Rice, rich folks, and (small) reasons for hope

How much trouble is agriculture facing because of climate change?

There are lots of studies out there that seek to predict the effects of changes in rainfall or temperature on the yield of this or that crop, in this or that part of the world. There are even plenty of studies that look at what might happen to a whole bunch of crops on a global scale.

But they pretty much all have the drawback that they don’t take into account that farmers could in fact adapt, whether by changing crop or variety, or the way they manage their crops, for example through more irrigation. They may end up doing ok, at least with some crops in some places.

That’s a pretty big drawback, because it makes it difficult to prioritize.

But it’s also difficult to know what do about it. Farmers could potentially do a million different things, and even neighbouring farmers might do quite different things. How do you figure out what the effect on yields will be of all these things, everywhere?

A major global study in Nature has just tackled the problem by forgetting about the “what” and focusing on the “how much.” 1

The authors looked at the yields over time of six staple crops — cassava, maize, rice, sorghum, soyabeans and wheat, or two thirds of global calories — across 12,600 regions of the world. They then calculated how well farmers have actually been coping with increasing temperatures, irrespective of what specifically they are doing, and then projected that level of success into an even warmer future.

The findings are striking. Adaptation is happening, but just not enough. It can maybe alleviate 23% of global losses in 2050 and 34% at the end of the century; or 6% and 12%, respectively, for a moderate-emissions scenario. That’s worth having, but still leaves us with a mountain to climb. We’re going to have to keep breeding better crops, faster, and we’ll need the diversity in genebanks to do that.

I see two bright spots of hope in the gloom. One is that rice is predicted to do ok. And the other is that while the world’s poorest are as usual predicted to take a big hit, so are the world’s richest. Which might encourage them to actually do something about it.

Noah? No way!

In the latest GROW webinar, Prof. Stef de Haan, of the International Potato Centre and more recently Wageningen University and Research, explains how genebanks alone won’t preserve crop diversity adequately unless linked with farmer custodians, local seed systems, and policy spaces. Sounds like he also falls squarely in the middle in the old Erna vs Otto bunfight.

To save you googling, the Rikuy Agrobio website he mentions, with the community-level tools for monitoring crop diversity, is here. And you can explore potato diversity in on-farm hotspots on wikiPapa here. Both only in Spanish so far, but well worth looking into. Fascinating stuff, and obviously valuable, but I do wonder how to scale up this sort of thing to all crops, everywhere.

Brainfood: Protein, AnGR, Indian chickens, US Mashona cattle, Asiatic wild ass, European Neolithic pigs, Low methane pastures, American dogs, Baker’s yeast, Lager yeast

Nibbles: Cherokee Three Sisters, Australian native grains, Ancient Peruvian irrigation, Indian apples, IFOAM Seed Platform, MSB, Chinese conservation, Protected areas, Soybeans breeding, Funding cuts

  1. Three Sisters rematriated to historical Cherokee Nation.
  2. Native grains returning to Indigenous land in Australia too.
  3. May need to bring back agricultural practices too, like in Peru.
  4. Meanwhile, in India, farmers are trying to grow apples in new places. Go figure.
  5. Anyway, seems like the IFOAM Seeds Platform might be able to help.
  6. And genebanks too of course, like the Millennium Seed Bank.
  7. As part of a comprehensive conservation systems, goes without saying, like in China.
  8. Which also include climate-proof protected areas.
  9. It worked for soybeans, after all.
  10. Well, for now anyway…

Brainfood: Rice breeding, Sorghum parents, Cowpea diversity, Sweet potato double, Lesser yam uses, Tomato breeding, Peanut hybrids, Rice wild relatives, Sorghum genetic erosion