Category: Articles

Longer pieces; we’d call them essays if that didn’t sound pretentious.

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More on EU Conservation Varieties

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that meeting in Vicenza was part of an EU-funded project called Farm Seed Opportunities. So the EU funds a project to explore ways of overcoming the strict rules for the marketing of seeds — which the EU sets. This isn’t the only example of a lack of joined up thinking; there are the subsidies to the tobacco farmers ranged against the budget for no-smoking campaigns, and probably others too. But I digress.

The Directive on Conservation Varieties is currently in its 11th draft, and is due to be discussed again by the EU today, 9 November, as Item 5 on the agenda of the Standing Committee on Seeds and Propagating Material for Agriculture, Horticulture and Forestry, an element of the Health and Consumer Protection Directorate General. I think one intention of the Vicenza meeting was to sound out Italian players with a view to making their views known in today’s discussions.

So what are those views? I’m afraid I don’t know. There seems to be a general desire to see farmers and others allowed to market seeds of varieties, balanced by a worry that any legislation may offer big seed companies a low-cost route to marketing their varieties. Some say the maximum amounts of seed prescribed in the draft are too low, which seems to play into the hands of the big seed companies. Is the answer a tighter definition of “conservation” and “amateur” varieties, one that big players would not be able to meet? Or is the answer to reduce quantities still further, so that there is no incentive for the big players to exploit these directives?

Noble farmers experimenting with and exchanging their cultural and agricultural inheritance form a crucial part of the narrative surrounding many objections to Europe’s existing seed laws. If that’s true, then small quantities should be no obstacle. Indeed, they should promote the kind of experimentation and adaptation that lie at the heart of farmer conservation, as they bulk up the seed to make commercial use worthwhile.

Another aspect of the argument around these ideas is that somehow there is a clear and present need to regulate the market for all kinds of seed. Why? I believe that ordinary consumer-protection laws are definitely sufficient as far as seed quality (germination, health) are concerned, and that they could probably cope with questions of identity as well. And for small quantities, where the downside — for incomes and food production alike — is more or less trivial, that ought to be enough.

I’ll be interesting to see how today’s discussions go; in the meantime, civil disobedience seems to be the only alternative.

While we’re on the subject, BBC Radio 4 is airing a two part series called Save our Seeds with the estimable Jonathon Porritt doing his thing. The first programme, on Wednesday 7 November, “explores the ancient origins of our agricultural biodiversity and how scientists are working to gather and secure as many plant varieties as possible.” Part 2, on Wednesday 14 November, “examines the controversial fallout of the Green Revolution and the inherent danger of single variety crops.” Ho hum.

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War bad for seeds, seeds good for peace

We asked Jacob van Etten to write about war and agricultural biodiversity after seeing his great website. It’s just coincidence that he sent the following piece in right after we blogged about flooding and genetic erosion. Sometimes things work out that way. Thanks, Jacob. We’re always open to guest contributions…

War can be disastrous for the environment. Think about forest destruction in Kurdistan or burning oil wells in Iraq. But we know very little about agrobiodiversity losses caused by armed conflict. Some time ago, a team of geographers wrote an alarming article about maize biodiversity in Guatemala, where a war raged in the 1980s. They claimed that war and modernization had caused a massive disappearance of indigenous maize varieties. This was based on a quick study of several townships.

However, in a recent restudy, which involved more intensive sampling in a single township, it became clear that several maize varieties were still hiding in the corners. Variety loss was in fact rather low and no varieties were reported to be lost due to the war. What seemed to have changed over the last decades was the social distribution of seeds and knowledge, suggestive of a disrupted social exchange network.

As other studies in Rwanda and West Africa have given similar results, a general picture seems to emerge. The problem is often not the physical survival of seeds and varieties during war. They may be conserved by those who stay in the village or recovered after the violence from fields and secret storages. The main problem is that war destroys the social and economic tissue that underpins agricultural diversity management. Mistrust and poverty will limit the circulation of seeds, leading to access problems and a fragmented local knowledge system. There may thus be a lot of sense in a project of CARE by Sierra Leone that turned the problem of seeds and war on its head. It used the distribution of seeds as a way to evoke discussion on the principles of social exclusion and the causes of the armed conflict.

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Intensifying rice

WWF has a news release today announcing the publication of a study on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a set of practices initially developed in Madagascar in the 1980s. ((If you’re wondering why WWF is publishing a report on agriculture: “WWF is focusing on sustainable agriculture efforts for cotton, sugar and rice, some of the most consuming crops for which alternative techniques can result in a strong yield and water savings.”))

The system is based on eight principles which are different to conventional rice cultivation. They include developing nutrient-rich and un-flooded nurseries instead of flooded ones; ensuring wider spacing between rice seedlings; preferring composts or manure to synthetic fertilizers; and managing water carefully to avoid that the plants’ roots are not saturated.

The WWF study says SRI is more water-efficient and productive: in India, yields have apparently risen by 30%, while water use has decreased by 40%. No word on its effects on local agrobiodiversity. Yet. But methane emissions are supposed to go down. Nevertheless, there has been some criticism of SRI in the past.

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Feet of clay

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That’s another one to tick off the life list. Above you see Zhu Youyong, who describes himself as a farmer. He happens also to be Distinguished Professor Zhu, President of Yunnan Agricultural College and a hero of mine.

Zhu’s name is associated with a method of growing rice that delivers higher, more stable yields with lower inputs of fungicides and a more stable harvest from year to year. Not bad for an amazingly simple idea. The problem is that traditional landraces of sticky rice, which farmers like to grow and to eat, are susceptible to fungal disease. They also have a nasty tendency to fall over, or lodge, especially when they are carrying a bountiful load of seed. Modern hybrids are disease resistant, and high-yielding, but the taste is not much to write home about. Yields are high, but prices are low. To grow the tasty traditional landraces, farmers need to be able to afford fungicides and they need to be able to overcome their tendency to lodge.

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