the interactions between all 17 SDGs and to recognize their importance for

achieving sustainable development. A further challenge in relating SDGs

to sustainable development is that politicians and other social decision

makers, or societal decision makers, do not actually think in terms of SDGs. Countries do not,
for example, have

ministries devoted to the different SDGs. They have ministries devoted

to different sectors, the agriculture, health,

energy sectors, and so on. Furthermore, legislation is usually made

with respect to these different sectors, or systems. Therefore, it's difficult to relate

the SDGs to everyday decision making. I've invited Bruce Campbell

who's the director for the research program,

Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security under the CGIAR to

help us understand how something, that is familiar to us all as the food

system, creates both positive and negative interactions within the SDGs and

not least, where the food system needs to be changed in order to bring us on

a more sustainable development trajectory. Food production is, obviously,

critical to people to survive. But what other kinds of interactions

does food production actually have with the SDGs than just health?

>> So it actually has multiple interactions. So the first one is, no poverty, so agricultural
development is a key

part of the poverty alleviation agenda. Obviously, it's connection with food,

no hunger. It's got a connection to the water one. What agriculture does to water resources,

and it uses 70% of the earth's water resources at the moment,

of the usable water. The biodiversity ones, both of those, agriculture production is a key driver

of biodiversity change, climate change. So those are some of the big ones

with agriculture production, but even all the others you can find linkages. So, for example the
gender one, there's a massive feminization of

agriculture in developing countries. So more women than men are doing farming. So then you
have to have an empowerment

approach within agriculture development as well. So you can go through the list and you

can find linkages to almost all the SDGs. >> That's really kind of neat because nobody really
thinks in terms of SDGs. They think in terms of the systems that
we can regulate, like the food system, and the health system, and so on. And it's really kind of
neat to

see how they all fit together, but these SDGs are a global vision, really. I mean, they are at the
global level, but they play out differently at

regional and even local levels. Can you give some examples

in agriculture of how the leverages that you would use,

regionally, would be different to achieve the same goal?

>> Yeah, we really believe that you have to work right across the scales,

right from a farmer's field to national level policies, to global level policies,

and they all have to come together. But some of the real solutions lie

at the the level of countries and farms in landscapes. And so, for example,

in Ghana the solution may be providing mobile phones to farmers and

making sure everybody can access climate information about the next

season to know what seed to grow. To buy insurance on the phone, which is already
happening in

some places around the world. To use more fertilizer, which in other parts of the world is

a test to be using less fertilizer. So it's highly context specific,

the solutions. So we have to understand these

trade offs at a local level, and then deal with them at that local

level in terms of the solutions. >> What about diet and culture? We keep hearing that we

should be eating less meat. >> Yeah, so that's a really tough one, because in some parts of the
world, so there's strong connections

to health issues and livestock is driving many of the negative

environmental effects on the planet. But in other parts of the world,

people have meat three or four times a year at ceremonies. So there's definitely no over
consumption,

and there's livelihoods that

depend on livestock production. So you cannot do away with livestock

production, because you'll be really impacting the poverty agenda, for example.

>> Do you really believe that we can have sustainable development and

still feed 9 to 10 billion people? >> I really do believe that's possible. So, first of all, the
production

in many developing countries is way below the potential, five, six,

seven, ten times below the potential. So we can increase the amount

of food production, but we have to do it through

sustainable intensification. It can't be at the spreading through more

forest land and those sorts of things. So I'm optimistic that

there can be changes. >> Bruce, two of the SDGs that a lot of countries

are struggling with, actually, everybody's struggling with,

are the ones on biodiversity. The numbers 14 and

15 on the ocean and in land. What about agriculture and biodiversity?

>> Now, so agriculture's had a massive

impact on biodiversity. On the land, it accounts for

more than 70% of global deforestation, and it's the major driver of