Finding A Shared Reality
Can the data revolution put stakeholders on the same page when it comes to biodiversity-sensitive farming?
An interview with Dr Youri Martin, Biodiversity Engineer, Luxembourg Institute of Science & Technology
Q. Okay, fantastic. Great to have you with us. If you could start by just giving us a sense of who you are and why you do what you do?
My name is Youri Martin. I’m Belgian. I studied biological conservation and then I did a Ph.D. on the impact of climate change on species attributions. And I now work at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, as a Engineer in Biodiversity, where I'm actually working on a lot of different projects, mainly around monitoring species. I’m involved in the Framework project mainly because of the bio monitoring activities but also in the Farmer Clusters.
Q. There’s always quite a lot of work to be done deciding what to measure and how to measure it!
Deciding what to measure must dictate what data you get and how that informs changing practises towards more biodiversity sensitive methods?
Are there key species within agroecosystems that you can monitor to get a sense of the wider ecological health and diversity of these systems?
Yeah, that's a really good question! Ecology is very complex and it’s very difficult to take into account all of the bio interactions that you can have across species, especially when you try to model change. Because of course, when you have an unknown environmental change, you can have different bio interactions. It’s good to have more data but you can’t record everything.
So the best we can do is actually try to include some of the most relevant interactions amongst species within the landscape and check the downstream effects of these interactions.
If you realise that you are missing some of the data, you need to really model the landscape and the species, then you start again and you can play with the different variables and change to variables and records new parameters. That's one of the big, interesting things with modelling is that you can start again! You can create a lot of models by including or removing some interactions, some variables. And the goal is, of course, to try to stick as much as possible to the reality!
All this creates tons of big databases with a lot of data, including spatial data, because of course, you need to to to precisely locate all of your data, especially when you do landscape modelling and when you want to analyse the effects of farming practise, for instance, at some precise location. So we have a big data set and then you play with software so as to extract the data you need for your study and in the region you need.
The first people we want to raise these biodiversity issues with and change the future with? These are the politicians! Because normally they are the people that can take measures to counteract wrong effects. So, we try to get in touch with the politicians… I am working with the Office of Environment Protection and so on.
So then we need to also reach over the people that can actually have an impact on the field! So that’s the farmers but also people involved in nature organisations and citizen organisations because we need to actually be heard by as many people as we can.
One of the keys is actually to be able to let the data show and do the talking about what is happening in the landscape. So scientists have to do a big work of analysing it correctly and to really understand what's going on, but also to be able to explain this result to those stakeholders, to the farmers and so on. It’s exciting to be able to let the data talk, especially if it's in the direction you expected before your study!
But of course, thats not always the case. Especially with biodiversity analysis, there are always new parameters that you discover. But that's why it's really exciting also and interesting because then you try to understand these results and explain it. And most of the time, that's where you find new relations between between species, landscape practises and so on. So it's always interesting! Thats also our job, to raise attention to show where things aren’t going well.
Q. I completely get how that complexity is so exciting for scientists! But what is it like for stakeholders you are explaining it to?
One of the aspects of this that other Framework folks have mentioned, is that the benefits and possibilities of biodiversity are often so specific to different agroecosystems that it can be hard to communicate how important biodiversity is to resilience and ecosystem health generally…
Do you personally find that one of the challenges to the implementation of more biodiversity sensitive methods in agriculture is that you have to prove how biodiversity is contributing to the sustainability of an agroecosystem in all these very specific circumstances? How broadly are you comfortable speaking as a scientist?!
Yeah. This is also a very good question because…
most of the time, we are convinced that more biodiversity is better because you have more tools in your hands to play with the changes that are happening in the landscape.
Climate change, farming practise changes or whatever could happen because you need you need a lot of different species to be able to continue growing fruit, vegetables and so on with pollination services. So basically, you need a lot of species to be able to fulfil the ecosystem services to continue to ecosystem services! So we are most of the time convinced about that. But our job is also exactly what you said which is to be able to prove that and to really point it out to the farmers or stakeholders, why biodiversity and where biodiversity really helps us.
So, for instance, for the pollination services we can as a scientist, we can show that having a lot of different bee species for a range of crops improves the quality of your harvest because you will have much more efficiency in the pollination. And our job is to prove that for pollination but also for different interactions between pest and prey species and so on. Exactly the same also for biodiversity in the soil. It is really important because biodiversity provides oxygen and nutrients to the to the plants and so on. So our job is actually to give the evidence that biodiversity is really helping the way that farming can improve. It is exciting when that process happens. And then you see an incentive scheme or a farming practise developed or something a policymaker is doing that results from data you've been involved in or one of your colleagues has been involved in.
Resilience was the word I was looking for... You need to have cross-pollination amongst species to produce higher quality food. It's not always the question of producing large amounts of food, but it's to produce food that actually provides good nutrients to people. You don't need to produce a lot because at the moment, we produce to much foods. And most of the time, the quality of this food is not that good. If you only have one or two key species in your landscapes, it's not enough because the quality will not be enough. Maybe you will have pollination to all your crops, but the predictions are mainly the quality of your production will be lower.
And if you talk about climate change that is actually ongoing. You don't know if you will be still able to produce your crops in 20 years because you don't know if you will have the biodiversity to support this change because you still need all the ecosystem services provided by biodiversity in 20 years, 30 years. And for the moment, it's a big question - will agriculture?
Will we still be able to produce quality foods in 30 years if we stay in this scheme of conventional agriculture? So, I think if we if we have lower biodiversity, we will have more difficulties to produce foods in the futures, but also more difficulties producing high quality nutrient-rich foods.
Q. That's a really interesting point - because what you're describing about resilience as a form of spread-betting with biodiversity in the face of global heating, is really different to many stereotypes some stakeholders seem to have about biodiversity-sensitive farming.
They sometimes imagine it to be about purely backwards-looking conservation and a hippie-like environmentalism which can skew towards rewilding approaches. You know, people we’ve talked to still sometimes see it as maintaining life in the landscape almost like a museum or trying to turn back the clock!
And that the environmentalist perspective is one of stasis - but what your saying is actually nature is always in flux and has these ecological niches which can be filled by different life and different species of life.
What would you say to a farmer or land manager who still thinks conservation aims are purely protective, and about the past, and not about allowing for change and the future?
We, the humans, the people, the farmers we are so far from what's going on in nature. I mean the cultivars that we are using, the methods that we are using in conventional agriculture are killing the soil, biodiversity and so on. It’s almost not nature anymore - It's technology with plants!
Selected cultivars can produce high volume but we forgot about the resilience of these cultivars. We forgot the nutrients level of them and we forgot all the old ancient cultivars. So we need to look at what we did in the past - we still need to see, oh, it's going on in nature to be able to still, use nature as a good example and work with nature to help us to live on this planet. So we have no other choice than keeping our planet with the system that is implemented without us! I mean, the ecosystem resilience, the biodiversity and so on - and we have nothing to gain by excluding biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, that's not a good direction, we need to be able to integrate all these aspects into where we want to produce food. I don't see another way of working actually for the future.
Q. And obviously many farmers and stakeholders are already switched on to all this! What’s it like working on this within Framework?
For the Framework project, I am collecting the data with one or two of my colleagues. So there is a specific biodiversity monitoring action in the project. But if we need more data than what the Framework allows us to collect. We also have other databases, national databases that we can use. That is especially the case when you need to include environmental variables, because most of the time nature conservation biologists and scientists collect biological data. But when you do modelling, you need to related them to environmental data as well climate data. So data, farming practise data and so on. So for that, you need to to reach other scientists and other database to to get this this information.
I have to say that's not an aspect that we used to do as nature conservation scientists! To actually really work with farmers and getting to data off them and showing and explaining to them what we are doing and why. And that's a very interesting part of this project - the frontier between scientist and practitioner or farmer.
And because we are not always talking the same language, or don't have the same objectives. They have to to produce food for their living and we need to get data, to produce papers and show results! And we don't always have the same view of the same landscape. And that's why this project is really interesting because we can really share thee views together. And that's how I think things can change in the future is that we can understand each other. And then by understanding each other, we can then try to get a bit further and explain why it could be interesting for them to change some practises. And I think these projects are interesting to get closer to farmers and farming practises and exchange together and think about developing new practises or sensibilities.
At least, to give them the sense of why biodiversity in their field is really important. And I think at the end, we will have a lot of of farmers that will change their mind. And I hope that our farm results will increase because at the beginning, when they see scientists in their fields, they will say, Well, this guy will probably put some some wood in my wheels [raise problems] But at the end,
when when we take time to discuss, they will see that we want the same thing, actually. We want them to produce better quality crops into the future - we just need to to talk the same language and be able to understand each other.
Q. There are literally lots of different languages across the Framework project but, in a sense, the general language of this stuff is almost going more in your direction with big data and machine learning. And those kind of innovations in a way are making the language around this more specialist.
How will it be for farmers, scientists and policymakers coming up, is this going to make things harder in terms of communicating together - or will the data revolution provide a shared language that can unite stakeholders?
What I have seen is actually, when you talk to the farmers, they have sons and daughters often in university. I've heard that already from farmers, ‘My son would probably be more interested than me about looking at the data of biodiversity in my field and in microbes and soil health’. Which means we may end up sharing this language more with the next generation of farmers, the younger generations who already often understand this language and the motivations for change.
Q. So that's quite exciting if people coming up have that kind of shared vocabulary and understanding - what are the best case impacts that some of this developing technology could have?
As a scientist, a practitioner-scientist we want that our studies and our data to raise action on the fields and change the mind of some people and so on. So the bigger are the results and the bigger the audience the better it is, I would say. I think it's the scale of data manipulation [the data revolution offers] but also the possibilities.
I was talking about environmental variables earlier and starting again, the models with different parameters and so on. It can help us to to make more models and better models - if they are closer to the reality, they will be easier to to explain to non-scientists and to stakeholders and practitioners. So big data will give more tools in our hands to to get closer to the reality.
It’s difficult to to manage all the flow of the data the same time, at the same place by the same people. And also you have to be able to know if all this data are compatible. But with technology, it's more and more possible to think about integrated solutions - we can store a lot of data, we can collect data every minute, for instance, at every eight metres! That was not possible in the past, which means that, it's possible to, I think, try to better integrate and improve the resolution of this data. That's very important. And I think know at least it's the case in the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology. We are working together amongst biologists, climatologists, agroecologists to collect the data with the same kind of system, and have the same resolution to be able to be more efficient in our modelling.
[On Framework] we actually have a meeting this week to discuss a key issues of funding for biodiversity-sensitive framing practises being mutually exclusive - so you don't get the funding from one if you want to apply another one. If you see what I mean. So there is a lot actually of work to do about trying to associate the different biodiversity farming practises. We will also show them the research of the biodiversity monitoring. We will ask them to participate in some of the monitoring.
We will present them a selection that we want to do with citizens of the area and even maybe with schools and so on. So we are actually talking to them about most of the action we are doing in Framework so that they can understand why this project is important. And we will also talk to them about the 2022 General Assembly that will take place in Luxembourg, where we will probably be at some point involved. So that's very important for us also, because then they can understand that they are part from a bigger project in Europe.
Q. That's fantastic to hear about the work that's going on the ground - at the moment it requires a lot of intentional work from farmers. Do you think changing technology will make some of this farmland data collection and manipulation more passive?
For example, the COVID apps which provided back-pocket data during the pandemic, or the recommendations for content and products increasingly provided to us by algorithms. When might this make farmers’ lives easier in terms of being biodiversity-sensitive?
I think it will be more an active direction in the future because everybody can be an actor of change. And but also with this technology, the smartphone and so on, every citizen, every farmer can collect data themselves about biodiversity, about plants, about whatever changes. So the older people can be active in in the future, actually with monitoring, helping us to collect data and monitoring the change and so on. And I think that technology, it's helping us to to get the attention of the citizen and of all the people, actually, because we need everybody to take the direction of the change. And actually, I think that technology is helping to involve citizens and farmers and other people.
There's still a lot to do to improve the way technology can help us to monitor biodiversity but it's ongoing. I would say there is already some nice technology driven information coming from environmental DNA, for instance, for identifying very difficult species that can actually help us to get a lot of data quite rapidly, for instance, also by covering more landscape or different regions that were not reachable before.
I think there is progress in every different group of species and and I think in the future we will be sustained by biotechnology that can help us to get more data, get stronger data… have that higher resolution.
There are still old school techniques of sampling biodiversity but it's because most of the time people are old! When they are still using old school sampling methods. But with the new generation, I think the technology will will be more and more important in the future. And for instance, here, in our Research Centre at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, we are trying to push forward all the technological aspects we can in helping us for the monitoring of biodiversity and collecting more data. That's that's our goal!
And I think in the future, that's one of the main. Yeah, one of the main promising directions! Because we are in the era of big data and we also need big data in biodiversity. So we need technology to help us to get a lot, a lot of data.
Q. Yeah, that's really interesting. It looks like we've got this challenge, over the next two decades, of both taking great advantage of the age of big data, machine learning and developing technology…
but also somehow actually using all this to reduce the level of abstraction between us and these natural processes and resources and the workings of these agroecosystems!
That's going to be an interesting journey! Thank you so much for talking to us.
Conversation edited for clarity and format. Interview by Theodore Simmons.
Published by project knowledge exchange and communications partner Taskscape.
Hear more from Youri on the project-sponsored podcast.
Interested in diving into more detail on this topic? Check out our live round table hosted by IIASA - Technology, Big Data & Agrobiodiversity
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