Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Task the Ask Force

A friend alerted me to the Ask Force, hosted at something called the Public Research and Regulation Initiative. According to the site, “On this ‘ASK-FORCE’ page, PRRI publishes frequently asked questions that refer to publications that are either not supported by properly peer reviewed scientific research.” Breathless with excitement, we hurried to the section on agriculture. What a terrific list of topics, to whit:

  • Biofuels: what will the positive and negative impact be?
  • Is co-existence between organic farming and GM crops possible
  • Will GM crops end small scale farming?
  • Did GM Crops cause health problems for the farmers?
  • Were the Indian farmers committing suicide because of GM crops?
  • Are GM crops are less well adapted to the local environment than local landraces?
  • Are GM crops an economic desaster?
  • Do GM crops cause higher pesticide and herbicide usage?
  • Do GM crops cause new pests?
  • Does GM crop planting create super weeds?
  • Do GM crops decrease the yields?

Alas, the answers to these frequently asked questions remain “under development”. Like you, dear readers, I’d be delighted to read those answers. But there’s no RSS feed, and I’ll be blowed if I am going to return to the site every day to check. A word to the wise, Emeritus Professor Klaus Ammann: get a feed.

I noticed later that one can get a feed from a bulletin board hosted by the European Federation of Biotechnology, which raises another question. Why duplicate the content?

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Africa needs an old-fashioned green revolution

An article in The Africa Report, published by the Rockefeller Foundation, outlines several good news stories achieved “with not a petri dish-induced genetic manipulation in sight”. While one may quibble with the details — how many engineered genes can you actually see — one cannot fault the conclusion: old-fashioned breeding is more likely to deliver the goods than GMOs. The article is at pains to point out that the early emphasis of the Rockefeller Foundation and Bill Gates on biotechnology was “slow and expensive”. Conventional breeding, by contrast, has resulted in fast-growing disease-resistant cassava and better bean varieties. ((“Roughly half the beans grown on the continent are eaten by weevils, not by people.” That’s astonishing.)) The article also stresses the need for investment in agriculture:

There is broad agreement among economists that countries like India, China and Vietnam all kick-started their economies by accumulating an agricultural surplus, which not only created healthier and more productive workforces, but also released manpower that would otherwise have been devoted to farming.

No argument on that score. In other respects, though, I’d have to say that the “new” approach doesn’t go quite far enough. For example, it contrasts Africa’s variable landscape with the “uniform” coastal plains of Asia that responded to “the high-yield variety of paddy rice”. Professor Mark Laing, the expert quoted to support that view, goes on:

[I]n Asia … you are able to use a single superior variety suitable for this habitat. This can’t work in Africa, because it doesn’t have these coherent zones. For example, between South Africa and Zimbabwe you need four different varieties of soybean.

Four whole varieties! Africa’s farmers deserve better. They deserve a rich diversity of crops and a rich diversity of varieties. While old-fashioned breeding, suitably beefed up with better training for African breeders, is a good start, making full use of farmers’ own expertise as participants in the breeding process would be even better.

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We’re back

There may be a big blank space above. It ought to be a fancy link to a video of Levon Helm singing Poor Old Dirt Farmer. Lovely song, but with the ethanol subsidies and everything it is hard to imagine even the poorest old dirt farmer unable to make a living growing corn.

Anyway, I’m rested, relaxed and raring to go. ((I hope Luigi is too, but he’s possibly had a more stressful break than I have, if newspaper reports are anything to go by.)) There’s only one way to catch up with the backlog of stuff that’s come in over the past two weeks, and that is to ignore it. Inevitably, that means missing some good stuff, but if we were to look for it we’d never get started again. So help us out.

Is there some really interesting bit of agrobiodiversity news we’ve missed? Some new twist on agricultural biodiversity? Let us know. Thanks.

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Takin’ a break

Bad Santa So we discussed this thing among ourselves, and decided that we would both have a more enjoyable rest if we put this blog to rest too. Temporarily. That way we won’t be fretting about connections and internets and all that technology. Just about over-eating, our solemn duty at this time of year.

In the meantime, you could visit our page of links and try visiting some of them from time to time. So, for a couple of weeks we’re off to our respective non-work homes. We wish you everything you might wish for yourselves, and we’ll see you early in January.

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Tangled Bank #95

Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? Was it only two weeks ago that the last biological carnival went up? How much longer can I keep this rhetorical ball of nonsense in the air? Tangled Bank 95 is up, hosted at Ouroboros. Go! Expose yourself to some diverse ideas. You’ve already read the three pieces we had the greedy gall to submit.