The National Geographic Society has awarded US$ 20,000 to a study of coconut DNA that will shed light on its history before and after domestication.
What the first Green Revolution taught India
What would you say were the lessons of the first Green Revolution in India? That wealthier farmers on good land need even more help to boost their yields? Or that the smaller, poorer farmers by passed (or even actively harmed) by the Green Revolution should be the focus of attention now?
OK, so it’s an unfair question. Intensive farming does need continuing research and development to thrive and expand. And rural smallholders, while they could be assisted in their quest for food security, are not the answer to national problems. Nevertheless, I confess to being more than a little dismayed by the report of a recent speech by India’s new president Pratibha Patil to the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
“The structural weaknesses of the agriculture sector include low levels of public investment, exhaustion of the yield potential of new high yielding varieties of wheat and rice, unbalanced fertilizer use, low seeds replacement rate and low yield per unit area across almost all crops.”
Patil further said that the reasons for low agri-production are the diminishing size of land holdings, degradation in land quality and soil health due to improper nutrient application, the looming threats of global warming and climate change, and emergence of new pests and diseases.
Weak linkages between research and extension, limited credit access at reasonable rates of interest, non-remunerative prices, inadequate market access, poor rural infrastructure and insufficient post-harvest infrastructure such as warehousing, cold chains, and agro-processing facilities are other features plaguing our agricultural production environment, she added.
Many of the “reasons” Patil enumerated look from afar like the consequences of poor intensification rather than weaknesses not addressed by the Green Revolution.
Just the teeniest passing reference to the benefits of agricultural biodiversity, especially for the farmers who did not get much out of the Green Revolution, would have pleased me no end.
There’s more here: apparently Patil’s speech was a curtain-raiser for FAO Director General Jacques Diouf. But the Indian papers don’t seem to be recording what he said.
More on school gardens
A brief summary of edible schoolyards in the US, with useful links. A couple more links that I snagged over at Desertification. A new book on Gardening with Children and an article about how teachers in San Francisco are using gardening, with a video. Desertification has also published a comment on the subject as a full post, which seems like a neat bit of recycling.
Examining the entrails
There’s an extremely long and detailed piece in Business Daily Africa about what Kofi Annan really said, what he meant, and what other people think he meant, and what should have said about the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and GMOs. It really does have the whiff of theologists discussing a papal pronouncement. One thing the article does is to draw attention to all the other things — roads, markets, communications — that Africa needs to become more food secure. But just as I’m guilty of treating Africa as a monolith, so the article, and the multitude of experts it cites, are guilty of treating crops and genetic engineering as monoliths. Instead of worrying about the fine nuances of words like “consider” — as in “the Alliance will not shy away from considering the potential of bio-technology in reducing hunger and poverty” — maybe the assembled experts could consider specific crops and specific biotechnologies.
Nutrition news from the Antipodes
What do these fruits have in common: Kakadu plum, Illawarra plum, Burdekin plum, Davidson’s plum, riberry, red and yellow finger limes, Tasmanian pepper, brush cherry, Cedar Bay cherry, muntries and Molucca raspberry? Five points if you said “They’re all native Australian fruits”. Ten points if you said “According to this press release I just read, they’re exceptional sources of antioxidants identified in research published in the journal Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies”.
Ten points to me.