Markets for agrobiodiversity to the fore today. Two resources highlighted by Eldis look at strategies for agricultural diversification and at the importance of assessing market potential in prioritizing among indigenous fruit trees for promotion and development. And once you get your high-value agricultural product to market you will want to guard against pilferage and counterfeiting, won’t you?
Nibbles: Bananas, health, IAASTD, Israeli genebank
- IITA blankets Ghana with micro-propagated bananas. How many varieties?
- Hey, yesterday was Biodiversity and World Health Day. Who knew? (Agriculture not relevant.)
- IAASTD says agriculture needs “…a new paradigm…” Discuss.
- Israeli genebank has to fight for cash. Jeremy comments: alert the media.
Nibbles: potato, EU catalogue, trees, cocoa
- Boffins discuss potatoes in Cuzco. The media are duly alerted.
- Dominique Guillet (M. Kokopelli) offers his French history of the EU Common Catalogue. Jeremy comments: “You translate it, we’ll post it”.
- Tanzanian women making money from tree diversity.
- “UK committed to Ghanaian cocoa farmers.” And to cacao diversity?
- Yams in trouble in Nigeria. Make that foufou to go.
Nibbles: IPRs, chicory, pigs
- Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher optimistic that farmers can avoid becoming “serfs of a different kind”.
- Three chicory museums? Who knew? Want to know more about chicory?
- Just when you thought it was safe, Return of the Pocket Pigs (with added photographic goodness).
Of spears, shields and sorghum
Africa’s farmers have been making sorghum beer for centuries, but it now looks like European brewers are getting in on the act. Heineken and Diageo have started replacing imported barley with locally-grown sorghum in their brewing operations in Ghana and Sierra Leone. It started as a social responsibility project (funded by the Common Fund for Commodities, with the European Co-operative for Rural Development as a partner), but recent increases in the price of malting barley have made it “commercially rather attractive” too.
Of course, farmers have to grow the right variety, and ensure that a consistent supply gets to the breweries, so the project has provided training, access to finance (for seed, fertilizer etc.), and assistance with organizing into groups. This is meant to lead to the establishment of a “sustainable production chain,” which is often touted as a prerequisite for the successful promotion of an underutilized crop — or a crop underutilized for a particular purpose, such as sorghum for industrial brewing: “Farmers need to build confidence that the market is there.”
What will the promotion of a single, industrial use for sorghum do to the diversity of the crop? Nothing good, probably, unless the possible consequences are recognized and appropriate steps taken. In a recent paper we have advocated a “spear and shield” approach to promotion. This means that specific incentives that support diversification should be included when promotion of a particular species, variety or use carries significant risks for (agricultural) biodiversity.
Actions which would support diversification include strengthening community germplasm exchange networks. Coincidentally, there’s an IFPRI discussion paper also out today which looks at the seed system for sorghum and millet in West Africa — Mali, in this case. It seems little certified seed is reaching farmers, though it is still unclear whether this is a demand or supply problem. One of the recommendations is that the formal seed supply systems should deal not only with improved material but also with local landraces. This should be brought to the attention of Heineken, Diageo and their sorghum-brewing partners. Their project should seek to strengthen the local seed system as a whole (the shield), not just help farmers get hold of the preferred brewing variety (the spear).