Theme 1 Keynote

Pedro Antonio Pereira Arraes

Dr Pereira is Director General of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) with extensive international experience. He has served as Coordinator General of the EMBRAPA International Program Labex, International Cooperation, ARS, USDA, Maryland, USA, and as Head of the EMBRAPA National Research Center for Rice and Beans.

Dr Pereira graduated in Agriculture from the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (1979), followed by specialization in Applied Microbiology from the National Center of Agrobiology (1980), Master in Plant Genetics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison (1985), Ph.D. in Plant Genetics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison (1987) and post-doctoral fellowship from the University of California (1995). He has extensive research experience with plant genetics and nitrogen fixation.

Theme 1 Keynote

John Kirkegaard

John Kirkegaard was born and educated on Queensland’s Darling Downs and his interest in conservation agriculture was foreshadowed by his PhD studies investigating the impact of soil compaction on the growth of grain legumes on heavy clay soils in that region. He joined CSIRO Plant Industry as a farming systems agronomist in 1990 to develop sustainable farming systems in SE Australia, then based on the “3 Rs” – reduced tillage, retaining stubble and rotating crops. He was quick to confirm farmer experience of yield-limiting factors inherent in these practices in southern Australian, mixed farming systems.

His 1995 review of wheat productivity under conservation farming exposed these constraints, and challenged scientists and farmers alike to recognise and overcome the crop productivity constraints facing farmers under CA systems. Soil scientists were mystified by the slow adoption by farmers of practices they widely accepted as “proven” while agronomists grappled with crops seemingly unresponsive to the “healthy” soils created.

Throughout this period John and his colleagues sought pragmatic, evidence-based approaches to maintain system productivity while moving systems towards the desirable goals of CA.

Research during this period included identifying and overcoming the biological constraints reducing wheat vigour under no-till systems, demonstrating that allelopathy was not the cause of poor canola growth in retained wheat stubble, and quantifying the mechanisms and benefits of canola break crops in cereal farming systems.

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His team is currently investigating the impacts of grazing animals in controlled-traffic, no-till cropping systems, how nutrients limit carbon sequestration in no-till systems, the potential to develop wheat varieties better adapted to no-till systems, and the role of strategic tillage in CA systems. He also leads a national project for the grains industry which has the aim of assisting farmers across 16 regional groups to adopt innovations to improve the water-use efficiency of their farming systems by 10%. His research is conducted almost exclusively on-farm (the longest experiment now in it’s 21st year) and his willing and effective communication of research to growers was recognised with his awarding of the Australian grains industry 2008 Seed of Light Award. In 2009 he received an Inaugural CSIRO Newton-Turner Award for research excellence, and used the award to travel to South America, USA and Europe where he investigated the adaptation of CA principles into different farming systems. This trip reinforced his view that CA principles must be carefully researched, adapted and adopted wisely within the context of specific farming systems, and that we should never stop seeking to acknowledge, identify and overcome the productivity constraints inherent in all systems. Global food security demands that of us.

Theme 1 Keynote

Richard Heath
Farmer

Richard Heath is a grain grower on the Liverpool Plains south of Gunnedah, NSW. Richard’s family has been farming the property Pine Cliff since 1928 and have been at the forefront of conservation agriculture as the concept has developed over time.

The most recent recognition of this was the awarding of the Brownhill Cup for Conservation Agriculture to the Heath Family in 2006. Richard was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship in 2003 which he used to study new technology for the measurement and application of nitrogen fertilizers to crops.

Richard has been involved in grains research and development since he moved back to the farm and for the last six years has held a position on the Northern Panel of the Grains Research and Development Cooperation.

Theme 2 Keynote

Dr Mario Herrero

Dr Mario Herrero is a senior agro-ecological systems analyst with more than 15 years experience working on strategic livestock-livelihoods and the environment research projects in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. He leads ILRI’s Sustainable Livestock Futures Group where he manages over 15 staff and an annual budget of US$4 million. A known team player with an extensive network of partners and donors, he works in the areas of livestock and global change, climate change (impacts, adaptation and mitigation), development of scenarios of livestock and livelihoods futures, multi-scale integrated assessment, sustainable development pathways for livestock systems, ex-ante impact assessment of livestock interventions and investment opportunities, and others.

He has experience working at different scales, from the animal and farm level to the regional and global levels. He has coordinated several global integrated assessment projects such as the CGIAR global assessment of food production systems, ecosystems services and human well-being. Additionally, he has contributed to numerous international assessments such as the 2010 World Development Report, the 2007/2008 Human Development Report and the 2007 Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. He has participated in international task forces such as IPCC’s Task Force on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Guidelines and has served in several donor and science advisory committees on livestock and the environment.

He has published more than 150 fully refereed papers, book chapters and reports in his areas of expertise and is currently on the editorial board of Agricultural Systems, and a guest editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS) in the area of livestock, sustainability science and global change. He has also supervised over 60 academic theses on different aspects of animal production systems.

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Selected publications: Herrero, M., Thornton, PK, Havlik, P. and Rufino, M. 2011. Livestock and greenhouse gas emissions: mitigation options and trade-offs. In: Wollenberg, E., A. Nihart, M.L. Tapio-Bistrom, and C. Seeberg-Elverfeldt (eds) (2011) Climate Change Mitigation and Agriculture, Earthscan, London, UK (in press) Thornton, PK, Herrero, M and Jones PG. 2011. Adaptation to climate change in mixed crop-livestock farming systems in developing countries. In Handbook on Climate Change and Agriculture (R. Mendelsohn and A. Dinar, Editors).Edward Elgar Publishers, US (in press). Ericksen P J, Thornton P K, Notenbaert A, Cramer L, Herrero M (2011). Mapping hotspots of climate change and food insecurity in the global tropics. Report tothe CGIAR Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security Research Programme, ILRI, Nairobi, 77 pp. Herrero, M., Macmillan, S., Johnson, N., Ericksen, P., Duncan, A., Grace, D. and Thornton, PK. 2011. Chapter 14. Improving Food Production from Livestock. In: State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet. The Worldwatch Institute, Washington DC. W.W. Norton and Company Publishers, New York, p. 155-163. Bryan, E, Ringler, C, Okoba, B, Koo, J, Herrero, M and Silvestri, S. 2011. Agricultural Land Management: Capturing Synergies between Climate Change Adaptation, Greenhouse Gas Mitigation and Agricultural Productivity. Report to the World Bank. Report 3b of the project “Adaptation of Smallholder Agriculture to Climate Change in Kenya”. IFPRI – KARI - U of Georgia – ILRI.International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, 100 p. Thornton P K and Herrero, M 2010. The potential for reduced methane and carbon dioxide emissions from livestock and pasture management in the tropics. PNAS 107, 19667-19672. Herrero, M., Thornton PK., Notenbaert AM., Wood S., Msangi S., Freeman HA., Bossio D., Dixon J., Peters M., van de Steeg J., Lynam J., ParthasarathyRao P., Macmillan S., Gerard B., McDermott J, Seré C., Rosegrant M. 2010. Smart investments in sustainable food production: revisiting mixed crop-livestock systems. Science 327, 822-825. Liu, J., You, L., Amini, M., Obersteiner, M., Herrero, M., Zehnder, A.J.B., Yang, H. 2010. A high resolution assessment of nitrogen flows in cropland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 107, 835-840. McDermott, J.J., Staal, S., Freeman, H.A., Herrero, M., van de Steeg, J. 2010. Sustaining intensification of smallholder systems in the tropics. Livestock Science 130, 95-109. 10.1016/j.livsci.2010.02.014 Thornton, P.K., Jones, P.G., Alagarswamy, G., Andresen, J and Herrero, M. 2010. Adapting to climate change: agricultural system and household impacts in East Africa. Agricultural Systems 103, 73-82 vanBreugel, P., Herrero, M., van de Steeg, J., Peden, D. 2010. Livestock water use and productivity in the Nile Basin. Ecosystems 13, 205-221. Herrero, M., Thornton, P.K., Gerber, P. and Reid, RS. 2009. Livestock, livelihoods and the environment: understanding the trade-offs. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 1, 111-120. Rufino, M., Herrero, M., van Wijk, M., Hemerink, R., de Ridder, N and Giller, K., 2009. Lifetime productivity of dairy cows in smallholder systems in the highlands of Kenya. Animal 3, 1044-1056. Thornton, P. K., Van de Steeg, J., Notenbaert, A, and Herrero, M. 2009. The impacts of climate change on livestock and livestock systems in developing countries: a review of what we know and what we need to know. Agricultural Systems 101, 113-200. Tittonell, P., van Wijk, M., Herrero, M., Rufino, M.C., de Ridder, N. and Giller, K.E. 2009. Beyond resource constraints – Exploring the biophysical feasibility of options for the intensification of smallholder crop-livestock systems in Vihiga district, Kenya. Agricultural Systems 101, 1-19.

Theme 3 Keynote

Dennis P Garrity
Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre

Dr. Garrity is a systems agronomist and research leader, whose career has been focused on the development of small-scale farming systems in the tropics. He is the CEO of the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), the global leader in advancing the science and practice of producing trees on farms. Its vision is to foster a smallholder tree revolution through the increased use of trees in agricultural landscapes to help overcome hunger and poverty and create a sustainable environment.

He is involved in a global effort to reconsider the future of agriculture in the 21st Century by examining unconventional ways of creating more productive and environmentally sound farming systems. In this new agriculture, much of the tropical world’s annual food crop production would occur under a canopy of trees, using practices that are based on sound science and demonstrated farmer experience.

He has championed the concepts of Evergreen Agriculture, where trees are integrated into annual crop farming, and the development of conservation agriculture with trees (CAWT). He has worked to stimulate broader awareness that Evergreen Agriculture has already been successfully implemented on millions of farms in Africa. Currently, he and his colleagues are supporting the development of Evergreen Agriculture programmes in 21 countries in Africa, as well as in India and several other Asian countries.

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Dr Garrity also chairs the Steering Committee for Landcare International, a global organization that supports a wide-ranging effort to strengthen community-based natural resource management. Landcare International has been able to support the creation of new Landcare programmes in many countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas. It is now active in 17 countries, and is gaining momentum as a worldwide movement to create a land ethic that spurs people to better care for the land. From 1992 to 2002 Dr.Garrity served as Regional Coordinator of the ICRAF Southeast Asia Programme, based in Bogor, Indonesia . He created the regional programme, and led the systems improvement research in the region to develop and evaluate agroforestry alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture. He worked extensively on the development of conservation-oriented agroforestry systems for sloping uplands. He has been active in the development of institutional innovations related to farmer-led organizations in sustainable agriculture and natural resources management. He served as agronomist/crop ecologist and head of the Agroecology Unit at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines between 1982 and 1992. Dr.Garrity has a BSc degree in agriculture from Ohio State University, an MSc in agronomy from the University of the Philippines at Los Baños, and a PhD in crop physiology from the University of Nebraska.

Theme 4 Keynote

Kamil Shideed

Dr. Shideed is ICARDA’s Assistant Director General for International Cooperation and Communications since 2009. Prior to that he was Director of ICARDA’s Social, Economic and Policy Research Program (2005-08) and Senior Natural Resources Economist (2004-05).

Before joining ICARDA, Dr Shideed was Professor and Head of Planning and Economic Analysis at the Agricultural Research System and the University of Baghdad in Iraq. He was responsible for research planning and monitoring; conducting applied research in Agricultural Economics; supervising PhD and MSc studies in Baghdad and Mosul Universities; and providing policy advice for public organizations in economics and agricultural research and development.

He served as Senior Research Fellow at the Agricultural Economics Department, University of Georgia in USA during 1985-89, with focus on production economics and policy research.

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Dr Shideed has a range of experience including international agricultural research-for-development, resource mobilization and donor relations, and partnerships. He has led the design and implementation of successful research-for-development projects in production systems integration, natural resources management, productivity enhancement and food security, policy research and adoption and impact assessment in many developing countries. He has an active network of partners in both developed and developing countries, including West Asia, North Africa, Nile Valley and Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Central Asia and the Caucasus. Dr Shideed received a PhD from Mississippi State University, USA in 1984 in Agricultural Economics. He has authored or co-authored over 130 publications and has participated in numerous conferences, symposiums and workshops at both international and regional levels.