The proposals for agricultural monitoring systems by Jeffrey Sachs and colleagues (Nature 466, 558–560; 2010) will take five years to mature and deliver value. We can make an immediate difference to agricultural advisory services and farmers by providing access to pragmatic advice about strategies that are appropriate to their local environment.

At present, for example, there are no reliable means of tracking plant pests and diseases globally. So we lose 40% of what we grow to pest and disease damage to crops in the field, in transit and during storage. This threat is set to increase as trade flows and climate change accelerate the movement of plant pests and pathogens. By losing less, we can feed more people right now — without extra land, water, energy or chemicals, or creating new crop varieties. Using data and information that already exist, a knowledge bank to reduce losses in all major food and cash crops could be up and running within three years. The UK-based CABI (Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International) already has a prototype that could start delivering useful data on a few key crops within a year.

More funding for agricultural research is essential, but the greatest challenge is to transfer the knowledge we already have, applying known remedies and simple technologies that farmers can afford and readily adapt. Much of the hand-wringing by developed countries about food production skirts around this central problem: that however much we know, we still do not get the information to the smallholders and communities in developing countries that are the backbone of local food production — but have the lowest food security.