Innovation needs to meet future challenges

Innovation needs to meet future challenges

Accepted Manuscript Title: Innovation needs to meet future challenges Author: Catherine E. Woteki PII: DOI: Reference: S0889-1575(17)30174-6 http://d...

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Accepted Manuscript Title: Innovation needs to meet future challenges Author: Catherine E. Woteki PII: DOI: Reference:

S0889-1575(17)30174-6 http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.jfca.2017.07.020 YJFCA 2937

To appear in: Received date: Accepted date:

2-11-2016 7-7-2017

Please cite this article as: & Woteki, Catherine E., Innovation needs to meet future challenges.Journal of Food Composition and Analysis http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfca.2017.07.020 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

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Commentary Innovation needs to meet future challenges1

Catherine E. Woteki, Ph.D.2

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Keynote Address presented at the 39th National Nutrient Databank Conference (NNDC), held May 16–18, 2016 in Alexandria, VA (USA). 143 Kentucky Ave SE, Washington, DC 20003, USA 2

Corresponding author. Contact email: [email protected]

Highlights Blank Highlights file.

Good morning and thank you very much for that kind introduction. I would like to start by thanking the planners of this 39th National Nutrient Databank Conference for inviting me to speak at this prestigious event. I’m Catherine Woteki, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s

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Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics at the USDA. I am pleased to speak to you about some innovations needed in food, nutrition and agriculture to meet future challenges – and more specifically about the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition initiative, also referred to as GODAN. The work that you do in food composition data is a brilliant example of open data. From the first food composition tables that Wilbur Atwater made publicly available in the early 1900s, USDA has been committed to providing open access to information about the nutrient composition of food. Fast forward to today, the public data files that are available from the USDA Food Composition Database are a valuable resource to researchers across the country and the globe. Let me start by providing a bit of background about what I do at USDA. First, I wear two hats, serving both as the Under Secretary for the Research, Education and Economics Mission area, and as the Department’s Chief Scientist. As Under Secretary, I have responsibility for four agencies: the Agricultural Research Service, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, and the Economic Research Service. The intramural and extramural scientific and statistical agencies in my mission area support your universities and colleges through numerous activities, including funding competitive, formula, and noncompetitive grants programs, provision of data for economic research through the Census of Agriculture and production surveys that also inform commodity markets as well as guide USDA programs and policies. Among my duties as USDA Chief Scientist, I oversee the science agenda across the Department in the areas of the biological and physical sciences, plant and animal breeding and health, climate and sustainability, bio-energy, human nutrition, and food safety. This work requires significant

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coordination with the Forest Service (FS) on ecological and natural resources, with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) on vaccines and diagnostics development, and with the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on research to inform their regulatory agendas, just to name a few. A worldwide movement called the “Data Revolution” is under way to make government and private sector data available for public use. The open data is expected to generate new insights, drive better decision-making, and enable governments, civil society, and the private sector to better target interventions and programs. Such open data will also improve service delivery, spur innovation, strengthen accountability, and create whole new kinds of value and growth. Countries including the U.S. have adopted open data policies and are creating the infrastructure to make available, at no cost, the scholarly publications and underlying data that are the result of public investment in research, along with many administrative data sets. A rich infrastructure of data relevant to agriculture and nutrition is emerging, with data from field sensors and satellites; from the genetic sequencing of crops, livestock and their disease and pest species; and from supply chains and the agricultural marketplace. Sophisticated analytical tools and algorithms are also being made publicly available. Focused public-private collaborations to address the world’s nutrition security problems will be needed to unlock the potential of open data for food and nutrition security. Open data, particularly open data relevant to agriculture and nutrition, is also being considered as a powerful tool for long-term sustainable development, improving economic opportunities for farmers and contributing to the health of all consumers.

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Increased availability and more effective use of research and programmatic data have the potential to be powerful drivers toward achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)1. The SDGs, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, comprise 17 goals and 169 targets to assure global sustainable development. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that one in nine people suffer from malnutrition today and that malnutrition is a major barrier to sustainable development. As the world population approaches 10 billion people over the next 30 years, global demand for food, feed and fiber is predicted to nearly double. Sustainable Development Goal 2 calls for zero hunger by the year 2030. Making open data work for agriculture and nutrition requires a shared agenda to increase the supply, quality, and interoperability of data, alongside action to build capacity for the use of data by all stakeholders. Adopting policies that require open access to scholarly research publications and the underlying scientific data are vital steps that countries can take. Major funding bodies of agri-food and nutrition research are making open access mandatory, requiring research outcomes and research data produced through their funding to be made publicly available. Globally, there is a growing political will to address the sustainability of agriculture and nutrition through open data and open access within the different international policy, research, development, and private sector communities. Agriculture and nutrition data is being recognized as a global public good, vital to promoting sustainable development and critical to achieving SDG2. Economist Paul A. Samuelson is usually credited as the first to develop the theory of public goods. In his classic 1954 paper, The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure, he defined this term. In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that 1

United Nations Organization Sustainable Development Goals. See http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainabledevelopment-goals/

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individuals cannot be effectively excluded from using the good and where use by one individual does not reduce the availability of the good to others. The traditional theoretical concept of public goods does not distinguish the geographical region in which a good may be produced or consumed. However, the term “global public good” has been used to mean a public good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable throughout the whole world, as opposed to a public good which exists in just one national area. The new initiative, Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN), seeks to support global efforts to make data that is relevant to agriculture and nutrition available, accessible, and usable for unrestricted use worldwide. GODAN is the first global open data initiative spanning across public and private entities including donors, international organizations and businesses. The GODAN initiative is a voluntary association brought together around a shared purpose. Launched just over two years ago, GODAN is a rapidly growing initiative, currently with over 325 members from non-governmental, international and private sector organizations and national governments. The initiative focuses on building high-level policy and institutional support for open data, both in the public and private sectors. GODAN encourages collaboration and cooperation among existing agriculture and open data activities, without duplication, and seeks to bring together all stakeholders to solve long-standing global problems. The GODAN initiative welcomes all those who share this purpose to join as members and to participate in shaping coordinated activities that can deliver on the potential of open data for agriculture and nutrition. I would encourage everyone in the audience to consider having their organizations join GODAN.

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I would also like to highlight a GODAN’s joint publication with the Open Data Institute (ODI), “How can we improve agriculture, food and nutrition with open data?” We brought a few copies with us, but it is also available on the GODAN website (http://www.godan.info). This paper has received worldwide exposure through the GODAN partnership. It is an invaluable contribution by ODI as a GODAN partner to highlight and illuminate the criticality of the global movement to make agriculture and nutrition data open. Finally, I would like to just speak briefly on an exciting commitment made last year by GODAN partners, the Governments of the US, UK, and Kenya along with the ONE campaign and Presidents United to Solve Hunger (PUSH) to plan a GODAN Summit in 2016. The U.S. Government, led by USDA, is excited to be part of the planning committee for the 2016 GODAN Summit. We will release further details soon, but anticipate the GODAN Summit to be a series of events starting next month leading to a major event in September in advance of the UN General Assembly Meeting in New York City. To learn more about the Summit please visit the Godan website. Thank you for the work you do to make food composition data open and accessible and I challenge everyone here today to join GODAN, be a part of the 2016 GODAN Summit, and help us make data work harder for agriculture and nutrition!

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