Rosamond L. Naylor

The field of global food security and agriculture-environment interactions is vast. Naylor’s early work centered on field experiments and surveys on intensive wheat systems of the Yaqui Valley, Mexico (the home of the Green Revolution for wheat). Naylor, along with Stanford’s Pamela Matson,[5] launched the project focused on fertilization practices in a highly intensive agricultural system,[6] and the outcomes of such practices on farm incomes, wheat yields, and the environment.[7] The study was followed by a decade of work in the Yaqui Valley among a growing team of faculty and students at Stanford (and partner institutions).

In addition to working on intensive, high-yield cropping systems, Naylor has researched orphan crops – classified as those that do not receive much investment and breeding effort, despite being critical for food security among the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities. In a collaborative effort she and several members of the McKnight Foundation Collaborative Crop Research Program including economists, geneticists, and ecologists addressed the question: Why are investments in biotechnology for orphan crop improvement important for food security? The research found that investments in genetic research in orphan crops can have positive spillover effects for major crops such as rice, what, and maize and vice versa.[8] This paper was rated in the top ten Food Policy papers for several years following its publication.

Naylor is widely published on aquaculture-environment interactions research dating back to the late 1990s. “Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies[9]” represented a global analysis and synthesis of the impacts of aquaculture on ecosystems and fish supplies. Over the course of the 2000s, the work by Naylor, colleagues, and many other researchers in the aquaculture field, helped to motivate industry improvements on feed efficiency and sustainable farming practices, and provided a foundation for the expanding literature on sustainable aquaculture practices (including the introduction of the journal Aquaculture Environment Interactions, which was launched in 2009). Naylor continues to publish on aquaculture and fisheries issues in prominent journals, and in 2017 her paper on Opportunity for Marine Fisheries Reform in China[10]” with Cao et al. was nominated for the PNAS Cozzarelli Prize.[11]

As the impacts of El Niño events became more prominent, Naylor examined the effects on food security in Indonesia[12] and what the government might do to alleviate episodes of food insecurity during El Niño events. This study became a core component of Indonesia’s food security division of the Ministry of Agriculture. Naylor continues to collaborate on research examining the implications of climate variability and climate change[13] on global food security, a focus area at The Center on Food Security and the Environment.

Naylor has also focused on the potential of water resources to improve food and nutrition security. Working with FSE fellow Jennifer Burney, Naylor led a multi-year survey to measure the impacts of solar market gardens in Benin, West Africa. The introduction of distributed irrigation improved nutritional and social outcomes, and the research resulted in several publications outlining the effectiveness of the intervention[14] including nutritional improvements, equity between and among households, marketing expansion, and educational impacts.

In a culmination of collaborative work with colleagues at Stanford over the past two decades Naylor published The Evolving Sphere of Food Security[15]. Designed primarily for university teaching purposes the book provides three novel approaches to understanding global food security. First, the individual chapters show how food security is tightly linked to many other forms of security: water, health, energy, environmental, climate, and even national security. The most effective intervention points for improving food security may not be in the agricultural sector per se, but instead in the water, energy or health sectors. Second, the chapters show that all countries, including the U.S., have food security challenges, but that the challenges change over the course of economic development. The third important aspect of the book is that it delves into food policy, integrating science and policy to understand the complex field of global food security.

As global incomes rose, diets changed, and new global food systems emerged, Naylor turned her attention toward tropical oil crop systems. She has studied the effects of biofuels on food security and the environment,[16] the impacts of soybean production in Brazil[17] and palm oil production across the globe.[18] Working closely with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Naylor and a team of Stanford faculty, scholars, and students with expertise in sustainability launched the Poverty Alleviation through Sustainable Palm Oil Production project. In 2017 Naylor co-authored The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution which examines the major supply and demand drivers in oil crop production; the economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050.[19]