Complex Systems Science in food production

In: CSIRO Sustainability Network Update – No.15: p.10-13, June 2002,     ed. Elizabeth Heij  http://www.bml.csiro.au/susnetnl/netwl11E.pdf

The following essay on the future of agricultural research is provided by CSIRO's Dr Maarten Stapper.  Maarten's training in Holland gave him an early understanding of the need for a more inclusive type of agricultural science to underpin food production  – a holistic science based on linking the physics, chemistry and biology of natural systems from the complex food web of the soil, through crops and livestock, to human and environmental health.                                                                        

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Posted on 20th Jan, 2008 by Maarten Stapper

Sydney Morning Herald December 2007: GM: Saviour or Satan?

Maarten Stapper was interviewed in a private capacity for a Channel 9 story about salinity to help dismantle the doctrine that rising watertables are the sole cause of dryland salinity.

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Posted on 8th Jan, 2008 by Maarten Stapper

Sunday Program May 2006: Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis?

Maarten Stapper was interviewed in a private capacity for a Channel 9 story about salinity to help dismantle the doctrine that rising watertables are the sole cause of dryland salinity.

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Posted on 1st Jan, 2008 by Maarten Stapper

ABC 7.30 Report 28 Nov: Mixed reaction to GM crop ban

From transcript below:

GREG HOY: Former CSIRO agronomist Dr Maarten Stapper says his protests direct to Dr Jim Peacock were silenced.

MAARTEN STAPPER: First I was told that I was not allowed to talk in public about it because I was not a geneticist. I didn’t know anything about it. And if I would talk about it I would be fired. But I asked the question all the time, give me your study of multi-generation animal feeding study and I believe that it is safe if I see a four generation animal feeding study. But they never showed me that. And they never instigated a trial like that because they know that it gives negatives. And they don’t want to see that. They said okay you will be made redundant because we don’t want you. Those issues that generate money, like patents for genes and GMOs and making new varieties, that all gives money back to the CSIRO.

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Posted on 1st Jan, 2008 by Maarten Stapper

Where’s the science in GM debate?

The GM debate continued during July 2007 in the Country magazines. The pro-GM lobby was repeating the same non-quantified statements of how good the GM solutions will be in production of food crops by Australian farmers. However, where is the science?

Therefore, Maarten Stapper wrote the following letter to the editors of the three main rural magazines. It was published in the July 26 issues of The Land, as Rush to disaster?, and the Stock & Land, as Where’s science in GM debate?

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Posted on 1st Jan, 2008 by Maarten Stapper

Agricultural science directions

Specialists know more and more about less and less. Current specialisation in agricultural science has resulted in research within very narrow boundaries. This has induced linear, mechanistic thinking, which doesn’t allow room for synergies, and results in confusion between cause and effect.

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Posted on 31st Dec, 2007 by Maarten Stapper

Canberra Times: Stapper in Food & Wine about wheat

In this article ,”A scientist who knows his wheat” , published 31 August 2004 (in The Canberra Times) Dr Maarten Stapper says paddocks are like the human body – they’re both complex biological systems where simple solutions often don’t work –

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Posted on 31st Dec, 2007 by Maarten Stapper

Crop monitoring and Zadoks growth stages

Introduction

Crop monitoring is the skill to link strategic and tactical management decisions to plant development and crop growth. Strategic management relates to decisions before sowing and lessons to be learned within season for future seasons, such as variety choice, crop growth and soil fertility, sowing conditions/sowing rate/seed quality and plant establishment. After sowing, tactical management relates adjustments in timing and quantity of management decisions to crop observations of actual crop condition. For example, in relation to application timing (and need) of herbicides, fungicides, N fertiliser (and water), grazing and harvesting. Also crop monitoring to determine the timing of the occurrence of such yield reducing factors as lodging, waterlogging and frost will, in combination with their severity, determine their effect on grain yield. Such crop related management has been described elsewhere for high-yielding wheat [1].

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Posted on 31st Dec, 2007 by Maarten Stapper

The road to sustainability

While ‘sustainable agriculture’ has been defined in many ways, it is fundamentally a process of social learning, not led by a science that overemphasises production and neglects maintenance functions within agroecosystems.

Hill (1998) sees this blind spot as one of a number of indicators of our undeveloped and distressed psychosocial state. Habits, perception and assumptions determine what we see and want to see, and correlation is not cause. This realisation is another aspect of the change that will be required in our paradigm – the way we learned to see the world.

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Posted on 31st Dec, 2007 by Maarten Stapper

Soil Health outcomes

Farms that have achieved healthy soils look and smell good, with dung beetles present in pastures and no slugs or snails in crops. Plants growing on such farms have less disease and insect damage, less frost damage (high sugar content or ‘brix' in plant sap), have great root systems, and taste better. For example, canola and lucerne having no to minimal insect damage without pesticides after commencement of biological farming. Animals show the most extraordinary health (e.g. lack of foot rot, bloat, pink eye, mastitis), fertility (e.g. +25% lambing), and longevity. They need less fodder and graze for shorter periods compared with available conventional feed systems. Think of what could happen to humans if we ate such food!

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Posted on 31st Dec, 2007 by Maarten Stapper