.980]within the departments.
[00:02:20.890]I think there's a lot of wonderful crossover
[00:02:22.690]between entomology and agronomy and horticulture,
[00:02:26.100]and I've already had several great interactions
[00:02:29.730]with people in the department.
[00:02:30.940]So I'm hoping to continue that as I expand my program.
[00:02:34.610]So I have been a research associate professor,
[00:02:37.940]here at UNL since September, 2019.
[00:02:42.650]But prior to that,
[00:02:43.483]I was already here based on East campus
[00:02:47.640]as an adjunct professor working for a private company.
[00:02:52.440]So it wasn't a big jump to move to the faculty, but I do,
[00:02:56.780]I'm very excited right now because
[00:02:58.700]I have more freedom moving away from industry,
[00:03:01.070]I have more freedom to expand my research portfolio.
[00:03:04.310]So it's a pretty exciting time for me.
[00:03:08.694]So today I thought I would talk a little bit about
[00:03:11.240]some hard hitting topics,
[00:03:15.410]climate-smart agriculture being one,
[00:03:19.020]in this age of climate change and global warming,
[00:03:23.420]and then also engaging for one health and how insects
[00:03:28.050]and food and water security kind of interact
[00:03:30.780]and as Dan said intersect together,
[00:03:34.110]particularly from an emerging diseases
[00:03:36.620]and emerging pests perspective.
[00:03:39.810]So I just thought I'd start out
[00:03:41.300]just by telling you who I am and where I'm from,
[00:03:43.410]you might have guessed from my accent
[00:03:45.360]that I am not American.
[00:03:47.810]I'm originally from the UK,
[00:03:49.780]and I grew up in a tiny village of AC people
[00:03:55.470]in a county called Lincolnshire and my father grow crops.
[00:04:01.010]And he was multi-culturalist actually.
[00:04:02.850]So these are photos from where I'm from in the UK.
[00:04:08.160]And that's right here on the map.
[00:04:11.090]After that, I went all the way up north to Scotland
[00:04:15.490]to study animal and agricultural science.
[00:04:18.140]During that time, I had an opportunity
[00:04:20.490]to do an Erasmus year abroad,
[00:04:24.727]where I studied at Bargaining University,
[00:04:27.040]in the Netherlands,
[00:04:28.350]and that led to a project looking at Maasai pastoralists
[00:04:33.920]and the fragmentation of rangelands in Kenya.
[00:04:39.360]Following that I went on to do a PhD in post-doc
[00:04:44.480]with Imperial college and (indistinct) Research.
[00:04:48.390]There's a quiz question
[00:04:50.960]that I might ask people about at the end.
[00:04:53.580]So I was quite astounded by the size of the United States,
[00:04:58.900]as you fly across it,
[00:05:00.690]it seems to never end as someone coming from Europe,
[00:05:03.640]it's intimidating and amazing at the same time,
[00:05:07.200]and just to give you a perspective,
[00:05:09.270]my perspective on things,
[00:05:11.530]England is basically the size of Kansas.
[00:05:16.260]Following my postdoc in the UK,
[00:05:19.180]I started working for a humanitarian company,
[00:05:22.070]working on long lasting mosquito bed nets in Switzerland,
[00:05:26.970]and that's a picture of Lausanne, Switzerland,
[00:05:29.370]where our headquarters were based.
[00:05:31.620]And then following that, moved to Lincoln, Nebraska,
[00:05:36.900]where, as I mentioned, I was an adjunct faculty
[00:05:40.150]and had a lab on East campus
[00:05:42.010]within the department of entomology.
[00:05:44.440]And it's just a picture of me working
[00:05:45.950]on one of my projects out in Africa.
[00:05:50.520]So the company that I previously worked for
[00:05:52.910]for around 12 years was a humanitarian entrepreneurship.
[00:05:58.300]So what does that mean?
[00:05:59.320]So it means that doing good is good business.
[00:06:03.900]So it's not your typical corporate social responsibility
[00:06:08.100]of other private sector industry companies.
[00:06:12.810]The entire business model focuses
[00:06:15.570]and devotes all of their innovative platform,
[00:06:18.330]producing products and solutions for the most disadvantaged
[00:06:21.820]and vulnerable people in the world.
[00:06:23.600]I felt very lucky to have this opportunity
[00:06:25.860]to work in that company.
[00:06:29.159]And we were mostly working,
[00:06:31.200]as I mentioned in mosquito bed nets,
[00:06:33.650]we also worked on water filters and food security products.
[00:06:38.980]And much of our research portfolio
[00:06:41.110]was based around control release technologies.
[00:06:44.870]So I'm not sure if you're aware,
[00:06:46.410]but mosquito bed nets to make them long lasting
[00:06:50.530]require particular resins or incorporation
[00:06:55.890]of an active ingredient to allow the slow controlled release
[00:07:00.520]of insecticide to the surface
[00:07:02.780]of the plastic of the mosquito net,
[00:07:05.990]where the insect would then come into contact and die.
[00:07:10.907]And so, and our water filters
[00:07:12.490]were similar type of technology,
[00:07:15.940]using filaments to control release of toxins
[00:07:22.010]and hold them away so that they could be washed out later.
[00:07:26.890]So this was quite a cheap solution for cleaning water.
[00:07:32.930]So we thought it'd start out because people
[00:07:35.480]often throw around words like climate smart agriculture
[00:07:39.070]and food security,
[00:07:40.580]and I just thought I'd start out with some definitions.
[00:07:45.853]And so as defined by the United nations,
[00:07:49.680]food security is kind of a complex thing.
[00:07:51.770]It's not just having enough to eat,
[00:07:54.840]it's a little more structured than that.
[00:07:56.870]So it's about having all people at all times,
[00:08:01.960]having physical, social and economic access to sufficient,
[00:08:06.000]safe, nutritious food that meets their food preferences
[00:08:10.380]and dietary needs for a healthy act of life.
[00:08:13.790]So there's a lot in that sentence
[00:08:16.730]and that includes cultural preferences, religious needs,
[00:08:20.870]and it's not just about having food
[00:08:24.629]and having a full family basically.
[00:08:28.580]And climate smart agriculture talks around about a lot.
[00:08:33.199]And there are basically three main objectives
[00:08:37.350]sustainably increasing agricultural productivity
[00:08:39.900]and incomes, adapting and building resilience
[00:08:42.550]to climate change and reducing
[00:08:45.410]or removing greenhouse gas emissions where possible.
[00:08:48.110]And a lot of my work in the food security sector
[00:08:51.410]of the company that I was working in
[00:08:54.900]was focused on a lot of these goals,
[00:08:57.430]but mostly in Africa.
[00:08:59.660]It always astounds me how many people
[00:09:03.640]there are in the world,
[00:09:04.900]I can never really get my head around it.
[00:09:07.598]And the fact that there are so many people hungry.
[00:09:12.810]So one in nine American people today are hungry.
[00:09:17.150]So it's a pretty serious problem.
[00:09:22.170]So basically I wanted to focus on a couple of things
[00:09:25.390]as I worked through the different projects
[00:09:29.780]that I've worked on.
[00:09:30.960]So climate related risks to health,
[00:09:33.410]livelihoods, food security, water supply,
[00:09:36.470]human health and economic growth.
[00:09:40.370]So these risks are indicated
[00:09:43.210]to increase over the coming years,
[00:09:47.890]whether we believe it or not,
[00:09:49.590]it appears that that is happening
[00:09:52.720]and something that I've been focused on in my research
[00:09:56.110]more recently is the expansion of habitats
[00:09:58.840]and new areas for economically damaging insect pest species.
[00:10:04.892]I've really focused in on insects
[00:10:07.320]with bacterial capacity so far.
[00:10:11.120]So it's not all leak and I wanted to just say that,
[00:10:15.490]you know, if we start
[00:10:17.080]looking into climate smart agricultural practices,
[00:10:20.310]we bring in one health concepts
[00:10:22.430]and connect everything in a multidisciplinary way,
[00:10:27.350]we can link implementation programs and interventions,
[00:10:31.370]and this can then reduce costs.
[00:10:33.210]Because if you imagine,
[00:10:34.400]if you bring all of the pieces together,
[00:10:37.770]it's not one program going ahead,
[00:10:44.163]another program going ahead and another program going ahead,
[00:10:46.570]all needing the funds for their capital expenses,
[00:10:50.183]and implementation costs.
[00:10:54.050]If you bring it all together,
[00:10:55.050]then you can reduce a lot of that costs,
[00:10:56.920]and I will talk about into of that in a little bit.
[00:11:02.000]And I'll also talk about using cell phones
[00:11:04.200]and internet smartphone and apps
[00:11:06.160]to track and use and share big data sets,
[00:11:10.980]in order for us to learn and become better
[00:11:14.860]at making these systems more efficient and resilient.
[00:11:20.630]So a couple of things that go across
[00:11:23.100]all the projects that I have worked on.
[00:11:26.310]So one of the key points is integration
[00:11:29.160]as I was just mentioning.
[00:11:30.340]So when we bring disciplines together
[00:11:32.770]and implement this together,
[00:11:33.880]and it allows linkages that weren't otherwise there,
[00:11:37.610]allowing streamlining a program called costs.
[00:11:41.890]And then that means that, so in my case,
[00:11:44.180]when I was working with the humanitarian company,
[00:11:47.710]it means that more people are getting
[00:11:50.760]these life saving tools like mosquito bed net,
[00:11:52.910]or water filter,
[00:11:54.430]and the cost of delivering that becomes less,
[00:11:57.740]which means coverage can be greater.
[00:12:00.520]And one of those examples was
[00:12:04.020]whilst I was at this company Vestergaard,
[00:12:08.020]we were looking
[00:12:08.853]at the vertical distribution of mosquito nets,
[00:12:12.680]and it costs $5 per bed net on a normal campaign.
[00:12:17.300]But during 2002, 2004, we integrated bed nets
[00:12:21.400]with measles vaccination, vitamin A and de-worming
[00:12:24.740]and managed to distribute the bed nets for $2,
[00:12:27.770]less than $2 each.
[00:12:29.370]So that's a huge saving and it means that
[00:12:33.650]you can more than double up the amount of people reached.
[00:12:38.670]So I think the numbers speak for themselves,
[00:12:42.560]but it's not always easy to break that silo mentality,
[00:12:45.460]and there are always pots of money in their small silos
[00:12:50.600]that you have to take, you have to understand,
[00:12:57.310]but I think these days,
[00:13:00.290]those silo mentalities are starting to disappear,
[00:13:02.380]and people are understanding that
[00:13:04.570]you can reach more people quicker and cheaper
[00:13:07.530]if you start working together.
[00:13:09.310]And I think the grand challenges
[00:13:11.070]that UNL is a great example of that
[00:13:13.260]breaking up silo mentality.
[00:13:17.160]Another thing is to promote innovation,
[00:13:21.680]and I think UNL is fantastic at that.
[00:13:25.020]And what we found, particularly when we were working
[00:13:29.720]with the most vulnerable folks,
[00:13:32.467]was that innovations that could be lifesaving
[00:13:34.700]were often sitting on a shelf
[00:13:37.320]because regulatory and normative bodies
[00:13:40.120]weren't able to evaluate or classify them fit for service.
[00:13:43.690]Now, I'll walk you through an example of that
[00:13:46.000]with a new product that we designed
[00:13:48.144]for storing grain for smallholder farmers.
[00:13:52.630]So then what we found was the best result
[00:13:56.490]was when the private sector
[00:13:58.760]could come together with the public sector mandates,
[00:14:01.980]and then bring in the implementers
[00:14:05.640]to allow the tools to be available
[00:14:07.680]for timely and integrated deployment.
[00:14:12.490]And really the regulatory bodies
[00:14:15.260]are very important as it very important for me to work
[00:14:18.040]hands in hand with the different
[00:14:19.270]regulator in normative bodies,
[00:14:21.240]so that we can ensure product performance and standards,
[00:14:24.030]because what we don't want is
[00:14:26.370]a whole bunch of substandard products going out to people
[00:14:32.190]in rural communities and it doing more harm than goods.
[00:14:38.000]And there's also issues with procurement procedures
[00:14:41.470]and uptake of new innovations, adoption of new innovations,
[00:14:45.260]as many of us know an extension is not easy,
[00:14:49.490]and having people understand
[00:14:51.560]why this new innovation is important,
[00:14:53.490]why they should pay for it,
[00:14:56.060]it takes a lot of work and a lot of outreach in education.
[00:15:01.120]Something that I also came up against
[00:15:03.850]working with various different countries
[00:15:05.650]was import export specifications,
[00:15:08.700]and I'll talk a little bit about specifications
[00:15:10.640]for that one product that we developed,
[00:15:13.900]but, you know, the most important thing
[00:15:15.970]is to include clear quality parameters and standards.
[00:15:20.060]So that programs, for example,
[00:15:22.240]the national malaria initiative programs,
[00:15:25.860]they know which products and which suppliers are reliable.
[00:15:30.870]So coming back to climate,
[00:15:32.900]I pulled this from the IPCC AR6 report
[00:15:40.060]that just came out this year,
[00:15:43.000]and it basically paints a picture of today and then future
[00:15:48.160]and where we could be in the future,
[00:15:50.420]whether we will continue to be unsustainable
[00:15:52.900]as we are currently,
[00:15:54.480]or can we find some middle ground
[00:15:56.520]and become climate resilient.
[00:15:58.860]There's a lot of things that need to be done,
[00:16:01.900]achieving STGs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions
[00:16:06.520]and limiting global warming.
[00:16:08.360]So I think right now we're on target
[00:16:10.050]for 1.5 degrees C increase, according to that report.
[00:16:15.990]But anything above that,
[00:16:17.190]as far as I've read is gonna cause massive impact
[00:16:21.500]around the globe.
[00:16:23.840]So jumping straight into it,
[00:16:25.135]the people that I was serving as a R and D lead
[00:16:30.910]and global partnerships manager at the humanitarian company,
[00:16:34.450]we were focused on small holder farmers.
[00:16:36.840]And so 500 million small holder farmers
[00:16:40.300]support 2 billion people.
[00:16:43.100]And they produce most of the food
[00:16:45.840]for people in developing countries.
[00:16:48.020]And something that I found
[00:16:49.580]while I was working in the different countries
[00:16:53.040]in Africa and Southeast Asia,
[00:16:54.630]the most valuable asset was their livestock.
[00:16:58.090]It wasn't just a commodity,
[00:17:02.100]it was also something which provided insurance
[00:17:04.520]because there isn't no very little or no insurance available
[00:17:09.240]in the countries that we were working in,
[00:17:11.110]so if there was a drought or a natural disaster
[00:17:16.920]or something terrible happened within the family,
[00:17:19.520]they could sell that animal and then still
[00:17:22.350]have enough food to eat, send their children to school.
[00:17:25.480]Quite often, some of the farmers that I worked with,
[00:17:28.500]they would have specific animals that they were raising
[00:17:32.610]to be sold at the time that one of their children
[00:17:35.160]needed to go to school and they would sell an animal
[00:17:38.720]to allow the kids to go to school.
[00:17:44.220]So one of the examples that I wanted to talk about
[00:17:46.620]was sleeping sickness,
[00:17:48.310]and I feel like this is a good topic,
[00:17:51.780]a good current topic to discuss because it encompasses
[00:17:57.470]the one health aspect.
[00:17:59.080]So it's humans, it's animals.
[00:18:03.597]It also is agriculture, the plowing of the land,
[00:18:08.510]et cetera, that's impacted by this disease and it's global.
[00:18:14.490]So it's not just Africa
[00:18:15.810]that suffers from sleeping sickness,
[00:18:18.240]as people quite often think it's in Asia,
[00:18:21.840]it's in South America,
[00:18:22.900]it's in the USA and now it's in Nebraska as of last year.
[00:18:29.570]So it's transmitted by the tsetse fly over here
[00:18:33.600]and Triatominae bugs,
[00:18:40.220]otherwise known as kissing bugs,
[00:18:41.660]and it can be mechanically transmitted
[00:18:43.670]by various biting flies.
[00:18:48.114]So the interesting thing I find
[00:18:50.050]about this particular disease is that
[00:18:53.070]it's not just the impact on the people,
[00:18:57.847]it's a chronic or acute disease,
[00:19:00.000]it can cause death, it can reduce the amount of time
[00:19:04.130]that you're able to work, go to school.
[00:19:06.930]So it definitely impacts human health
[00:19:10.340]and the human population in that way.
[00:19:13.810]However, when the animals get this disease,
[00:19:17.090]so you have the HAT, Human African Trypanosomiasis,
[00:19:20.940]and then you have Animal Africans Trypanosomiasis,
[00:19:24.420]transmitted by different trypanosome species.
[00:19:29.080]These animals that are used to plow of land
[00:19:33.040]becomes sick and can't plow anymore,
[00:19:35.880]and it's very difficult to bring in
[00:19:38.410]high producing animals from meat or milk,
[00:19:41.920]because they're very susceptible
[00:19:43.370]to this disease and just die.
[00:19:46.522]And so specifically in Ethiopia,
[00:19:49.020]there are large sways of land that are very fertile
[00:19:52.430]that can't be used
[00:19:53.770]because they're great tsetse fly habitats,
[00:19:57.070]and it's difficult to plow them,
[00:19:58.220]it's difficult to work in them for various reasons,
[00:20:00.570]human and animal health wise.
[00:20:03.580]And there's a great article,
[00:20:06.096]if you get the chance to read it from the economist,
[00:20:08.440]just explaining the impact on global food security
[00:20:11.530]from this one fly.
[00:20:15.760]So coming back to Nebraska,
[00:20:17.545]as I mentioned from our department,
[00:20:22.752]they actually discovered the triatominae bug
[00:20:31.983]in a couple of counties now.
[00:20:34.770]And it was actually carrying the disease causing factor,
[00:20:40.450]the trypanosoma cruzei known as Chagas here in America.
[00:20:46.700]So whilst this particular species doesn't transmit well,
[00:20:50.970]it's here, it's just arrived,
[00:20:53.480]and I think, and we postulate
[00:20:56.450]that this is a climate change induced movement,
[00:21:01.200]and this is an emerging disease that we have to watch,
[00:21:04.460]especially here in Nebraska.
[00:21:06.690]And we've got some studies to start in the summer
[00:21:09.500]to start looking at that into more detail.
[00:21:13.240]So just to give you an idea of where sleeping sickness
[00:21:16.500]is found in Africa and where I was working
[00:21:19.470]for the most part.
[00:21:20.980]The red parts are where you find most of the disease.
[00:21:27.120]It doesn't sound like many, so 1000 cases,
[00:21:32.361]but this disease is very debilitating and kills.
[00:21:36.250]One of the projects that I worked on
[00:21:37.590]was with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
[00:21:39.960]and what we did was try to tackle this issue.
[00:21:44.180]So these larger targets,
[00:21:46.910]which attract and kill the tsetse fly,
[00:21:50.440]they cost a lot of money, they are bulky,
[00:21:53.380]they are hard to get out into the field,
[00:21:55.450]and they need to go every 50 meters in a tsetse fly habitat
[00:22:00.510]to stop disease transmission.
[00:22:03.457]So what we did in conjunction with work
[00:22:05.900]from USDA in Louisiana State University,
[00:22:09.850]was to create these smaller targets.
[00:22:14.480]So we were able to drop
[00:22:16.160]the cost of implementation significantly.
[00:22:20.960]And this has been a project
[00:22:22.900]that I've been working on for the last 10 years,
[00:22:25.040]and we just recently had a review article come out.
[00:22:30.260]Well, recently 2020, the years are going by too fast,
[00:22:33.950]it feels recent, but it just explains that
[00:22:40.050]how we manage to reduce implementation costs
[00:22:43.410]and reduce disease.
[00:22:45.020]And just an in interesting anecdotal story,
[00:22:49.820]while I was working in the Gambia,
[00:22:53.390]where there was an Ebola outbreak a few years ago,
[00:22:58.970]they were not able to go out and screen and treat people.
[00:23:02.580]And at that time, the health community
[00:23:04.830]felt that screening and treating
[00:23:06.130]was the most important elements of controlling this disease.
[00:23:10.080]And that these targets that were killing the flies
[00:23:13.920]were a nice to have, but a not a need to have.
[00:23:17.250]And when Ebola struck households were unwilling
[00:23:20.870]to allow anyone in a white coat anywhere near them,
[00:23:23.950]they felt that they were transmitting the disease.
[00:23:27.360]So in fact the only strategy reduce sleeping sickness
[00:23:31.430]were these long lasting targets
[00:23:33.970]that stayed out for six to eight months.
[00:23:36.610]And when we did the analysis,
[00:23:40.040]we saw that in the regions where there were
[00:23:42.840]these better control tools out,
[00:23:46.402]the disease was reduced by 70%,
[00:23:51.610]as opposed to places where there was nothing,
[00:23:54.370]which indicated that these back to control tools
[00:23:56.850]were definitely important in controlling sleeping sickness.
[00:24:01.890]And then a little bit more,
[00:24:02.723]I did a little bit more research on this
[00:24:04.760]to see if we could further reduce costs
[00:24:07.870]by piggybacking on health clinics.
[00:24:10.230]So this was in the DRC.
[00:24:12.180]And what we wanted to do was work with a local agency
[00:24:15.080]called IMA on the ground,
[00:24:17.610]and try to further reduce
[00:24:20.020]using an integrated delivery method,
[00:24:21.820]similarly to what we did with the mosquito nets
[00:24:24.710]and measles campaigns.
[00:24:27.010]So that we could go down from $482 per kilometer,
[00:24:31.950]down to $18 per kilometer, by co-distributing
[00:24:36.820]with bed nets and de-worming,
[00:24:41.010]that IMA were already going out and doing,
[00:24:43.860]trained public health profession.
[00:24:47.920]However, what was interesting was that this was blocked
[00:24:51.070]because it would mean that local officials
[00:24:55.140]wouldn't receive double per diems,
[00:24:57.730]that they would've received.
[00:25:00.610]So this program was blocked and we were told
[00:25:03.470]that we had to do both programs.
[00:25:06.450]So sometimes even though the cost can be reduced,
[00:25:10.530]and it seems like a good idea,
[00:25:11.860]and it seems like everyone will benefit
[00:25:14.880]on a day to day basis,
[00:25:16.540]these families who work there,
[00:25:20.000]they live on the per diem, there salary is so low,
[00:25:23.600]they really need these per diems,
[00:25:26.420]and they felt that we were short changing them basically,
[00:25:32.620]to do too much work for what they were getting
[00:25:36.860]because their salary would not increase,
[00:25:39.390]but they would lose a per diem.
[00:25:40.720]So it's interesting, the problems that you face
[00:25:43.570]when you think you're doing the right thing,
[00:25:47.300]but actually it wasn't gonna help
[00:25:48.730]those families immediately.
[00:25:52.350]Another area that I worked on was stored products.
[00:25:56.270]So staple foods like maize, sorghum, and also some beans,
[00:26:04.040]cows peas and legumes.
[00:26:06.420]So what happens is after the harvest,
[00:26:08.170]they dry these store them.
[00:26:11.203]And you can see here, the beautiful,
[00:26:13.260]this is a market in Nigeria
[00:26:15.390]and a farmer that I was working with
[00:26:17.360]and how he was storing the grain for the family.
[00:26:24.506]And so that was when I embarked
[00:26:27.300]on a career understanding, stored product,
[00:26:30.810]which are quite different from mosquitoes
[00:26:33.240]and the agricultural and multicultural pests
[00:26:35.580]that I had been working on in the past,
[00:26:37.470]they behave very differently,
[00:26:39.100]they respond very differently and they are voracious.
[00:26:42.550]So here's a picture just showing how the lesser grain boa,
[00:26:47.010]which is a big problem here in the United States,
[00:26:49.310]can destroy wheat over 128 days to almost nothing.
[00:26:57.330]And these insects, basically they go in
[00:26:59.500]and they eat the most nutritious part first,
[00:27:03.380]and then eat the rest after.
[00:27:06.300]So even if you catch them early,
[00:27:08.730]they have probably eaten
[00:27:09.780]the most nutritious part of that grain.
[00:27:14.480]And food losses and waste
[00:27:15.550]is probably a low hanging fruit it's part of SDG 13,
[00:27:21.430]and what they're trying to do is reduce food loss and waste
[00:27:26.440]by 50% by 2030 as part of the SDGs.
[00:27:30.890]But I have seen myself working in different environments,
[00:27:38.420]in warehouses and in homes that these insects
[00:27:42.250]can destroy a whole bag of grain within three months,
[00:27:45.270]which is kind of frightening.
[00:27:46.350]So there's a bag sizes, it's about a 90 kilo bag,
[00:27:51.060]and this is one year after setting up this stack.
[00:27:57.060]Behind that you can see one of the bags
[00:27:59.321]that my team developed,
[00:28:00.870]it's an insecticide treated bag
[00:28:02.630]based on the malaria mosquito bed at technology,
[00:28:06.430]and you can see it's almost untouched.
[00:28:09.190]When I walked up to these bags and I touched them,
[00:28:11.880]they just disintegrated, they were completely destroyed.
[00:28:14.300]You can see the FRAs and the webbing from the insect damage
[00:28:18.050]all the way through there.
[00:28:18.900]And that's just after one year
[00:28:20.070]that was in Zambia on mace.
[00:28:24.400]So we also started moving away
[00:28:26.080]from simple insecticide technology
[00:28:29.530]to try and bring in hermetic storage.
[00:28:32.010]Obviously this isn't a new concept,
[00:28:33.546]it's been around for a long time,
[00:28:36.880]you can see here the steps down to
[00:28:39.220]where they would store grains underground,
[00:28:42.610]people store grains in plastic drums
[00:28:46.640]to try and keep them hermetically sealed.
[00:28:49.010]And then here in Nebraska and US,
[00:28:51.750]especially this Midwestern region,
[00:28:55.210]we have the huge silos
[00:28:57.070]with controlled environment inside them.
[00:28:59.270]So hermetic storage has come a long way
[00:29:02.227]since in prehistoric times,
[00:29:05.220]people would bury their grain
[00:29:06.970]to try and save it from insects and other pests.
[00:29:12.900]And the important thing about hermetic technology
[00:29:16.890]is that grain must be dried to a certain percentage,
[00:29:20.220]and if it is not, then you will have fermentation.
[00:29:24.120]So basically more or less you're brewing beer
[00:29:27.950]or something inside your bag
[00:29:29.480]and you're not getting a food source.
[00:29:31.250]And it's very contaminated with toxins,
[00:29:34.820]like aflatoxin that come in with the grain,
[00:29:39.780]from the field,
[00:29:40.760]and then they just proliferate in these circumstances.
[00:29:43.980]So this just becomes a big toxic mess that nobody can eat.
[00:29:48.370]And unfortunately the poorest people
[00:29:51.380]end up having to eat this
[00:29:52.580]and there are terrible stories of aflatoxin
[00:29:56.280]being found in breast milk in Kenya
[00:29:58.920]and causing damaging effects on infants,
[00:30:02.950]and also can actually kill people in large enough amounts.
[00:30:10.250]So what we did within the research team
[00:30:12.960]that I was working on, we talked with different people.
[00:30:17.310]So the Purdue improved KLP storage bags are hermetic bags.
[00:30:25.990]So if you imagine your food in the supermarket,
[00:30:30.350]and it is in a what looks like a solid plastic wrapping,
[00:30:36.850]in fact, that wrap that what looks like a single layer
[00:30:41.290]is a multi-layer piece of plastic
[00:30:44.270]that allows certain amounts of water to come out
[00:30:48.550]and certain amounts of air to come out or go in,
[00:30:52.800]to keep the commodity or the food source
[00:30:56.760]at the correct amount of air and hermetic to store safely,
[00:31:04.610]and so it doesn't rot.
[00:31:06.430]So what we did was we looked at having
[00:31:10.970]a multi-layer bag inside of a normal woven sac,
[00:31:17.640]which we had treated with the insecticide
[00:31:21.390]that we used for mosquito nets.
[00:31:23.240]So what that did, what that meant was
[00:31:25.640]we could kill insects inside the bag,
[00:31:28.130]which we hadn't been able to do previously
[00:31:30.070]with just the treated outer bag
[00:31:32.470]and we could also kill insects trying to get in.
[00:31:34.980]And this is a big problem to helium places
[00:31:37.320]where they have insects like the larger grain borer,
[00:31:40.960]and they will come in,
[00:31:43.099]and the Capra beetle and interesting anecdote
[00:31:46.580]about the Capra beetle is that it can go through concrete,
[00:31:49.800]and a lot of these insects are amazing borers,
[00:31:53.120]they come from Woodlands and they have just decided that
[00:31:57.220]since the domestication of corn and agriculture has boomed,
[00:32:02.660]this is a much better food source
[00:32:04.800]for them than being in the forest.
[00:32:07.160]So they have adapted quickly and doing a really good job
[00:32:12.440]of destroying grains that are trying to be stored,
[00:32:16.380]particularly by smallholder of families,
[00:32:18.540]you can see here, they have a couple of cows
[00:32:22.850]and just store their grain under their bed.
[00:32:27.010]One way people treat these bags,
[00:32:31.520]which is quite frightening is fumigation.
[00:32:36.320]And what they would do is they would take a tablet of the,
[00:32:40.420]the phosphine tablet, wrap it in a piece of fabric,
[00:32:45.280]put it inside the stored grain, close the bag,
[00:32:49.590]and then put it underneath the bed
[00:32:52.080]and basically fumigate the entire family.
[00:32:55.700]So there are lots of very scary practices
[00:32:58.010]that happen with insecticides.
[00:33:01.280]So what we were hoping with this controlled release coat
[00:33:06.540]on the bag was that people
[00:33:08.110]wouldn't need to treat brain anymore.
[00:33:11.590]So you have the hermetic inner liner,
[00:33:14.290]and you have the treated liner
[00:33:17.120]to ensure that insects can't get in,
[00:33:19.220]and the ones inside get killed.
[00:33:22.610]So sometimes there is a problem with hermetic bags,
[00:33:26.870]as you can imagine,
[00:33:27.703]they're quite fragile and you can get a puncture
[00:33:31.460]or it's not tied correctly.
[00:33:33.470]So that doesn't help the smallholder
[00:33:36.270]that has only one bag, unfortunately,
[00:33:39.864]but if you have several bags,
[00:33:42.370]it does mean that the insects that proliferate
[00:33:45.500]within that one single bag are killed
[00:33:49.180]as they try to come out of the bag.
[00:33:50.750]So they won't infect any other stored products
[00:33:53.860]in the closed vicinity.
[00:33:57.610]And I've been working with Oklahoma State University
[00:34:02.790]and some groups in Nigeria and Ghana
[00:34:05.340]under the USA feed the future post-harvest innovation lab.
[00:34:13.113]And we have done several evaluations of these tools
[00:34:19.070]in Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria,
[00:34:24.800]under that program to look at the impact on,
[00:34:29.780]we have some new data recently on poultry producers
[00:34:32.930]showing that if the chickens are fed on grain
[00:34:37.790]that is free of aflatoxin and insects, then they actually,
[00:34:43.730]the broilers do better, the eggs are better,
[00:34:46.160]and this is actually gonna be published here, Sam.
[00:34:49.400]So, as I mentioned earlier,
[00:34:52.080]when you come with a new technology,
[00:34:54.090]that hasn't ever been seen before,
[00:34:56.920]it involves a lot of regulatory conversation,
[00:35:00.670]and that was something
[00:35:01.590]that I had the opportunity to be involved in.
[00:35:04.500]And so I worked with the FAO
[00:35:07.760]and other various country regulatory bodies
[00:35:12.600]to create a set of harmonized tests for hermetic
[00:35:19.130]and insecticide treated bags.
[00:35:23.110]And they actually created category for these bags
[00:35:26.850]in the effort to ensure that
[00:35:29.250]it was only good policy products
[00:35:31.340]that were gonna reach the market.
[00:35:34.000]And this was quite an involved process
[00:35:36.210]because it was hard for people sometimes
[00:35:38.770]to understand that this was a bag, a plastic bag,
[00:35:43.550]but it also had an insecticide
[00:35:45.550]and it was also killing insects.
[00:35:47.480]And then how you classify that
[00:35:50.940]specifically for import export duties,
[00:35:54.770]because plastic bags have no,
[00:35:57.730]or limited duty in some countries
[00:36:00.180]and insecticides have hired, much higher duties.
[00:36:04.327]So it was a lot of discussion onto what this bag was,
[00:36:09.180]how should we call it with the regulatory bodies?
[00:36:14.190]And we also had to work with national bodies
[00:36:18.810]to ensure the testing that I was suggesting,
[00:36:22.210]we were suggesting was suitable
[00:36:25.760]for showing that these bags were fit for purpose
[00:36:30.730]and lasting long enough,
[00:36:33.550]and actually doing what we said they were gonna do.
[00:36:39.344]And there were a lot of discussions internationally
[00:36:41.120]as what should we want them to do?
[00:36:43.410]What should be the standards?
[00:36:45.370]And this is the 11 tests that they came up with,
[00:36:49.913]that we came up with to confirm
[00:36:53.610]whether these bags were fit for use.
[00:36:58.360]So it was also harmonizing the hermetic bag standards,
[00:37:02.151]and then also the insecticide treated bags.
[00:37:06.510]I mentioned earlier specification,
[00:37:08.240]so your specification is linked
[00:37:10.220]directly to your target product profile,
[00:37:15.720]and that comes from what the customer wants,
[00:37:20.320]what the consumer would like,
[00:37:21.890]and then what the regulatory bodies need and require.
[00:37:26.880]So I worked with our production partners
[00:37:30.280]to write up specific specifications
[00:37:34.090]in order to have the correct dosage
[00:37:38.030]and insecticide, for example,
[00:37:39.260]the right ranges that were safe and even down to the weave
[00:37:44.960]was important for certain markets.
[00:37:47.340]And I learned a lot about plastic bags
[00:37:49.100]during this period.
[00:37:50.480]So I kind of went into it as an entomologist
[00:37:55.560]and a biochemist and came out of it,
[00:37:58.060]knowing a lot more about plastic formulation
[00:38:01.640]and storage bags and how complicated hermetic storage is.
[00:38:09.030]I had no idea.
[00:38:11.250]And yeah, I just never understood how complex
[00:38:16.060]these control environment chambers
[00:38:18.350]that your meat or your cheese or whatever is kept in,
[00:38:23.610]I had no idea the amount of science
[00:38:26.490]that goes behind creating the right kind of packaging
[00:38:30.520]to keep the product safe until consumption.
[00:38:35.010]So, one of the fun things that I did during the studies
[00:38:38.250]was testing the air ratios within hermetic bags
[00:38:43.500]and how quickly the oxygen dropped away,
[00:38:47.440]and the CO2 went up and according to the literature,
[00:38:51.560]after five days below 4% oxygen, all insects should be dead.
[00:38:57.060]So I went away and tested all of our bags,
[00:39:01.240]the vests on the market bags, other bags,
[00:39:05.340]and we checked that out and you can see here,
[00:39:08.270]this is what happens,
[00:39:09.970]so oxygen is in blue and carbon dioxide is in red.
[00:39:16.610]So if you have a nonfunctional hermetic bag,
[00:39:19.340]that's kind of the data that you're gonna see over time,
[00:39:22.170]so this is days down here,
[00:39:24.070]and this is percentage air change up here.
[00:39:28.200]Here you can see if you have
[00:39:29.808]a suitably functioning hermetic bag,
[00:39:34.060]your hum upside peaks up here,
[00:39:37.719]and your oxygen drops down here.
[00:39:39.470]The caveat here is that it's the insects doing this.
[00:39:43.260]So the insects are using out the oxygen.
[00:39:46.070]It doesn't just go away by itself.
[00:39:47.850]So this is a kind of, this is an interesting catch 22,
[00:39:51.943]and if you don't have insects, domestic bag won't work,
[00:39:55.440]but then if you don't have insects,
[00:39:56.780]then it really doesn't matter
[00:39:58.030]'cause you don't have to kill the insects.
[00:40:00.810]But yeah, it was just an interesting caveat
[00:40:02.700]as I was working through this research.
[00:40:08.380]And being head of the R and D team,
[00:40:13.320]I had to ensure that we had all the quality,
[00:40:17.150]quality premises in place, quality checks,
[00:40:19.920]and these are bags that were produced
[00:40:22.830]and you can see the obvious visual issues.
[00:40:25.830]This is the bottom of the bag and it's not stuck properly,
[00:40:29.213]it's not stuck down properly.
[00:40:30.530]So the grain will likely just fall through,
[00:40:33.350]this clearly is not going to stop insects from getting in.
[00:40:38.240]So we had to set up a way to have batches tested,
[00:40:44.700]to ensure that none of this damage got through
[00:40:49.400]or as much as possible.
[00:40:51.420]So another fun thing I got to do
[00:40:53.530]was work with the University in Connecticut,
[00:40:58.770]and they do this analysis to show you
[00:41:02.510]what materials you have present in your bag.
[00:41:06.840]You can tell when you have polypropylene,
[00:41:09.020]because of this specific peak at this specific time
[00:41:12.890]and heat flow and here we have EVOH,
[00:41:18.520]which is a really great hermetic tool.
[00:41:22.890]It's if you can imagine a double ways window.
[00:41:27.910]So you have the two pieces of glass
[00:41:30.920]and you have the air in between,
[00:41:34.180]this is kind of the basis of how EVOH was made.
[00:41:39.340]So this is a great hermetic barrier.
[00:41:43.420]And then again,
[00:41:45.120]we have some polypropylene from our analysis.
[00:41:50.110]What I also discovered was it doesn't,
[00:41:51.860]it depends on the temperature
[00:41:53.830]and humidity that you're testing.
[00:41:56.350]When you're looking at OTR,
[00:41:57.480]this is oxygen transmission rate within a hermetic bag.
[00:42:00.820]And what we're really looking for
[00:42:03.569]is anywhere between one to 70 OTR measurements
[00:42:10.700]to be a suitable hermetic bag barrier
[00:42:13.820]for these small holder, 90 kilo bags.
[00:42:18.210]But you can see that that jumps up significantly,
[00:42:21.320]particularly humidity with the EVOH barrier,
[00:42:25.840]it really doesn't perform as well
[00:42:27.410]when you have high humidity.
[00:42:28.650]And the places that we were working
[00:42:30.560]definitely came up to 80% relative humidity.
[00:42:33.860]So we kinda had to start rethinking
[00:42:36.550]and redesigning our hermetic bag.
[00:42:39.230]So hermetic bags are great, they work really well,
[00:42:44.290]it's not new, but it's very affordable
[00:42:50.010]compared to other technologies, it's safe,
[00:42:55.340]but when I say it's very affordable,
[00:42:59.530]the poorest of the poor, subsistence farmers,
[00:43:03.430]weren't able to afford it at all,
[00:43:05.640]and they just could not use it.
[00:43:07.660]Availability is also difficult
[00:43:09.470]because these regions are large
[00:43:11.525]and it's very difficult to reach the customers.
[00:43:15.730]Durability and usability,
[00:43:17.580]I mentioned that there are issues with puncturing.
[00:43:21.410]So these are slightly fragile technology
[00:43:25.090]and you need to dry and in some cases,
[00:43:28.530]for example, in Northern Guatemala,
[00:43:32.770]we couldn't get the moisture content down low enough
[00:43:35.490]to be able to store in hermetic bags.
[00:43:37.760]It just took too much energy,
[00:43:39.420]we had to use burning to create heat to dry,
[00:43:44.480]and eventually it wasn't a good,
[00:43:48.790]cost efficient technology to be used.
[00:43:52.280]So it's not good for everywhere.
[00:43:54.350]And then there was this need for product standards
[00:43:57.140]and specifications, which wasn't in place
[00:43:58.910]when I first started working on hermetic bags,
[00:44:00.950]there was a lot of rubbish out on the market,
[00:44:04.627]garbage out on the market.
[00:44:07.010]So this is something for any new product coming in,
[00:44:12.170]definitely this is a sticking point for me
[00:44:14.740]and something I learned a lot
[00:44:16.070]as I was going through these processes.
[00:44:19.780]There's also a need for alternatives, obviously,
[00:44:22.640]and I actually am working on a need for CPPM grant,
[00:44:27.340]together with K state and USDA,
[00:44:30.490]and we are looking at using attractants
[00:44:34.810]and controlled release materials within there
[00:44:37.490]to kill the insects when they come into the trap.
[00:44:40.690]So when we developed these bags, we realized,
[00:44:45.260]we, I say we still, Vestergaard,
[00:44:48.410]I was with them for a very long time,
[00:44:50.130]I'm having a hard time, not saying we sometimes,
[00:44:53.460]but Vestergaard while I was there, realized, as I mentioned,
[00:44:58.310]the subsistence farmers were having a hard time
[00:45:01.160]affording even the cheapest hermetic bags,
[00:45:07.980]and they were just disenfranchised from the value chain.
[00:45:11.580]So what we did was we looked into that some more
[00:45:15.850]and tried to understand the value chain better
[00:45:19.380]and tried to find a way to take these disenfranchised
[00:45:24.170]smallholder farmers who are basically
[00:45:26.880]either wasting at the farm gate for a trader to come by
[00:45:30.500]and offer them some money for whatever grain they have,
[00:45:35.890]so they don't really have a choice on the price
[00:45:39.080]or they'll go to a market
[00:45:41.430]and get whatever they can for their brain,
[00:45:44.710]because basically within three months
[00:45:46.870]that grain will be gone because of insects,
[00:45:48.910]because they can't afford to keep them safe.
[00:45:52.990]So what we did was we brought together
[00:45:55.594]a group of farmers in Kenya
[00:46:00.110]and got them onto a mobile app that we developed.
[00:46:05.350]It had an online management dashboard,
[00:46:07.650]so that they could manage and monitor
[00:46:09.310]the entire value chain.
[00:46:12.110]But the key thing for this value chain is that
[00:46:19.570]each activity is fully traceable
[00:46:21.172]and I'll show you what that means in a minute.
[00:46:24.290]So it allows data collection and analysis
[00:46:26.780]through a smartphone,
[00:46:28.620]it allows market systems linkages,
[00:46:30.697]and what we're trying to do right now
[00:46:32.230]is include aflatoxin testing and decontamination,
[00:46:37.160]and a few other things as well.
[00:46:40.100]So there is a field agent dashboard, farmer registration,
[00:46:43.340]crop monitoring, crop aggregation, inventory,
[00:46:48.350]shipments, payments and traceability,
[00:46:50.360]all through the one app.
[00:46:52.170]So what it really looks like is this,
[00:46:54.120]and it uses various different internet of things,
[00:46:57.970]technology, so Bluetooth, padlocks,
[00:47:04.360]Bluetooth connected, moisture meters,
[00:47:07.910]each bag has a QR code in it.
[00:47:13.100]There is solar powered video
[00:47:16.370]and the Bluetooth and waist scale,
[00:47:21.010]so that all connects into the phone,
[00:47:23.580]and what we did was we worked with specific aggregators,
[00:47:29.110]we gave them a certain amount of money as a loan,
[00:47:33.760]to allow them to buy grain and store it
[00:47:36.370]and then sell it once the prices went up at the market.
[00:47:40.510]The caveat that was for that was
[00:47:43.710]we took the farmer's details into the phone,
[00:47:46.800]and it became a digital contract
[00:47:51.330]with all the farmer's details on it,
[00:47:53.670]and they, after their grain or the grain was sold,
[00:48:01.780]there was a kickback of 15% profit
[00:48:04.070]back to that small holder farmer,
[00:48:06.160]which obviously doesn't have any other value chain.
[00:48:09.290]But, so that was kind of how we were trying
[00:48:12.010]to give back to smallholder farmers
[00:48:15.720]through a proper business model.
[00:48:20.897]So this is what the app looks like.
[00:48:22.540]This is kind of the dashboard and the farmer registration,
[00:48:25.930]and there's a lot of information that goes into it.
[00:48:28.598]And I really, this is gonna,
[00:48:30.470]this where I talk about big data.
[00:48:33.000]And so you're able to get the quantity of crops,
[00:48:38.170]schedule for harvest,
[00:48:41.325]the different aggregation of stored products,
[00:48:47.690]and also different daily tasks
[00:48:49.500]that they work with the farmers.
[00:48:50.960]So is a very hands on app and relationship that they build.
[00:48:57.430]There are 15,000 farmers on this app currently,
[00:49:00.640]and this is probably the third year,
[00:49:03.900]and they're about to scale up to 200,000 farmers
[00:49:06.580]towards the end of the year.
[00:49:09.960]But what's really cool,
[00:49:11.920]I think also is that you can have
[00:49:14.510]the crop monitoring measures, just through text messages,
[00:49:18.880]back and forth with the smallholder farmers.
[00:49:21.970]And so you can get record estimated yields,
[00:49:24.700]input expenditures, usage, plant and pest disease issues,
[00:49:29.350]there is this back and forth just through the phone,
[00:49:36.150]which is kind of amazing,
[00:49:37.020]and particularly during COVID,
[00:49:39.360]this has been really helpful for these rural communities.
[00:49:44.640]So here, it's just showing you which crop with which farmer
[00:49:48.860]and how much they're estimated to sell,
[00:49:51.900]and then the group goes and picks up the grain
[00:49:57.020]and then puts it into one of those warehouses locally.
[00:50:00.998]Another really good thing about that is
[00:50:04.860]it's a local entrepreneur,
[00:50:06.380]it's a local storage center and it's relatively small
[00:50:10.240]and it's people within the community.
[00:50:13.840]So what actually happens is the women
[00:50:17.240]who don't normally sell the grain,
[00:50:21.130]the husband usually goes to the market,
[00:50:23.030]sells it for cash, then yeah,
[00:50:28.060]then that money doesn't always come home,
[00:50:29.550]unfortunately, that's just the truth of it.
[00:50:32.210]She is able to gain credit through her phone,
[00:50:36.540]so it's actually M-Pesa, I'm not sure if you it's like,
[00:50:42.102]it's just that a money exchange on the phone.
[00:50:45.110]So everything is that on the phone,
[00:50:47.070]and it means that women who were previously
[00:50:50.060]unable to open bank accounts or gain credit,
[00:50:52.660]they are actually able to do that now.
[00:50:54.320]So we're doing some research to look at the impact.
[00:50:58.210]And 70% of the farmers on the app currently
[00:51:01.810]are actually women, so that's pretty interesting.
[00:51:06.740]And you can go all the way through shipments logistics,
[00:51:10.410]confirming transactions,
[00:51:12.220]and the GPS within that tag can enable you
[00:51:17.140]to track the entire delivery.
[00:51:18.960]So you've got full traceability all the way along the phone,
[00:51:21.540]all the way along the line, all the value chain,
[00:51:24.250]and you can see here,
[00:51:25.630]there's a text message over here from the farmer
[00:51:30.530]showing that that transaction has gone through.
[00:51:35.470]Yeah and I mentioned traceability.
[00:51:36.480]So, and right now, what they're trying to implement
[00:51:41.110]is bring in better higher quality seeds,
[00:51:46.840]and also a different commodities,
[00:51:49.750]which can be sold as cash crops,
[00:51:53.179]and they can make more money.
[00:51:54.920]So there's this dialogue back and forth,
[00:51:57.560]the outreach back and forth, but that's expanding,
[00:52:01.050]and they're still looking for partners
[00:52:03.515]as we're moving forward,
[00:52:06.140]looking at soil quality is something
[00:52:10.390]they are very interested in the drone technology from UNL,
[00:52:14.370]to see whether they could use that
[00:52:16.480]to start looking at the crops.
[00:52:21.510]But yeah, so this is kind of a growing system.
[00:52:26.170]They're gonna take it to Nigeria and Ghana next year,
[00:52:30.290]Ghana just started this year.
[00:52:32.926]And the wishes that within three years
[00:52:36.170]there'll be over a million farmers on this app.
[00:52:39.101]So kind of what I've been talking about
[00:52:40.350]is these combined interventions
[00:52:43.330]with bringing in technologies and tools,
[00:52:46.730]and then you can't have that
[00:52:48.480]without the education outreach and training,
[00:52:51.320]because these tools,
[00:52:52.420]even though they seem simple,
[00:52:53.740]training's very important for them to be working correctly.
[00:52:58.020]And then this kind of digital revolution
[00:53:00.510]that has happened in the last 10 years.
[00:53:02.040]So communication, smartphone,
[00:53:04.200]money transfer through phones and digital platforms
[00:53:07.660]has been really a game changer,
[00:53:10.360]particularly in the developing countries.
[00:53:13.360]Yeah, so I just wanted to kind of summarize under,
[00:53:16.870]so climate smart agriculture all brought together
[00:53:19.640]under one health and the importance of cell phone surveys
[00:53:26.160]and GPS coordinates in order to generate
[00:53:28.910]large data sets to better understand these value chains
[00:53:32.210]and the best places to interact and improve situations
[00:53:37.070]and bring the right technology,
[00:53:38.640]appropriate technology to the right place.
[00:53:42.120]Access the clean water,
[00:53:43.501]I can't highlight this enough
[00:53:46.440]because if you can eat as much as you want,
[00:53:48.330]but if you get a diarrheal disease, as we know,
[00:53:51.080]you're not gonna be able to uptake
[00:53:52.760]any of that nutritive value.
[00:53:54.720]And so clean water is absolutely vital.
[00:53:58.340]So that's kind of it from my past work,
[00:54:02.090]I just have two more slides left,
[00:54:04.740]just to talk about a project that actually Dan and I
[00:54:08.070]are involved in, it's a grand challenges project,
[00:54:10.660]and I'm part of the entomology pestology group
[00:54:16.022]within that grand challenge proposal,
[00:54:21.080]looking to make beef production, climate neutral,
[00:54:25.760]or climate positive, looking at the system as a whole.
[00:54:31.260]And our part is looking at past parasite
[00:54:34.220]and beneficial for management.
[00:54:38.360]We are looking at trying to forecast
[00:54:41.550]and predict any emerging problems from insects or disease,
[00:54:47.230]and trying to create treatment and management plans
[00:54:50.660]and thresholds to actually be able
[00:54:52.820]to reduce the amount of insecticide or anti parasitic
[00:54:57.060]that the farmer needs to use.
[00:54:58.740]These parasites and Peristalses on the animal,
[00:55:01.900]and that actually increases the amount of enteric methane
[00:55:04.690]that they produce,
[00:55:06.070]exasperating this problem of climate change.
[00:55:09.770]And we're also looking at the pasture systems
[00:55:12.350]with beneficial insects, like the Beetles
[00:55:15.901]to remove the menu or quicker from the pasture,
[00:55:21.110]and look at, for example,
[00:55:23.330]grasshopper and cutworm management systems
[00:55:27.450]to try and increase carbon sequestration.
[00:55:30.130]So there is less background
[00:55:32.770]due to these insects grasshoppers, particularly
[00:55:35.900]there can be a big outbreak and it can be
[00:55:38.170]as bad as overgrazing, serious overgrazing.
[00:55:41.100]So trying to pull all of this together to improve
[00:55:45.900]and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
[00:55:52.250]And then some future research,
[00:55:53.270]I kind of wanted to pop up for this group in my postdoc,
[00:55:57.840]I worked on a project where we worked
[00:56:02.190]with a compound called cis-jasmone,
[00:56:05.610]and it's a volatile chemical for produced by plants,
[00:56:08.920]and basically it's a signal that tells the plant
[00:56:12.870]that it's being eaten.
[00:56:14.550]And so what we did was we added that to a synergist.
[00:56:22.450]So this synergist propylgallate,
[00:56:25.030]if you apply that to an insect,
[00:56:26.750]even a highly resistant insect,
[00:56:28.530]it makes it hypersensitive to any kind of toxin
[00:56:30.970]that it comes into contact with.
[00:56:34.930]And so when you apply cis-jasmone,
[00:56:39.140]the plant up regulates the toxins naturally,
[00:56:43.190]and if you have applied synergies to the insects,
[00:56:45.970]they're hypersensitive to that toxin.
[00:56:48.630]So when they feed they die,
[00:56:51.580]and this was my postdoc for a couple of years,
[00:56:55.010]and we actually got a patent on it, a couple of papers,
[00:56:59.280]but it worked really well,
[00:57:00.210]we got it out to the field
[00:57:01.370]with a micro encapsulated formulation,
[00:57:05.430]but I think this could be a really interesting area.
[00:57:07.600]I mean, it obviously doesn't do away
[00:57:09.590]with issues of viruses being transmitted,
[00:57:12.320]but it could be another tool in a toolbox
[00:57:15.220]for controlling resistant insects.
[00:57:18.210]And here you can see,
[00:57:19.410]this is cypermethrin, methrin insecticide
[00:57:22.590]being treated on tobacco white flies.
[00:57:27.200]This was a resistance strain.
[00:57:29.330]And then these are the different formulations
[00:57:31.560]of this micro encapsulation showing increase,
[00:57:34.950]the different formulations were obviously
[00:57:37.190]increasing efficacy in killing these insects
[00:57:40.000]faster at lower doses.
[00:57:43.380]But yeah, this is something
[00:57:44.360]I would like to get back into in my research, yeah.
[00:57:48.740]Thank you so much for listening,
[00:57:50.010]and if you have any questions.
[00:57:51.973]Thank you, Georgina
[00:57:53.440]for that wonderful overview of your work.
[00:57:57.400]The two questions in the chat,
[00:58:00.690]one from (indistinct),
[00:58:02.700]and then one from Regan (indistinct),
[00:58:06.100]have to do with the hermetic sealed bags.
[00:58:10.819]First, are they available in the US, the United States?
[00:58:16.130]And secondly, are there any contamination issues
[00:58:20.820]in particular with the insecticide treated bags?
[00:58:24.570]Yeah, that's a really good question.
[00:58:27.950]So hermetically sealed bags,
[00:58:29.760]yes they're available here in the US.
[00:58:33.090]A Ziploc bag is almost hermetic, almost,
[00:58:37.510]but these particular hermetically sealed food bags
[00:58:42.379]are more used by smallholder farmers
[00:58:47.020]because of their size and the fact,
[00:58:49.540]so they cannot be stacked,
[00:58:50.800]so they can't be used in a warehouse.
[00:58:54.154]And the insecticide question, that's a really good one.
[00:58:59.050]It's something that really worried me
[00:59:02.530]when we first started working on this project,
[00:59:06.200]because obviously insect
[00:59:07.390]are coming into contact with food,
[00:59:09.060]particularly when small children are gonna be eating this.
[00:59:12.460]So very early on,
[00:59:13.470]we started to look at residues, residues over time
[00:59:17.420]and residues under different climatic conditions.
[00:59:20.960]So with different relative humidities,
[00:59:24.100]if it got wet and different temperatures
[00:59:26.960]and the combination of the two and pressure also,
[00:59:30.030]if they were stacked,
[00:59:31.975]'cause you can stack up,
[00:59:33.330]so you can't stack in warehouse style up to 33 high,
[00:59:36.720]but you can stack up to maybe five or six.
[00:59:39.200]So we really wanted to get to the bottom of whether
[00:59:43.070]there was gonna be any insecticide residue
[00:59:45.070]that would cause any damage.
[00:59:47.610]And all of the studies that came back independent
[00:59:50.560]and ours showed that we were well under the residue limits
[00:59:58.150]for EPA and the EU and the EU limits
[01:00:01.750]are actually half of the EPA residue.
[01:00:07.251]So that's a really great question.
[01:00:11.170]Thank you.
[01:00:12.003]Yeah and I had a question just come in about the app,
[01:00:15.810]and I was gonna ask the same thing,
[01:00:17.080]the name of the app and how it can be accessed.
[01:00:21.110]So it's currently called GROA, I stopped sharing,
[01:00:26.470]but G-R-O and then R backwards.
[01:00:31.475]You can find it on the website of Vestegaard,
[01:00:35.490]V-E-S-T-E-R-G-A-A-R-D.
[01:00:41.010]It's a program that they're working on,
[01:00:42.930]currently it's in Kenya and about to be expanded to Nigeria
[01:00:47.020]and Ghana and hopefully beyond,
[01:00:50.910]there are also other two other partners,
[01:00:53.430]there is a World Food Program spin out called Saving Grains.
[01:00:57.980]They're doing something similar also in Ghana,
[01:01:02.217]with a slightly different focus,
[01:01:04.490]just really focusing in on the poorest of the poor,
[01:01:07.600]but there and also World Food Program in Zambia,
[01:01:13.670]have one called Maano, M-A-A-N-O.
[01:01:17.600]So there are several platforms out there
[01:01:19.290]doing similar things.
[01:01:21.636]The Vestegaard one is kind of special
[01:01:22.840]because they're trying to bring in outreach
[01:01:25.610]and seeds and fertilizer
[01:01:29.310]and to help the farmers check their soil,
[01:01:31.680]which I think is really interesting and check for aflatoxin.
[01:01:34.820]Excellent, yes thank you.
[01:01:37.550]I do believe that we are about out time,
[01:01:41.292]but I'd encourage you to follow up with Dr. Bingham
[01:01:45.730]with any of your related questions.
[01:01:48.150]This is that was fascinating about the app,
[01:01:51.010]the projected growth and the 70% being women users.
[01:01:56.970]So I think those, yeah, very interesting.
[01:01:59.227](both talking)
[01:02:02.590]Great, well thank you again so much
[01:02:05.010]for presenting today and.
[01:02:09.080]Definitely, and I really encourage people
[01:02:10.830]to reach out and expanding my research portfolio right now.
[01:02:14.580]So yeah I'd love to collaborate more
[01:02:17.130]on the various different things, Dan.
[01:02:18.570]Thank you so much for having me, it was great.

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Climate-smart Agriculture: Engaging One Health, Insects, Food and Water Security

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