Nibbles: Conferences, Banana satire, Green rice, Fairchild, Slippery cabbage

Zero-emission seed fridge gets a boost

A while ago I was snitty about the pitch for a zero-emission fridge to help farmers in Mozambique to store seeds, because it seemed to be saying that subsistence farmers didn’t know how to save or store their seeds. In the event the proposal did not win one of the World Bank’s Development Marketplace awards. Today’s Development Marketplace blog has good news. The European Commission Food Facility has granted Helvetas US$ 2 million “to establish 90 seed banks benefitting 38,000 families in 300 communities”.

I’m still not sure I fully understand the basis of the proposal, but if the EU gets it, then that’s probably just me. I think than the “fridge” is designed to store next season’s seeds in better condition that whatever techniques the farmers were using before, but there’s also something about helping the farmers “get through the ‘hunger period’,” which is being extended by changing climate. And that’s the bit I don’t get. Were farmers eating their seed stocks before? And how will better storage prevent them eating their seed stocks? Judging from the picture at the DM blog, 90 of those are not going to provide food for 38,000 families, but they might help to provide seed for planting.

How fast will this climate change be anyway?

ResearchBlogging.orgWell, in terms of distance along the Earth’s surface, about 400 m per year on average, ranging from 80 m per year in mountainous regions to 1.26 km per year in deserts. That’s according to a new paper in Nature by Loarie et al. ((Loarie, S., Duffy, P., Hamilton, H., Asner, G., Field, C., & Ackerly, D. (2009). The velocity of climate change Nature, 462 (7276), 1052-1055 DOI: 10.1038/nature08649)) Compare that with figures of postglacial migration rates of <100 m per year for some trees. Here’s a map of the speed of temperature change by biome from the Nature paper (click to enlarge).

map

And here’s the “persistence time” for protected areas in different biomes, i.e. the diameter of protected areas divided by the climate velocity.

persistence

The persistence time — which is how long it takes for the current climate to cross a protected area — exceeds 100 years for only about 8% of protected areas. And that, dear reader, is why we need protected areas that are larger and more connected. Oh, and genebanks.