- A “grand, almost surreal vision” of coconut conservation.
- A grandish vision of ex situ crop conservation in Korea.
- A very down-to-earth vision of fruit conservation in Arizona.
- An extremely wacky vision of the post-agricultural world.
- A workmanlike vision of biodiversity for nutrition project.
- A musical vision of rice husking.
- A historical vision of food in the Middle Ages.
Geographically confused
Some confusing signals from the GIS folks of the CGIAR. We hear that the team behind the CGIAR Research Programme on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) met recently to discuss the geographic targeting of their interventions. The payoff is in the mail: “…the team is creating an online digital atlas on everything related to RTB crop development.” Promises to be very useful. But is that the same atlas that was announced at more or less the same time to separate fanfare? Certainly some of the same people are involved, but that’s not always a guide. I did play around with the IBP Generation Atlas for half an hour or so and I have to say I’m profoundly unimpressed so far. Sharing doesn’t really work. You can’t import your own data in any way that I can see. And I couldn’t get a number of the maps in the menu to load, for example the crop distribution one. But no doubt it’s all at the very forefront of GIS technology. So I’ll reserve definitive judgement until I’ve had a proper chance to test it. But don’t let me stop you jumping in. It could just be me.
ISO certification: What is it good for?
Do genebanks need ISO certification to maintain standards? Or accreditation. Or whatever. We have talked about the issue of quality assurance here in the past. But a random Facebook status update of mine on the subject recently elicited a stronger reaction than I had seen in a while. What do you think? Comment here, or on Facebook. We’ll figure out a way of bringing it all together if there’s a good response.
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.
More than pawns in the game of crop diversity conservation
There’s a program on the History Channel called Pawn Stars. It’s about a high-end but nevertheless slightly seedy family-owned pawn shop in Las Vegas, and the motley assortment of customers who come through its doors, hoping to trade their property for cash. I’ve developed something of an addiction to this show lately, and family and friends were sufficiently concerned to mount an intervention. Confronted with the truth, I had to think fast. I watch it for work reasons, I improvised. Pawn shops are just like genebanks.
Panicked or not, I may have been onto something. The wonderful thing about pawn shops is that they deal in all manner of weird and unusual stuff. Each item is brought in by someone who has some kind of story about it, needs to be evaluated by an expert, and will eventually catch the fancy of someone else. Just like genebanks. Genebanks typically keep seeds of dozens of different species, and sometimes hundreds if not thousands of different varieties of each. Each lot of seeds has a story – a story about how it got to be what it is, often thanks to generations of farmers –- encoded in its DNA. It was brought into the genebank by someone who more often than not has an interesting story to tell about how they got it. It needs to be taken care of in a particular way, depending on what it is, and its characteristics described. And it will be taken out by someone who needs it because of those characteristics, and will make good use of it, in a breeding programme, or because they remember their grandparents growing it.
Trying to explain what genebanks do can call forth many metaphors. All fall painfully short in some way. Banks only have money. Different currencies, maybe, and different kinds of accounts, but it’s all boring old money in the end. Only you have access to what you put into a safe deposit box. 1 Customers don’t take things into department stores. Museums do have lots of different things in them, but visitors can’t take them out. No genebank manager wants their charge to be described as just a museum. Some people call genebanks morgues, and while that may occasionally be a bit true, it’s just plain rude.
The parallel for pawn shops is better than all these, I think. But it’s not perfect. The idea of pawning the crown jewels, another metaphor that’s sometimes used for genebanks, at least within the CGIAR, is not, ahem, attractive. Anyway, genebanks don’t buy and sell; though maybe they should sometimes. And they deal in resources that are pretty special in being non-exclusive and renewable. Just because you’ve used a particular variety doesn’t mean nobody else can. And if the genebank is careful, it can always make more seeds.
Which in the end is why none of the comparisons is really satisfactory. A genebank is a genebank is a genebank. There’s no substitute for walking into a cold store full of thousands of jars of different varieties of seeds, neatly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelving, carefully labelled. Or listening to the people in charge of some of the largest genebanks in the world explain their visions, as I’m doing this week. But if you want to see why some people get a thrill when they do that, can’t be in Rome this week, and can’t wait for Genebank Gods to come along on the History Channel, watch Pawn Stars. Just don’t let your family catch you.