Farmers are saying traditional crops were much better because they rarely ever lost everything even in the worst of droughts.
Well, well, well. That’s from a news piece in The Nation, explaining that many farmers are turning away from improved varieties of maize and beans because they don’t deliver a reliable harvest. Kenya does put a little money into its “orphan crops programme,” designed to rehabilitate traditional crops such as cassava, sorghum and millet; The Nation stops just short of calling for more research into these crops.
And that, in a microcosm, is the entire story of international investment in agricultural R&D. Not enough, on the wrong things, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Philip Pardey and his colleagues Julian Alston and Jennifer James have published a paper on Agricultural R&D Policy: A Tragedy of the International Commons that makes for pretty grim reading. They analyse the extent of the current failure to invest and the reasons for it, useful ammunition for anyone who needs to know these things. And they offer some possibilities for the future, which personally I found less than convincing.
The Nation noted that scientists need to move speedily, to prevent the current food crisis one day being remembered as a picnic. But not all scientists are the problem. They chase money, and they solve the problems the money asks them to solve. The money needs to sit up and pay attention.