Category: Genetic diversity

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Who Owns Nature?

There is a new report, “Who Owns Nature? Corporate Power and the Final Frontier in the Commodification of Life” from the ETC group.

It talks of corporate concentration in:

  • farm input (from thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales);
  • food output (supermarkets);
  • pharmaceuticals; and
  • the New Post-Petroleum sugar industry (“the so-called ‘sugar economy’ will be the catalyst for a corporate grab on all plant matter –- and destruction of biodiversity on a massive scale”).

Their (not so new) bottom line on seeds:

So-called climate-ready genes are a false solution to climate change. Patented gene technologies will not help small farmers survive climate change, but they will concentrate corporate power, drive up costs, inhibit public sector research and further undermine the rights of farmers to save and exchange seeds.

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Diversity rules

Three articles on the benefits of diversity for your delectation this weekend. Evolutionary Applications has a paper suggesting that restoration of degraded landscapes is best done with “high quality and genetically diverse seed to maximize the adaptive potential of restoration efforts to current and future environmental change.” Meanwhile, in The Economist, how structurally complex and diverse betel nut plantations ((Ok, ok, “betel nut.”)) can be almost as good for bird diversity as the surrounding forest, and how it is better for a crop to be attacked by two pests rather than one.

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Nibbles: Chickens, Realpolitik, Apples, Kew, Maize, Local food

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Microbe man

Gary at Muck and Mystery waxes lyrical:

When I walk my fields I entertain fantasy visions of walking on a spongy mass of wriggling, ravenous microbes. It helps that my fields – or at least those I’ve had the management of for a couple of years – are in fact soft and yielding since they are rich in organic matter and living material so that even when bone dry they remind some of walking on a firm mattress.

He sees microbes and moo-cows as co-workers, a view we need to promote to those who see simplification as the only response to challenge. Complexity is almost always best.