Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
In England, the government is asking for views on vegetable varieties of ‘no intrinsic value for crop production but developed for growing under particular conditions’. They mean heritage and heirloom varieties, which could be promoted through Commission Directive 2009/145/EC on conservation and amateur varieties of vegetables, but we advise caution. Can worthless be far behind?
Seriously, let them know what you think.
Nourishing the Planet continues to disseminate answers. Today, Pascal Pulvery, of the National Association of Livestock & Artificial Insemination Cooperatives, France says:
“I think that the majority of funds should be used to develop the production of food for local utilization instead of developing the agricultural production for exportation.”
In other news, there’s a National Association of Livestock & Artificial Insemination Cooperatives in France.
That’s the question posed by the title of a big splash in Nature. The answer, in case you don’t want to work your way through the various contributions, as summarized in a handy pamphlet, is yes, by enabling sustainable intensification, although not on its own. So nothing wildly new there. Also not new is that once again agrobiodiversity gets the shaft. One of the articles does focus on plant breeding, but it doesn’t mention the need to ensure the long-term availability of its raw material — crop and livestock genetic diversity, including that in genebanks. There’s also a piece by Jeffrey Sachs and numerous co-authors on the need for better global monitoring of agriculture, which doesn’t mention the desirability of monitoring levels of agricultural biodiversity on-farm. Oh well.