Cultivating Drylands

What if we lived in a world where people living in drought affected areas could still achieve food security through healthy, resilient and locally-produced food?

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that the UK recently hit record high temperatures, reaching 40 degrees for the first time. Although the UK has experienced heat waves in previous years, nothing compares to what took place in July with temperatures breaking ‘…the national record by 1.6°C…across an extensive area of the country’¹. In fact, it was the first time that the UK had ever issued a red warning for extreme heat; in a region that historically has not had to deal with such high temperatures, infrastructure cannot cope. 

There was massive disruption to national rail services with extensive fires, failing electric lines, and buckling tracks². Huge pressures were placed on energy networks, which resulted in the National Grid managing to avoid a London blackout by buying electricity from Belgium at almost £10,000 per megawatt hour³. And there are more challenges to come – it is likely that the UK will face a drought later this summer. Parched, arid soil will result in the probability of failed crops together with significant costs for farmers – and continental Europe will not fare any better⁴. Furthermore, we are seeing the stark reality of wildfires spreading so violently. Growing in areas suffering from drought or wildfires is a problem that farmers in developing countries have been facing for decades, and associated implications on global food security are steadily increasing. 

Globally, land used to grow food may lose up to 10% of its productivity by 2050 due to the effects of severe climate change.⁵ This challenge is in addition to the need to satisfy an anticipated >60% increase in global food demand by 2050.⁶ Alongside their vulnerability to climate change, our food systems are also a leading cause of climate change. We urgently need to develop innovative ways of growing the food we need while reducing our food systems’ impact on the planet. The current drought taking place in the Horn of Africa is having massive repercussions on people – the risk of famine is growing and together with wider geopolitical variables like the Ukraine war there is an emerging and escalating crisis.

At Challenge Works we are developing a prize that looks at how innovation can enhance agricultural technologies and practices to support more resilient, intelligent approaches to farming in arid conditions. These innovations can support farmers to consistently boost crop yields and strengthen food security overall. Our ‘Cultivating the Drylands Prize’ will award £5m to the solution that most effectively enables smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production of crops in an arid location using limited resources. It will unlock the potential that exists to create solutions that can climate-proof our agricultural and food systems in order to meet the challenges rapid climate change is presenting. 

We know that the threat of rising temperatures is not a new topic. Experts and activists alike have for years been drumming home the message that the world is heating up and we need to do something now! It has only been in the most recent decade or so with heat waves spreading in frequency across regions like western USA, Australia, and Europe – i.e. outside of developing countries – that wider society is starting to stop, take notice, and worry that heat is literally knocking at their door. It is important that climate smart agricultural innovations are actively invested in and supported to develop practical solutions not in the next few decades, but now, so that we can tackle the immediate threat of heatwaves and drought head-on.  

About the Author: Janet Southern McCormick is a Senior Programme Manager with Challenge Works. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

¹ A milestone in UK climate history – Met Office 

² Britain’s rail services severely disrupted as heatwave damage is repaired | Network Rail | The Guardian

³ How London Paid a Record Price to Dodge a Blackout 

⁴ UK facing drought in August following extreme heat 

⁵ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ 

⁶ https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00322-9