Author: Luigi Guarino

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Land sharing or sparing?

That is one of the questions addressed by a paper in Journal of Applied Ecology which looks at the ecogeographic distribution of organic farming in the UK. “Land sparing” means excluding land from intensive agriculture to protect biodiversity. “Land sharing” is a contrasting strategy which would make all agricultural land better for biodiversity. The study recommends

…continuing to use intensive agriculture to meet our food production targets, but using organic farms in suitable areas to provide islands of biodiversity, as well as a smaller amount of food.

So the vote is for land sparing. Ok, fair enough. What gets me, though, is that, as usual, it is only the effect of agriculture on the surrounding wild biodiversity that is being considered. What about the biodiversity that is an integral part of the agricultural system itself? Doesn’t agrobiodiversity count for something in all this?

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Forced penning in the Sahara

Mathilda had a post a few days ago which caught my eye, but I forgot to nibble it. Better late than never. She discusses a recent paper reporting on the archaeological excavation of Uan Afuda and other Early Holocene sites of the Acacus mountains, in the Libyan Sahara, and in particular the layers of animal dung that excavations uncovered. The paper suggests that these “dung layers are related to a forced penning of a ruminant, very likely Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia),” and that this is evidence of delayed use of resources designed to cope with lean periods. Mathilda goes on to hypothesize that cattle domestication keeping ((See comment from Mathilda.)) may have started in the Sahara — before the growing of crops — in a similar way.

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Agriculture blogged in Copenhagen

Climate Feedback is a blog hosted by Nature Reports: Climate Change to facilitate lively and informative discussion on the science and wider implications of global warming.

There’s not a huge amount on agriculture normally, but a post yesterday from the Copenhagen conference mentions not one but two people whose (independent) work on the effect of climate change on agriculture we’ve mentioned a number of times, Marshall Burke from Stanford and Andy Jarvis from Bioversity International.

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Iraqis let down again

Talking of disasters… Drought, salinity, violence, higher paying jobs in construction, the Coalition Provisional Authority and its Order 81, a corrupt Australian; and before that Saddam Hussein and the embargo: Iraqi agriculture has had a lot to deal with over the years. ((Via.)) The genetic erosion must have been phenomenal. But there’s always ex situ, right? Well:

ICARDA scientists are uncertain … about the fate of Iraq’s research facilities, especially its genebank. Prior to the war, the Abu Ghraib national genebank contained some 1,400 accessions of different crops. According to Shideed, virtually all of the country’s agricultural research centers have been destroyed or severely damaged. Large quantities of genetic materials for crops and livestock animals are feared lost, he said.

We now know that the Iraqi genebank was in fact destroyed, but that copies of the material had previously been sent to ICARDA. I wish I could say that such ex situ collections of Iraqi material maintained around the world are adequate in the face of what’s been happening there. But SINGER gives 1147 accessions, 402 of which geo-referenced, and these are all from the north of the country.

iraq

And GRIN returns 1150 hits. I just don’t think that can possibly fully represent the diversity that was present in even the main staples 20-30 years ago, let along the vegetables and fruits.

Ok, it’s probably not all gone on farm. But who’s going to go out and collect it?