Conservation.Bytes features a landmark 2004 paper on the projected effect of climate change on species distributions as its latest Conservation Classic. It also points to a 2008 summary of such studies over at BraveNewClimate. Regular readers will know that there have been studies which have focused specifically on the wild genepools of different crops.
Nibbles: Boswellia, Nepali rice, Andes, Pacific nutrition, Wild rice, Coffea, Kashmir, Fibres, Fermentation
- Saving Dhofar’s frankincense tree. Evocative things they are too.
- The rich may have trouble getting into heaven, but they manage more agrobiodiversity. At least of rice. At least in Nepal.
- Gotta be careful with niche modeling in mountain areas. Well, duh.
- New Pacific food leaflets from SPC.
- Ok, how weird is it that I have a personal connection of sorts to all of the above? Probably not much.
- Ex situ not enough for wild rice. Say it ain’t so!
- The evolution of coffee.
- “If the rains do not fall we may face problems with certain crops.” Right.
- Network on natural fibres proposed by Industree Craft Foundation and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Sounds like fun.
- Screening lactic acid strains for sorghum beer making. Well, kinda. Somebody please fund this vital research!
The Viking in the wheat field on the radio
Alerted by a colleague I listened to a little bit of a long radio programme featuring Susan Dworkin, author of The Viking in the Wheat Field, and assorted luminaries. The Viking in question was Sir Bent Skovmand, a plant breeder extraordinaire, and what I heard of the programme indicated that there is still profound ignorance out there about plant breeding, about agriculture, about genebanks, about GMOs, about the Global Crop Diversity Trust, about just about everything.
Of course, I have no idea what to do about any of that (other than to keep plugging away). I did like one metaphor that Per Pinstrup Anderson, former director general of IFPRI used when asked about the “problem of hunger”. Imagine yourself in a room of seventy people, he said. Ten of those won’t have enough to eat today. That’s pretty good. To which I’d add that another 10 are obese or overweight. And 20 suffer the hidden hunger of missing micronutrients.
Seed systems and survival
Two recent documents address seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa. One, from the Drylands Coordination Group in Norway looks at the relevance of the informal seed sector to farmers in southern Tigray, Ethiopia, using the famine of 1984 as a boundary across which to compare results. It’s a complex story that would repay study by someone expert in the subject matter, but this is striking:
Five cultivars of sorghum, one cultivar of tef and four cultivars of maize have been lost and others are on the verge of being lost from the farming system of the area. Early maturing sorghum cultivars from the informal seed are gaining upper hand and have already replaced the old but late maturing types.
It is tempting to see those changes as a response to changing weather patterns, and the study recommends research to make older varieties “as productive as they used to be”.
In Zambia, Danielle Nierenberg reports on her blog, the aid charity CARE is fostering a business-like approach to increasing the production of staple crops.
One way they’re doing this is by creating a network of agro-dealers who can sell inputs to their neighbors as well as educate them about how to use hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs. At the same time, “we are mindful” of the benefits of local varieties of seeds, says Harry Ngoma, Agriculture Advisor for the Consortium for Food Security, Agriculture and Nutrition, AIDS, Resiliency and Markets (C-FAARM).
Right on, Harry! Sounds very like the approach being promoted by AGRA in its pursuit of an African green revolution. And CARE is also promoting indigenous crops such as sorghum to complement Zambia’s appetite for maize. But is there a danger that this network of agro-dealers will be promoting the inputs that make them the most profit? There must be a way of tying rewards for advice to the practical outcome of following that advice.
Nibbles: Neglected species, Diversity 4 Life, Rice, Databases
- What makes a species “underutilized”? Your chance to tell FAO and Bioversity International
- Global awareness of biodiversity campaign in the Philippines.
- Staying in the Philippines, drought imperils rice terraces.
- Database builders: read this and weep.