Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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A fifty-year Farm Bill

When we nibbled an article from The Land Institute’s Stan Cox a couple of days ago it prompted a heartfelt outburst against the “holier than thou organic only everyting else be dammed mindset”. So I’m wondering what Anastasia and others will make of a Q&A in today’s Washington Post. Three of the wisest men in “alternative” agriculture in the US — Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry and Fred Kirschenmann — were in Washington to promote an alternative Farm Bill, one that takes a long-term view and that “values not only yields but also local ecosystems, healthy food and rural communities”. The Post took the opportunity to get some answers to pressing questions, such as “Washington doesn’t think in 50-year increments. How do you sell this?”.

Jackson: You sell it the same way as global warming or population growth. Washington thinks it’s going to deal with the global warming problem in 50 years? We will have this if we get cracking.

Kirschenmann: Because of our election cycles, you’re right. People tend to think in terms of two-year, four-year or six-year cycles. But I think the effort to deal with climate change is starting to change with that, because they know they can’t deal with climate change on that timeline. They have to extend the horizon. So we think the time is right to add agriculture to that.

I’d like to think they can do it, but I’m not optimistic.

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Back to sorghum: an African response to climate change?

Another in our series of occasional contributions from Jacob van Etten.

Last week I was at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) to talk about seed systems. To some degree or another, the people around the table were maize experts. We discussed climate change and this led to some reflections on the question:

If maize harvests are failing in Africa, why do most farmers not switch to sorghum?

When you ask the average agricultural scientist for solutions to climate change, the first idea he ((Most agricultural scientists are male.)) will come up with is to build drought tolerance and heat tolerance into major field crops. Most CGIAR centres and research programmes are structured around individual crops, so everyone has an incentive to stick to their own crop and stretch and bend it as much as possible to adapt to climate change. But what if simply switching from one crop to another does the trick?

Sorghum is a more drought-resistant crop than maize. Sorghum and maize are otherwise similar enough to make switching technologically fairly easy. Sorghum originated in Africa, unlike maize. Switching “back” to sorghum makes sense in many respects.

Several factors stand in the way of sorghum adoption in Africa, however. Maize seems to have become an acquired taste in many parts of the continent. Therefore, maize has a higher market demand than sorghum. By selling their maize surplus on the market, farmers can earn some money to pay school fees and the like. Sorghum is also more sensitive than maize to bird attacks. In a nutshell, maize lets African children be at school, sorghum pulls them from school to chase after the birds.

Even so, farmers are switching from maize to sorghum in Swaziland. These farmers are growing a bitter variety that birds don’t like. However, perhaps that makes it less marketable as grain for human consumption? The bitter taste of sorghum comes from tannins, which are have anti-oxidant properties. But although birds prefer sweet sorghum, they will still eat bitter sorghum if food is scarce. Also, a high tannin content decreases palatability. It seems that African farmers need alternative ways to deal with birds. Early varieties could perhaps help to avoid migratory birds, and synchrony in planting and maturing could spread the damage. Having the school holidays when sorghum is most vulnerable to bird attacks would be another option. … Any other ideas out there?

In Zambia, CARE is trying to help farmers grow more sorghum. One of the main challenges there is to develop a viable sorghum market. Economic incentives to continue growing maize may well be “climatologically perverse”. For instance, in Zambia, the major maize buyer is the government. Adapting to climate change may require African governments to buy more sorghum in order to develop viable sorghum markets. Liberalization, of course, has diminished the role of government cereal stocks in many African countries. Even so, there may still be a pro-maize bias in agricultural policy. Historically, sorghum hasn’t received the same level of state support as maize.

Creating more commercial demand for sorghum is key. Dietary preferences can change and economic incentives could help a great deal to achieve that. For instance, sorghum could become an obligatory ingredient in school feeding programmes. Sorghum is already increasingly used as a beer brewing ingredient by big brewers. Nigerian Guinness is made with sorghum and is not a bad beer at all.

“Fight climate change, drink more beer,” how does that sound?

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Mind boggling potato breeding

Tom Wagner explains how he does what he does, kinda, sorta.

Anyway, I had some extra pollen of Nordic October (one of my best reds) and went to a potato seedling growing in a raised bed. I emasculated several buds of the yet un-named seedling and proceeded to tell my neighbor of the pedigree. I said that the original line was CT8406-33, a chacoense/tuuberosum hybrid with slightly blue rings in a purple skinned white flesh potato that was but one of some seedling tubers lines bred for high glycoalkoloids in the foliage to repel Colorado Potato Beetles. This line was either selfed or OP’ed and the result was Red Cat, a red skinned, red fleshed line that had lots of berries. I crossed Red Cat to a male parent called Lenape, a white skinned, white flesh line with high glycoalcoloids. The cross led to the Negro y Azul, a very black/blue skin and fleshed line that saw it’s origin on some certified organic ground off I-5 near Buttonwillow, California. Negro y Azul was crossed to Kern Toro, one of my best reds at that time, a combination of NorDonna and Fontenot. The cross of Negro y Azul and Kern Toro led to Azul Toro, an excellent early blue flesh variety. I crossed the female Azul Toro with pollen from Blue Blood Russet, a cross of Blue Cat and an unknown russet seedling. The resulting cross was named Paint Jar, an inky black/blue with occasional white patches in the flesh. I crossed the Paint Jar with pollen from Dark Red Norland and this created Paint Nor. Paint Nor was crossed with pollen from October Blue, a cross of Nordic October, a red similar to Kern Toro with the exception of additional germplasm from Red October that had ND2912-2R in it….to Azul Toro, previously mentioned. The two seedlings in the raised bed has one I named last week as Mule Skinner Blues. The other had to be named and I thought of Mostly Purple and I serendipitously named it MOSTLY PURPLE as I crossed it with pollen from Nordic October…knowing fully that I had permission to do so.