In my previous post on the new EU Common Agricultural Policy, I missed that it promotes in situ conservation of crops. At least that is my reading of Annex IX, which provides a list of practices equivalent to crop diversification. The text is a bit confusing (why are legal documents never clear?); here’s an excerpt (my bolding):
- Crop Diversification
Requirement: at least three crops, the main crop covering a maximum of 75%, and any one or more of the following applying:
— there is a more appropriate selection of crops, such as, for example, leguminous, protein crops, crops not requiring irrigation or pesticide treatments, as appropriate,
— regional varieties of old, traditional or endangered crop types are included on at least 5% of the rotated area.
The ‘and‘ does not make sense, and should surely be ‘or‘? Otherwise there would be no ‘equivalency.’
Perhaps it is a European thing to emphasize the old & traditional over the novel & rare? Either way, there are busy times to come for European on farm conservation buffs! But where should interested farmers get seed? Many of these varieties may not be registered, and I thought that exchanging such seed was not legal in Europe?
As far as I know, the support for the in situ conservation was also in the 2007-2013 Rural Development Programs and was worth of 143 million euros EU funding in 21 Member States between 2007-2011.
Thanks, I did not know that. I wonder if there is any information about whether that money was spent, and where, and for conserving what.
Rather than `or’ it probably should be `also’. But what are the advantages to tax-payers or farmers to grow traditional varieties of crops? If there is a market they will be grown anyway. What environmental benefit can there be, for example, in growing blight-ridden potato varieties? And seed will certainly be a problem with lots of farm-saved diseased seed and no seed testing and very obviously to `true to type’ requirements. Sounds a good way of further wrecking EU farming. Who is doing the lobbying for all this funding to be wasted?
Angelo: Thanks for the information on the history of this. But to merit 143 million euros for in situ it must be shown that in some way the conserved varieties got `better’ in the field. I doubt very much if this happened or, indeed, if it is possible to show.
Is there anyone in the EU genetic resource conservation system that was involved in recommending this? If so, could they defend here what otherwise seems to me a complete waste of both funding and farmers’ time and expense? This funding will only get genetic resource conservation a bad name.
Is there a on-farm conservation/diversification policy that you think might be useful?
As farmer germplasm management is always dynamic, conservation is not an apt term for what farmers are already doing. As to diversification, the secret is crop introduction: getting crop species away from their co-evolved constraints (pests, diseases, weeds) in other continents. This was so successful in the past there is not much left to do: perhaps South American fruits for warmer parts of Europe and Andean crops for northern areas.
A farmer next to our house in Northern Scotland (57 degrees north) has grown quality quinoa in a wild bird food mixture (of course, with EU subsidies). There were commercial varieties of quinoa developed in Sweden (and soybean in Germany) long ago and Phaseolus beans in Cambridge. New markets may open up for previously neglected crops (or uses, for example, rape seed oil for salad dressings). The USDA has an underexploited crops unit for the USA (I was once involved in collecting Vernonia in East Africa as an industrial oil crop for the USA) – also there was a unit at FAL Braunschweig with some emphasis on biomass crops. There are also export possibilities. Canada expanded noodle wheat production for export to Asia (easier to cook than rice).
Exchanging of seeds that aren’t EU listed is OK; selling them isn’t. I thought farmers could still exchange them though.
On another note, I read in a farmer’s magazine that winter wheat and spring wheat were classed as 2 different crops for the purposes of this legislation! And that’s before you add spelt etc. as your potential third crop.
Oh my. But then again, there probably are not many places where it makes sense to grow both spring and winter wheat? Or are there?
I think there are. This is definately not my area of knowledge, but winter wheat requires a period of cold (vernalisation), whereas spring wheat doesn’t. So countries at mid-latitudes where there is rain all year round & mild winters I guess can do both e.g. prairies of Canada & N. of USA Europe, central China, parts of Chile & Argentina I guess. The winter wheat has a longer growing season so produces more tillers; the spring wheat has useful varieties for bread production + obviously can be grown in the tropics where temperatures don’t drop low enough for winter wheat.
But in practice there does not seem to be that much overlap. You cannot grow winter wheat in areas with very cold winters (e.g. Canada). And in places where farmers grow winter wheat it may get too hot and dry in summer for spring wheat. See this map and other maps in the same book. To further complicate things there are “facultative” varieties that require little vernalization. And as you go further south you get spring wheat varieties again, but typically sown in autumn (India, California), hence it is winter wheat from a cropping system perspective.
You certainly can grow winter wheat in Canada, and it is done in the western part of the country (and even some in Saskatchewan). In fact Bayer Crop Science and Ducks Unlimited have a partnership to expand production as it is waterfowl friendly. And it also can be more ecofriendly in that it gets up fast in spring and out-competes weeds (reduced tillage). Some evidence of lower fusarium rates as well.