Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
In England, the government is asking for views on vegetable varieties of ‘no intrinsic value for crop production but developed for growing under particular conditions’. They mean heritage and heirloom varieties, which could be promoted through Commission Directive 2009/145/EC on conservation and amateur varieties of vegetables, but we advise caution. Can worthless be far behind?
Seriously, let them know what you think.
Nourishing the Planet continues to disseminate answers. Today, Pascal Pulvery, of the National Association of Livestock & Artificial Insemination Cooperatives, France says:
“I think that the majority of funds should be used to develop the production of food for local utilization instead of developing the agricultural production for exportation.”
In other news, there’s a National Association of Livestock & Artificial Insemination Cooperatives in France.
The pack is well and truly on the scent now, with The Guardian in London and ABC in Australia weighing in, to say nothing of assorted ad-farms and feed scrapers. As they do so, strange claims are being made.
That Pavlovsk is “the world’s first global seed bank,” for example. It isn’t. But that does not diminish its importance of the Russian state’s short-sightenedness one bit.
And that “[t]welve Russian scientists starved to death at the site while protecting the crops”. They didn’t. They starved to death at the VIR’s headquarters in Leningrad proper.
Nits being picked, I agree, just as I’ve previously picked the “seed bank” nits. The heroism of the past is important and should never be forgotten, but it detracts from the argument that collections like Pavlovsk are even more important for the future. The forest fires raging in Russia during the hottest summer on record by far will burn themselves out. The need to adapt food and farming systems to climate change, using the genetic diversity of places like Pavlovsk, will not.
Every day Nourishing the Planet, a blog at the Worldwatch Institute, will publish three answers to the question Where Would You Like to See More Agricultural Funding Directed? You can email a response, or tweet it, but I’ll just say something here.
For me, the biggest single problem about current mainstream agricultural funding for development is that it is all chasing the same unimaginative goals. Adding another USD$300 million a year to the pot is a wonderful thing, but it is like more water pouring down a gully. It deepens the channel but makes it even more difficult to jump out of that channel and find another path. Given how little is currently spent on the more effective use of agricultural biodiversity, I reckon just a tenth of that, say USD30 million, would make a huge difference to the ability of people to enjoy a food secure future. Throw in another USD30 million for extension services, and I reckon you could really see some impact. Don’t get me wrong; things like infrastructure are important too. But in the end, lots of people are doing that. Let’s see a little money devoted to trying something different.
What do you think? If you send a suggestion to Nourishing the Planet, why not copy it here too?