Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Gates embraces diversity?

This post has two purposes. The first is to try and explain the shenanigans yesterday. That’s possibly of interest to only a few geeks who care about journalistic ethics. 1 The second is warmly to welcome some of the comments made by Bill Gates as he announced a further US$120 million for agricultural research. That should be of interest to everyone except monocultural thinkers.

Second things first. Judging from the stories we’ve seen, the Gates’ announcement might just mark a shift in the Foundation’s priorities. 2 That pesky iAfrica.com site, which started all the trouble, has perhaps the longest report, which contains several nuggets.

Gates will warn that as scientists, governments, and others strive to repeat the successes of the original Green Revolution, they should be careful not to repeat its mistakes, such as the overuse of fertilizer and irrigation.

“The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first,” Gates will say. “It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.”

That’s as clear a statement as any we’ve seen that Africa’s problems will require a huge diversity of solutions, and that African farmers may well know what they need. But this is the real money quote:

Gates will say that major breakthroughs in the fight against hunger and poverty are now within reach [and] he will caution that progress toward alleviating global hunger is “endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two.”

On one side, he will say, there are groups that support technological solutions to increase agricultural productivity without proper regard to environmental and sustainability concerns. On the other, there are those who react negatively to any emphasis on productivity.

“It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field,” Gates will say. “It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers. The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability — and there is no reason we can’t have both.”

That, quite simply, is music to our ears. We’ve been saying the same ourselves at every opportunity. And given that today is a rather special day for us, we’re going to delude ourselves into thinking that someone out there reads us and even pays attention to our ramblings.

Thanks.

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Global Hunger Index goes interactive

The Global Hunger Index for 2009 has just been released with a very cool interactive map (see above). 3 There’s a general release from our friends at IFPRI and one focused on sub-Saharan Africa.

Coincidentally, or not, this just in: 4

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, on Thursday will urge governments, donors, researchers, farmer groups, environmentalists, and others to set aside old divisions and join forces to help millions of the world’s poorest farming families boost their yields and incomes so they can lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.

Gates will say the effort must be guided by the farmers themselves, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.

The occasion for both news items is the award, tomorrow, of the World Food Prize to Dr Gebisa Ejeta.

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Green grants

People sometimes ask us if we have funds to support their work. Short answer: No. Nor are we experts in the finding of financial support. So it was good to see a report at Crops for the Future about Terra Viva Grants. This web site uses a combination of old technology — people — and new technology — the internet — to assemble details on all sorts of entities that fund projects on what they call “the green sector”.

Not being in the market for support (well, not of that sort) I’m not really able to judge how well Terra Viva Grants does the job it sets out to do. I had a quick search for a topic that interests me, and turned up six possible grant-makers; although there is clearly a lot more to getting funded than finding a funder, that’s clearly a good start. There have been similar efforts in the past, and many seem to have fallen by the wayside. Something of this sort is desperately needed, so we can only wish Terra Viva Grants the best of luck.

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Coping with climate change

SciDev.net reports on a project launched a couple of years ago to unite farmers, weather-wallahs and government in Benin to “help farmers make informed choices about when to sow and harvest crops”. About 300 farmers are enrolled in 60 field schools across the country.

[T]o develop, test and implement farming strategies suited to local conditions. These include mulching, planting pits, adopting integrated crop management and using organic fertilisers.

What, no agricultural biodiversity? No new varieties or crop selection? No participatory plant breeding? We think they’re missing a trick.

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Empty vessels and GMOs

You know the old story about the two women ranting at one another from their respective doorsteps on opposite sides of a narrow street. And a passing wit 5 remarked: “They will never agree, for they argue from different premises”. That’s how I feel about almost everything and everyone involved in almost every kind of discussion of genetic engineering.

Watch, if you will, this extract from a longer discussion with Michael Pollan, foodsayer extraordinaire.

Now, tell me, what exactly did he say that might cause someone else to say

I’m thinking he is just another tool. Now he suddenly supports “open source” genetic engineering…absolutely not….playing god/artifically manipulating DNA is not our place.

What’s with the “scare quotes”? How does a self-described seed breeder manage to elide playing god with artificially manipulating DNA?

I’m reminded of another quote, this one definitely attributable to Woody Allen. It runs something like this 6

The great advantage of being smart is that you can always act like an imbecile, while the reverse is never possible.

Hell yeah.