BBC Radio 4 has one of the longest-lived series devoted to all aspects of food: The Food Programme. Today’s broadcast looked at the importance of traditional African vegetables and fruits in nutrition, health, and offering farmers additional options for earning a better living. The programme rounded up many of the usual suspects from among our friends at Bioversity International, to very good effect. At least, that’s our opinion, and we’re sticking with it. Programme details are available at the Food Programme’s web site, which also has links that let you listen online. We’re hoping the episode will go into the archive, in which case we’ll post a link to that here. If not, well, there are other options …
Vegetable landraces of England and Wales
While lawyers and some scientists jump through hoops in their efforts to define — or at least describe — what they mean by “landrace” the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in Britain has quietly published the results of a project entitled “Vegetable landrace inventory of England and Wales”. ((Heads should roll for the typo in the first sentence on the UK Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture portal. But they won’t.)) We haven’t had time to even skim the full report, but judging by the Information Bulletin that accompanied it, this is a very important piece of work. The Bulletin, which is extremely readable, explains clearly the importance of landraces and why they are under threat. It outlines the sources of information, from commercial seed companies that still maintain varieties on the UK Vegetable ‘B’ List (which is also explained) through to NGOs, smaller seed companies, and individual farmers. It offers a snapshot of the landraces that have been preserved, and even valiantly attempts to answer the question “What is a landrace?”. As for another question — How many English and Welsh vegetable landraces are there? — I can do no better than to quote from the Bulletin:
The answer to this question is we currently dont know and may never be able to give a precise estimate, partly because some varieties are marketed or grown under different common names, but also because gaining access to information about who is growing landraces is hampered by a number of challenges as highlighted earlier. However, if we are to retain this national resource we need to continue to build the inventory and gradually increase our knowledge of the diversity that exists before it is lost forever.
If ever there was a universally applicable set of ideas, this is it, and it deserves to be taken up widely around the world. The Defra project has shown that it is possible to gain an accurate understanding without spurious precision, and should be a model for any organization interested in gathering information and materials. You insist you want numbers?
Four UK seedbanks are primarily responsible for the maintenance of English and Welsh vegetable landrace diversity — the Heritage Seed Library (HSL), the John Innes Centre (JIC — notable for pea and bean collections), Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture (SASA) and Warwick HRI’s Vegetable Genebank (WHRI). Collectively, they are responsible for the maintenance of seed samples of at least 327 vegetable landraces; however, we know that the actual number is higher because at present not all landrace samples are distinguished as landraces in their database maagement systems. Work is currently in progress to ensure that all landace material is identified.
Again, that should be resonating loudly around the world.
The project examined the identity of varieties on the B list (essentially traditional varieties that were in place before the EU Common Catalogue and its registered varieties came along) and discovered that the greatest number of varieties is among the brassicas, which account for 91 of the 345 landraces listed on the B list. No great surprise there, given that outbreeding Brassica oleracea makes it possibly the easiest species in which to find some slightly different characteristics (although that also makes it one of the hardest in which to maintain all the characteristics of a variety).
One of the interesting trends that the project identified is that government genebanks are increasingly taking on the work of maintaining traditional varieties landraces when, for one reason or another, their maintainers lose interest. SASA is currently responsible for 42% of the landraces. That represents a sea-change from when I was personally directly involved with this kind of thing. Are they making the seeds available, though, to gardeners and others less interested in breeding than in simply growing the varieties? They do offer a back-up scheme, which will replace a landrace should a grower lose it for some reason, an effort that the study says should be extended to England and Wales. The report also mentions Seedy Sunday and Seedling Saturday as community-organised events to promote the exchange of diversity and the knowledge to use it, and praises grower and breeder days organized by the four main genebanks.
One thing I’d suggest to expand the range of landraces of England and Wales would be to go looking in other government and NGO genebanks, especially in ex-colonies. Emigrants invariably took their seeds with them. Some that may no longer be available in the old country have surely survived in the new and could be repatriated to the delight of all.
A final quote:
[W]hile the loss of old varieties and the irreplaceable diversity that has gone with them is of concern, we may now be in a new period of expansion of locally-based vegetable crop diversity as a result of a strong resurgence of interest in growing traditional varieties and in grower-based breeding amongst both amateur and professional growers — the formal sector needs to work with the maintainers to put in place strategies to capture this diversity, as well as nurturing the culture that is responsible for creating and maintaining it.
All in all, this is very heartening news about the state of vegetable landraces in England and Wales. But is it a bit too heartening? We’d love to hear from people there who have on-the-ground experience.
GURT big mess
When are the knee-jerk opponents of genetically modified crops going to realize that genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) are their friends? ((I’ve asked before, here, here and here, and never received even an unsatisfactory reply. But I’m willing to try again.))
The latest gusher of drivel comes from the International Institute for Environment and Development, which really ought to know better. In a press release designed to ride the intense interest swirling aound the World Seed Conference, which opened at FAO yesterday, IIED “researchers” point out that:
in order to continue conserving and adapting their varieties, farmers also need to be allowed to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds. Technologies which restrict these customary rights — namely Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS) — pose a very serious threat to genetic diversity, seed quality and the livelihoods of poor farmers.
New readers (and IIED researchers) should start here. GURTs (there are a couple of different kinds) are bits of DNA that are intended to prevent any seed that contains them from germinating and growing.
Why?
So that farmers cannot save their own seeds.
Which farmers?
Farmers who choose to buy the seeds that contained the GURTs because they think that those seeds offer them valuable advantages over other seeds.
Why?
Because a company invested a sackload of money in developing a variety. So the company is going to do two things to recoup its investment, and more. It must persuade farmers to buy the seed. And it must stop everyone else from making use of the investment without paying for it.
So far, note, this is nothing to do with GURTs, which in any case are not currently permitted in seed anywhere. It is one good reason why seed companies like to produce F1 hybrids. The seeds of an F1 hybrid are no good to the farmer who wants the same performance from the seeds she saved as from the seeds she paid for. In that sense, GURTs are a logical extension of the desire of seed breeding companies to protect their investment. You can save the seeds of an F1, but those F2 seeds are not a replica of the F1. The company wins, although canny breeders can easily dehybridize the hybrids, and even farmers can benefit from the flow of interesting genes into their crops.
Now, whereas F1 hybrids produce pollen that can indeed pollute the seeds of a neighbouring farmer exercising her right to freely save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed, GURTs actually prevent this kind of pollution. Any seed fertilized by pollen from a GURTed plant is effectively dead.
GURTs thus stop any characters bred into a GMO from being transferred into another variety of the same crop and into the crop’s wild relatives.
So, IIED, remind me, please: why is that a bad thing?
Does it stop the farmer saving seeds? On the contrary, it makes life easier, because the farmer does not have to worry about genetic pollution. She can, of course, still take advantage of good pollution, or introgression, if she wants to.
Does it stop her using farm-saved seed? No, how could it, when any polluted seeds are going to fail to grow. It makes using the farm-saved seed more secure.
Can she still exchange and sell farm-saved seed? You bet, and not only that, but her customers and swap-partners will be grateful that her seeds cannot possibly be polluted.
Opponents of GURTs seem to think that massive influxes of foreign pollen are the norm. They’re not. And I certainly wouldn’t want to accept, even as a gift, seed from someone who knew so little about farming and seed saving that they couldn’t even maintain their own varieties. Cross pollination from a different field is a fascinating and rare source of diversity in farmers’ fields, not the norm. GURTs pose absolutely no threat to farm-saved seed. In fact, I believe that they can enhance genetic diversity (by maintaining the separation between varieties), improve seed quality (for the same reasons) and have no impact at all on the livelihoods of poor farmers.
I hold no brief for or against GMOs, though I do think they have yet to prove themselves in the areas where they make the loudest claims. This is not about GMOs. It is about honesty. Any opponent of GMOs, however good the rest of their arguments might be, immediately loses my respect if they are also against GURTs.
Nibbles: Goat, Wine, Heirlooms, Soil microbes, Climate change, Sorghum
- “Is goat the most popular meat you’ve never eaten?” No. We both love it.
- Winery recycles water. We recycle wine.
- “I have tomatoes in my blood.” See a doctor, Amy.
- Rice’s little friends the microbes, under intense scrutiny. Should IRRI be too? Or GRAIN?
- “Even small-scale management of farm lands can immensely benefit from recent advances in climate prediction.” FAO is ready.
- “We know that improved sorghum has better quality and high production value. But, given our reality of water scarcity, we prefer to plant traditional sorghum because it needs less water.”
Development and entrepreneurship in Africa
The company is just one part of Wade’s “comprehensive plan for Africa,” an anti-aid alternative to the Jeffrey Sachs vision.
A fascinating quote from a fascinating article on the Freakonomics blog, about three entrepreneurs in Africa. The woman whose quote I extracted above is Magatte Wade, and she’s the reason the story deserves a mention here. Her company — Adina for Life — came into being when she returned home to Senegal “and was disappointed to find that the traditional hibiscus drink of her childhood had been usurped by Western soft drinks”.
Hibiscus drinks are indeed a constant in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and hibiscus has been the focus of efforts to improve livelihoods by capitalizing on its popularity. Adina seems to be in a state of turmoil at the moment — with its US outlets suffering a crisis of identity and Wade apparently no longer associated with the company, at least in the US. But the larger point, that it is possible for Africans to make better use of their own natural resources remains valuable, and the other two stories in the Freakonomics story amplify that.
I wonder, though. Adina plunged into the cut-throat soft drinks market of the US. Why, when the stated goal was to replace sticky soft drinks in the home market? Wouldn’t that be enough?