Author: Luigi Guarino

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Africa’s Green Revolution: A report from the barricades

Jacob van Etten has sent in this post, with the following disclaimer: I contributed one of the articles to the issue and participated in a preparatory workshop. My own addition to this issue highlights the role of ICT technologies to create new networks of collaboration around technological innovation, creating new links between scientists and farmers. Luigi will give his own critical assessment of that piece in a separate post.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, the Milennium Villages Program and the new Feed the Future program are all busy to make a new Green Revolution happen in Sub-Saharan Africa. These initiatives promote similar combinations of better access to inputs such as fertilizers and improved varieties, including the development of input markets so that the inputs keep getting to the farms in the future, too.

The latest issue of the IDS Bulletin reports from the ground on these African Green Revolution initiatives. The issue contains interesting field studies from Malawi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ghana. The focus is not that of traditional impact evaluation, though. The studies look at how the different projects take shape through an institutional, political lens. How are local alliances shaped to realize the objectives of these programs? And whose interests are being served anyway?

The stories that emerge are tremendously diverse and well worth reading. For instance, Kenya, with its strong but unevenly developed private seed sector, versus Ethiopia‘s still largely state-controlled system give very different contexts to work in. Especially fascinating is the study on Malawi. Malawi has been a poster child for its input subsidy programme. Blessings Chinsinga investigates how this plays out on the ground.

One of the lessons is that seed market development, as promoted by the different African Green Revolution initiatives, is supply-driven rather than demand-driven. For agrobiodiversity, this means that the supply often becomes reduced to a few modern varieties, even though there might be demand for a more diverse set of seeds.

There is very little evidence that the different projects were designed explicitly taking the political-economic diversity on the ground into account. As a consequence, the different interventions seem to do little to change local power balances or place agricultural innovation on a more democratic footing. Therefore, Ian Scoones and John Thompson, in the introductory article, call for more democratic deliberation on these issues, so that more diverse perspectives come to the table.

To me it seems that we need fairly radical new ways to make the voices of farmers heard and to prevent certain elites from undermining the process. Even supposedly democratic deliberations are often hijacked by elite opinions as a result of cultural conventions, verbal assertiveness and so on. Perhaps we should promote less a “talking” democracy and more a “doing” democracy. 1 Democratic processes that tap into the expert knowledge of farmers may be less easy to hijack by non-experts, such as business elites. Vote with your seed.

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Tasteful crop breeding

What [breeders] say to me over and over again is no one’s ever asked me about flavor. No one asks me about flavor. They always ask me about yield and disease resistance… All we have to do is select for flavor.

That’s from an interview with Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, as reported on the Organic Seed Alliance blog. It seemed a bit overstated, so I posted the quote without further comment on PB Forum, hoping to elicit a response from the plant breeding community, and I was not disappointed. Here’s Nick Birch of the James Hutton Institute, Dundee:

At our institute (formerly SCRI), flavour and texture are key selection traits for soft fruit varieties (raspberries, blackcurrants, etc), alongside yield and pest/disease resistance traits.

Supermarkets in the U.K. generally select soft fruit varieties to sell mainly based on cosmetic traits, including flavour, colour, size, shape, texture and shelf life. However, environmental stress tolerance and pest/disease resistance are becoming more important as pesticide options get restricted via EU regulations.

And then came something from Bill Doley:

It seems that we’ve hit on the root of the problem here, the disconnect between the consumer and the farmer/producer, which might be worse in the US than most other places. With the long value chain between the plant breeder and the consumer, there can be myriad intermediaries producing seed, selling seed, producing the crop, and wholesaling, shipping and retailing the produce. Consumer feedback becomes a disappointing game of whisper down the lane.

Thus the booming popularity of “Fresh and Local” in the US, coupled with the resurgence of interest in so-called heirloom varieties. Now the consumers are meeting the farmers, providing the once lost opportunity to know more about the vegetables than simply the generic names provided in the supermarket produce section. They discuss their preferences and which varieties satisfy them, a very good start to solving the problem of tasteless commodity produce.

And finally Peter Glen Walley of the University of Warwick:

The breeding companies that I have spoken to or have worked with in the UK have breeding programmes that are heavily influenced by consumer preference (as directed by the supermarkets), be it general preference or the more selective niche markets. The global seed companies also use local preferences in markets around the world – selectively targeting their produce.

Flavour and texture have been a driving force in the tomato and leafy veg industries, with yield still a primary factor. I agree with Nick, consumer preference is still heavily influenced by cosmetic traits; indeed, much of our work at Warwick Crop Centre is now centred on how we can maintain this quality and yield as growth conditions begin to change through environmental stress.

So is Chef Barber hanging out with the wrong breeders? If he is, perhaps things are changing.

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Crops for the Future at a crossroads?

I’m conscious of not really having done justice to the recent announcement of considerable Malaysian government funding for a Crops for the Future Research Centre (CFFRC) near Kuala Lumpur.

First of all, I neglected to congratulate the University of Nottingham on securing the money for the Centre. And I didn’t mention that the announcement came at a conference on Crops for the Future – Beyond Food Security organized by the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in collaboration with the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) and with support from the ISHS Working Group on Underutilised Plant Genetic Resources, the ISHS Commission on Plant Genetic Resources and the ISHS Section on Tropical and Sub-Tropical Fruits.

But I suppose the main thing I should have discussed is the relationship between this new Crops for the Future Research Centre and Crops for the Future the international organization. Because it is not entirely clear to me that the two are necessarily synonymous, or even overlapping. 2 Will the Centre be like the little worm-like creature that bursts out of John Hurt’s chest and grows and grows and takes over the Nostromo?

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Nibbles: Qat, Neolithic, Indian nutrition, Indian fish resources, San Diego zoo genebank, Oats, food Security

  • Tax qat? Rather you than me, dude.
  • ” …non-domesticated animals and plants may give hints on the direction and timing of early human expansion routes.”
  • ” The question is why hunger is prevalent when the nature has blessed India with 20 agro-ecological regions and 60 sub-regions to produce the widest variety of food grains, fruits and vegetables in the world?” And it’s a good question.
  • “We have sent a report regarding the occurrence of exotic fishes in such a huge quantity to the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR), Lucknow.” In other news, India has a National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources.
  • San Diego Zoo works to conserve Africa apes. Fine. But did you know it has a Native Seed Gene Bank?
  • Swedes and oats; recipe for cold-tolerant varieties.
  • Empowering Farmers to Achieve Food Security. The Head of Food Security at Syngenta International explains how.