- The UK’s take on Nagoya? “In the end it was a great success.” Really, it was.
- ILRI outlines project to protect local livestock breeds in Viet Nam.
- Another day, another genebank (in another language).
- Haiti told to get growing. “I’ve worked in some severely affected countries, including Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Mali, but I have never seen such a suppressed agricultural system as we saw in Haiti.” Louise Sperling speaks truth to power.
Markets and on farm conservation: it’s complicated
Eating blue tortilla chips during a recent visit to the US reminded me that I had intended to blog about a paper just out in the Journal of Latin American Geography. ((Alder Keleman & Jonathan Hellin (2009) Specialty maize varieties in Mexico: A case study in market-driven agro-biodiversity conservation. Journal of Latin American Geography, 8 (2), 147-174. DOI: 10.1353/lag.0.0061)) Entitled “Specialty maize varieties in Mexico: A case study in market-driven agro-biodiversity conservation,” it looks in detail at the economics of growing blue and pozole maize in the areas around the huge market represented by Mexico City. Blue maize is used to make antojitos, savoury meat-, cheese- or vegetable-filled snacks. Pozole is a traditional Mexican maize and meat soup.
The authors, Alder Keleman and Jonathan Hellin, carried out a value chain analysis for both of these distinctive maizes and concluded that “while existing specialty markets clearly provide a strong incentive for farmers to continue to plant blue and pozole maize landraces, this in-and-of-itself … does not provide a complete in situ conservation system.” For one thing, it is not clear to what extent the demands of the market may be driving genetic “standardization” within these specialy types. And in any cases, other types of landraces are not benefiting from these markets, and may indeed be suffering as a result of them.
So, although on-farm conservation interventions which involve strengthening these specialty maize value chains, for example through geographical indications, may meet development goals like increasing incomes and food production, they will need to be carefully planned and implemented, and form part of a larger strategy. Which will need to involve genebanks.
Interestingly, another recent paper also looks at the role of markets in on-farm conservation in Mexico (among other things), though for another crop. ((K. Kraft, J. de Jesús Luna-Ruíz & P. Gepts (2010) Different seed selection and conservation practices for fresh market and dried chile farmers in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Economic Botany 64. 10.1007/s12231-010-9136-x. (Not yet live.) )) Kraft and co-workers found that all the landraces of green chile have disappeared in Aguascalientes due to the introduction of hybrids. Farmers still grow landraces for dried chile, in part because of laxer uniformity requirements for dried chile compared to fresh, but are open to the idea of hybrids for this market too. As with specialty maizes, the link between the market and diversity in complicated, and can go both ways. Genebanks are less fun, sure, but at least we know what they do to diversity. Mainly.
Nibbles: PNG & CC, Pasture, Nagoya, Sesame, CIMMYT, Oryza, Tradition
- A view from Papua New Guinea on a project to prepare PNG agriculture for climate change.
- How to grow a properly biodiverse pasture. Hint: money isn’t enough.
- Another Nagoya round-up. And another.
- Sesamum monographed.
- Award for CIMMYT genebank.
- African rice domestication deconstructed.
- Traditional practices bad for Nigerian children, good for Chinese fish.
Nibbles: Livestock system resilience, Nepal genebank, Salicornia, GMO risk
- ILRI slideshow on adapting South Asian livestock systems to climate change. And some background.
- Latest on Nepal’s new genebank.
- Salicornia 101.
- GENERA: a database of published, peer-reviewed scientific papers that are related to the risks and safety of genetic engineering in agriculture. Courtesy of Biofortified.
Did wild relatives get a boost at Nagoya?
I think I may have Nibbled the fact that IUCN released a few days ago at Nagoya the results of a massive study of the global pattern of threat to vertebrate diversity. Here’s the money map:
Also to coincide with Nagoya, IUCN collaborated with Kew and the Natural History Museum, London on a global analysis of extinction risk for the world’s plants.
And of course, the A-Z Guide of Areas of Biodiversity Importance was launched at a side event at COP 10. The press release is on the UNEP website.
Compare and contrast with this map Julian Ramirez of CIAT has kindly sent me, showing the richness of wild relatives of a dozen or more major crops. Question for anyone who was at Nagoya: were livestock and crop wild relatives discussed during the proceedings?
I ask because in a recent posting on the Crop Wild Relatives discussion group, Nigel Maxted suggests that launching an initiative to “(establish) … a Global Network of CWR Protected Areas is now a real priority, along with systematic ex situ conservation!”
So what happened?